Recent content by Microscopist

It's made by Thomas Fawcett. I was half expecting it to cause trouble in the mash but it behaves very well. I have heard of people making brews with 100% oat malt, I can't imagine how that would come out - this wort tastes 'thick' as it is. Got plenty of hops left, maybe 5g of each?

I've broken my foot, I gotta sit just to undo my fly at the moment :-(

I've got my bees so I'm throwing honey into everything. I'm generally very pleased with the results but I'm trying to find ways to counter the thinning effect of high proportions of honey without swamping the flavour. My latest batch is satisfying but not quite perfected - 10l 1.4 kg pale...

I've kept some of my heavier porters at the back of the cupboard for several years and they improve -I don't plan on drinking dark high gravity beers until they've had at least 4 months, especially if they're made with bret

I'm new to citra as well, I don't think you've over done it but I wouldn't have used citra at the 60min as I'd have thought most of its aroma would come off so a cheaper bittering hop might do. I'm planning on a light dry hopping. One thing I've found with citra beers is they can taste great on...

Off work with a foot in plaster but that won't stop me making beer! To keep boredom at bay I've had an online malt shopping spree. Bought myself a big pile of pale oat malt and decided to make something hoppy. I was toying with adding 500g torrefied wheat but thought better of it Maris otter...

That's probably the biggest risk and it's almost certainly present it also won't produce an off odour.

I got the blogging bug when I got the bees - here's a couple of brewing related posts. I must post an update on the quadruple brew day ( damn that was a busy day! ) http://thenakedapiarist.com/2015/10/20/try-a-little-bitterness/ http://thenakedapiarist.com/2015/09/03/quadruple-brew-wednesday/

It'll do the opposite and concentrate them. For small batches you could try freezing some in a PET bottle until good and slushy then invert the opened bottle to drain out the unfrozen fraction.

I've used raspberries in a non sour added to the primary on day 2 - ie once the yeast is well established. I've tried holding them at 70C for a few minutes for pasteurising but eventually gave up and just started throwing them in after a quick rinse. It's never caused me trouble ( yet ).

Oooh, I shall try that, thanks for tip!

I never add CO2, I tend to prime with malt extract and just let the pressure build up again - repriming if necessary but usualy I drink until the pressure goes then bottle the rest. If it goes half way through a drinking session then loosen the cap and when you're done drinking try to...

I put about a teaspoon in a 6l bucket of chopped apples and let the scratter ( pulpmaster actually ) do the mixing. It got me 10-15% more juice out of the pressing. I did some digging around and found out there's a time limit - leave it more than an hour and pressing gets difficult as the stuff...

It works in meads fine - I've done meads with nothing but honey but the beers do have a slight sharpness to them, they're good but might be even better if I tempered it a little. I might experiment with chalk in the glass as a tentative experiment.

My first year of bee keeping coming to a close and I have buckets of honey to play with. I like fermenting my beers out very dry and like the aromatic aroma that the honey adds when the sugar's been taken away. The trouble is, honey has a pH around 3.9 and using largish proportions in a brew...