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That OG is a little low, here's a nifty calculator http://www.liquorcraft.com.au/wawcs0113 ... ators.html OG should have been 1044 if you went to the 23 ltr mark

Thanks for the tip.

It is a little weird though - normally I have a tendency to get OG's too high (probably a reflection of not enough stirring to create a 'balanced' gravity across the wort).

Oh well, hopefully it does not matter too much in the end and the brew tastes ok.

I think it should be fine. I often make brews with 1.7kg kit and 1 kg malt to 23L and they taste fine. I figure they are around midstrength in alcohol and a 375ml stubby is about 1 standard drink. Makes it easy to keep track if you've got to drive.

cwbrown07 wrote:Having been inspired by this thread, I put a "real ale" brew into fermenter on the weekend:

1x Coopers Real Ale tin
1kg liquid light malt
200g Crystal (steeped in 3l of water slowly brought to about 70 degrees over 20mins)
25g Goldings pellets (15g at 20min boil, 10g at flameout)

Sounds great!

Am still tossing up whether to add another 10g of goldings into fermenter for some (wet) dry-hopping once FG has settled. Any thoughts?

Go for it if you love that fruity Goldings aroma. Just make sure you drink it out of a glass.

Wet hopping is where you put in fresh (undried) hop flowers. Otherwise it's dry hopping.

Perhaps someone with a calculator (and more experience than me...!) can assist - the OG was 1.038. Is this a little on the low side?

What volume did you top it up to?

earle wrote:I've been to one of your local HBS in Townsville and I'm not sure you would get very good advice there anyway.

The real ale has a reasonable high bitterness at around 38 IBU which means it can handle 1kg of ldm easily. If you are concerned you could always boil some hops with some of your malt to increase the bitterness.

Where are you getting your hops from?

curious which brew shop in tville u thought was sad on advice,i can recomend a champ if needed

The one that's also a tobacconist, on Ross River road.

I'm drinking the Hightail ale clone that I made a week or two ago.

Having recently tried the real deal, I can say that this is very close to the original. erring towards better.

I'm just getting through the last bottles of the Hightail clone I made about a year ago. Still great stuff after that amount of time, hasn't gone downhill like some ales can.

Filled up fermenter to 23l. Normally I am a 21l man, but got carried away in the excitement I guess.

This baby is now in the bottle, after having 2 weeks in the (primary) fermenter. Bottomed out at 1.008, so it should be pretty easy to drink I guess, both re: alcohol and body. 2 months in bottle gets it to October, so just in time for the hotter weather!

Initial fermenter tastings are promising, so I am looking forward to a proper (ie carbonated and cold) tester.

Thanks all for comments/advice.

For the sake of completeness, and to add to the collective knowledge base, I thought it appropriate to note that I tasted the first of my "Real Ale" batch the other day.

A bit disappointed is my initial reaction. First thoughts are:

1. massively undercarbed - used drops (yes, remembered to put them in...) and stored bottled beers in fridge at same temp as primary fermentation (18-20). Not sure whether this will change over time, or perhaps is a reflection of the yeast dropping out of solution in greater numbers and therefore there being less in the bottles - left in primary for 2 weeks?

2. Colour was a fairly plain murky brown. Kinda looks like Kent Old Brown, but less "sparkly" (pardon the limited use of descriptive words...).

Taste is ok, but I suspect it suffers from a lack of carbonation. Nice level of residual bitterness, but not a lot of hop flavour (to my palate) at this steg.

Oh well, hopefully some conditioning over the next month or so will assist.

In any case, it is certianly a good excuse to get on with brewing something else!

At risk of raising the dead thread with this post....

I am planning on doing my first attempts at hopping and steeping once I have some empty fermenters, I wanted to use the recipe posted on the first page but one part has me mildly confused...

earle wrote:15.00 gm Cascade [5.50 %] (Dry Hop 3 days) Hops -
15.00 gm Cascade [5.50 %] (30 min) Hops 7.4 IBU
15.00 gm Cascade [5.50 %] (15 min) Hops 4.8 IBU

The "Dry hop 3 days" now I know in a boil the time relates to time until flameout, so in dry hopping terms, do I read that as 3 days after primary has begun, or 3 days in secondary, i.e. 3 days before bottling?

Obviously adding it 3 days from the start will impart more flavour than 3 days from the end, but which one is it that the recipe suggests??

As this will be my first attempt at hopping, I'd like to make sure I have it right before I begin.

Did I write that? I'm pretty sure that it means 3 days before bottling, however what I actually did was add it at flame out (or 0 min). The advantage of adding it 3 days before bottling would be that not as much aroma is driven off during primary fermentation but at this stage I always add at flame out and it still turned out a cracker.

Flameout it is......

Thought I'd have a crack using the Real Ale can seeing as I picked up a couple of cans on special ($9)

Put this down last night

Yankee Brown

1 can Cooper's Real Ale
1kg LDME
250grms Caramunich III
300grms Dark Brown Sugar
15grms Amarillo @ 10mins
20grms Williamette @ 2mins
US05

Don't know how this will turn out. Didn't taste it out of the fermenter & forgot to get an OG...