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Very interesting that there is not as much of a difference as we normally assume with boiling wort versus 70-80C.

Extract does have a tendency to finish and bit sweet. It’s easy enough to add sugar to dry out the beer, and use a yeast with decent attenuation. Or just increase the IBUs to balance it out, maybe add some gypsum to the boil to emphasise the bitterness.

Saf-04 is solid and reliable for a variety of styles. Notty is a bit bland and attenuates too much imo. Windsor is known for stalling at 1.020, so that would be a no for me. The others I have no experience with.

Here in the UK, craft breweries in North Yorkshire and the North-East (Newcastle) are thriving with new breweries opening regularly. I’m not seeing the plateau yet.

It’s finished at 1.008, so it’s a 7.8% beer. It tastes more like a ‘strong ale’ at this minute. I’m bottling it today, so we will see how it turns out in a couple of weeks. May benefit from a few months aging.

If you REALLY wanted bottle, there’s a place about 15 mins down the road from me that stocks all the Sam Smiths bottled beers. Could also be worth speaking with Brewlab - I’m sure they will have Sam Smiths yeast.

I’m pretty sure that Sam Smiths don’t brew those fruit beers themselves.

Oddly enough, I live about 25 minutes from the Sam Smiths brewery in Tadcaster and I don’t see it in any pubs round here.

That’s quite a large temperature swing to get in one day. Even if ambient temperature changes in my house, the beer only changes by maybe 1C

Is this ambient temperature or the actual temperature inside in FV?

Top cropping at that stage seems weird to me, it’s certainly not the way I’ve ever been shown to do it. I’ve always been told to skim once the beer is a couple of points above FG when we put the beer on chill. I’d rouse the yeast and get the temperature up to 21-22C. If you get no activity or...

Starting off at 18C isn’t too bad, but I’d normally let the yeast free-rise to 22C. Stalling so high is a bit of a mystery. I’d probably build a big starter with something like Saf-04 and pitch that.

What temperature have you been fermenting at? Have you tried rousing the yeast? Some British strains do like rousing towards the end.

imo, skimming would not stall your beer - you should still have plenty of yeast available in solution at the very least. What SG are you getting now? What was expected FG?

Cracking the coffee beans open would give better extract as you’ll have more surface area exposed. I’d go a step further and grind them. Also, you could try steeping in vodka (or NGS if you can get access to this). It will really pull the flavour from the coffee. Lastly, is nobody adding...

I’ll leave this here... https://www.brewersjournal.info/the-effect-of-dry-hopping-on-fermentable-sugars-and-abv/

I don’t think anyone really fully understands what is going on yet. I’ve only tried dry hopping during active fermentation once, so it’s something I’d like to try again one time before completely writing it off.

21C (70F) is not high for English beers. That is a fairly standard fermentation temperature across most traditional styles. The first brewery I worked at used Saf-04 as it’s house strain fermented at 21.5C. Fermenting low at 18C is not a British thing I’ve come across, except at the start of...

Black malt is what they first used historically after moving away from diastic brown malt. I’ve used it and it can be quite bitter/dry. I’d try either cold steeping, or adding to mash at vorlauf for less astringency.

Read up on hop bio-transformation. In a nutshell, you will get flavour/aroma that you would not get any other way. Said to be more floral notes with this process. I’ve tried it and wasn’t convinced. I’ll stick to dry hoping once I’ve cold crashed.