What beer? Wheat beer.

Aug 172012
 
What beer? Wheat beer.

So after a break of a month or two of brewing together, BrewJAM are back in business.  As an aside, I’ve decided not to post any more of the beers that I (James) have brewed on my own, as they aren’t as experimental or big (or as interesting to read about) as the beers we make as BrewJAM. For this brew we decided to make a wheat beer.  We based it upon our Brau Weisse we brewed last year with a few changes. We have upgraded several parts of the brewing process – for the first time ever there is no need to jug from one vessel to the next.  As well as this, we have a separate electric HLT for the first time and have hooked up everything Click here to read rest of article.

 August 17, 2012  Posted by

Parti-Gyle Brew & BrewJaM

Apr 162012
 
Parti-Gyle Brew & BrewJaM

The BrewJam Not sure of the best way to start the write up of this brewday, as to be honest the brewday was a bit of an after thought to the main event of the day – our please come drink our homebrew as we are running out of Corny kegs party.  Here is our bar setup: On tap we had, 2 kegs of each of our latest 4 IPAs, the last keg of wheat beer and the last keg of hodgpodge goblin.  We used the awesome reg that I picked up that has 3 outputs, so we can have 3 different pressures – we had the wheat and hodepodge at slightly higher PSI.  Plus we didn’t have to arse about with a billion JG fittings to split Click here to read rest of article.

 April 16, 2012  Posted by

Spring electricity

Mar 042012
 
Spring electricity

Beer:  Spring electricity Brew Date: 02/03/12 Brew Time: 10am   This is the first brew done solely by me (James) and not both of us.  I finally decided to sort out kit so I can brew in London as well as at Brewjam headquarters.  So really not technically a brewjam beer, but with no where else to put it I’m sticking it here. From the bad title of this post you may be able to surmise that I am making a variation of Hopback Brewery’s Summer Lightning.  While I am not a massive fan of making clones, it seemed appropriate to test out the new kit with something that is pretty easy to make and the expected outcome is known.  So onto the new kit: Mash tun is a Click here to read rest of article.

 March 4, 2012  Posted by

Hopfoolery

Feb 252012
 
Hopfoolery

Beer:  100L IPA – split into 4 differently hopped 25l batches. Brew Date: 19/02/12 Brew Time: 12 till 2am. Grain Bill – 100L Aim: 5.8%ABV  1.055 @ 70% efficiency 25kg Pale Malt (100%) Total grain bill: 25kg We are still experimenting with hops, so we decided to do a basic IPA and then split it down into 4 batches and hop each differently.   This is based upon our tale of 2 IPAs recipe using Maris Otter malt.  However we removed the wheat from the grain bill, as while it gave the IPAs a better head the beers ended up very cloudy.  We also decided to use irish moss to combat this cloudiness, which isn’t something we use very often.  There is no problem taste wise with cloudiness, but it Click here to read rest of article.

 February 25, 2012  Posted by

Hodge Podge Goblin

Dec 172011
 
Hodge Podge Goblin

Beer:  Hodge Podge goblin 7.1% 25IBU Brew Date: 16/12/11 Brew Time: 5pm to 10.30pm. A variation on Smith’s Dark (aka INDESTRUCTIBLE) brewed on 15/11/10.  The beer turned out to be a really good stout after a year of maturing, so we’ve decided to make a variation to use up some odds and ends as well as try out a malt we haven’t brewed with before – smoked malt.  Hopefully this should give the beer a bit of an extra edge.  Grain bill  is simplified to use up a hodge podge of grain we had knocking about – OG will be calculated after boil has cooled.  Some of the grain is pretty old as well – a couple of years in some cases, but we have Click here to read rest of article.

 December 17, 2011  Posted by

A Tale of Two IPAs

Dec 032011
 
A Tale of Two IPAs

Beer:  42L IPA – Split Hopping with Tettnang and Cascade 5.8% 60IBU Brew Date: 02/12/11 Brew Time: Late Friday A big fan of BrewDog and their stonking high-hopped IPAs, James wanted to brew something similar. We both agree that we want to learn much more about hops in order to have some real conviction in blending and creating new beers. In so many of the beers that we drink the blends of hops stop us from really being able to appreciate the individual character of each (and in some cases we don’t even know what hops have been used), so this beer will lead us into a series of future single hop brews. I’ve personally found that formulating recipes to generate a consistent and specific Click here to read rest of article.

 December 3, 2011  Posted by

Brau Weisse

Oct 292011
 
Brau Weisse

Beer: Brau Weisse 5%ABV 15IBU Brew Date: 29/10/11 Brew Time: 6pm to 12pm (clock went back an hour due to daylight savings time, so 7 hours) Bastardised version of the Erdinger Hefe Weissbier recipe from the CAMRA “Brew Classic European Beers” book.  Matt has had quite a lot of experience brewing witt style beers, so we weren’t expecting too many problems.  Raw wheat was taken from the farm we brew on, at start of brew we went into the barn and grabbed a couple of buckets worth.  The wheat was the crushed using a hand grain mill.  At least an hour was spent crushing the 4.62kg of raw wheat.  This was the first brew after quite a break (3/4 year or so), so ingredients were all pretty old. Click here to read rest of article.

 October 29, 2011  Posted by

Indestructible Dark Ale

Nov 152010
 
Indestructible Dark Ale

Smith’s Dark (aka INDESTRUCTIBLE) is our own evolution of a tried and tested recipe. We wanted to brew a malty dark beer over christmas with some complex malt and grain flavours, with the proviso that it had to be strong.

 November 15, 2010  Posted by