Woodville NanoBrewery

2020 - A Year in Brewing (Review) It has been a funny old year and one that many will probably try to forget in a hurry. Nonetheless, it has given me an opportunity to hone and develop my brewing skills and methods alongside some family members.  Looking back to my first brew of 2020 (Lockdown IPA), I feel that I have learnt a lot and along the way and now is as good a time as any to reflect and look forward to 2021 with a little 'awards' ceremony:  Best Light Beer: I think over the lighter coloured brews made this year and there were some great results. Lockdown IPA gave me a real taste for brewing again and offered up a really sessionable beer. I really enjoyed making No More Lands with my Father in Law and the beer turned out exactly as we intended (but perhaps lacked a little hop zing for my liking). Bramble IPA in its 3 versions allowed me to experiment with a highly underrated hop whilst mixing up different methods to see how this effected flavour. Off the Cuff IPA was a...

Brew 14 - Alice Porter Revisited  Brew day: 28/11/2020 Bottle day: 21/12/2020 Brew day beckons again and this time I'm revisiting my first ever all grain brew - Alice Porter. A superb Brewdog recipe that I tried in Edinburgh last year. I love a porter at this time of year so a good chance to brew a slightly bigger batch before Christmas.  Slight variations to the recipe - no Magnum hops so Northern Brewer go in as a bittering hop and then East Kent Goldings before a dash of Soraci Ace at the end. Nice! New mash method working well and first batch pre boil gravity is 1.038 (potentially 80% efficiency... watch this space). Temperature control is so much better with the hob and stirring the mash regularly to distribute the heat. The first batch seems to have most of the darker malts and the wort is seriously dark. Need to think about how I can distribute the malts from the bag between batches.  2nd batch is looking good - perhaps a little lighter, the balance of malts seems ...

All Grain Mash Efficiencies (not including Extract Brews or 2nd Runnings)  Brew 1 - Alice Porter (16/11/2019) OG = 1.053 Efficiency = 39% ABV = 5.2% Brew 2 - Lockdown IPA (28/03/2020) OG = 1.040 Efficiency = 50% ABV = 4.7% Brew 3 - Chocolate Hop Nob (27/04/2020) OG = 1.035 Efficiency 58% ABV = 3.3% Brew 4 - Bramble Pie IPA 01 (30/05/2020) OG = 1.044 Efficiency = 27% ABV = 5.4% Brew 5 - Gardener's Gloves IPA (20/06/2020) OG = 1.057 Efficiency = 45.5% ABV = 6.4%  Brew 6 - Wake Up Call (30/06/2020) OG = 1.061 Efficiency = 57% ABV = 6.4% Brew 7 - Off The Cuff IPA (22/07/2020) OG = 1.058 Efficiency = 42% ABV = 6.8% Brew 8 - Evil Pea IPA ( 25/08/2020) OG = 1.045 Efficiency = 44% ABV = 4.6% Brew 9 - No More Lands to Conquer (31/10/2020)  OG = 1.045  Efficiency =  40.5% ABV = 5.2% Brew 10 - Bramble Pie IPA 02 ( 08/11/2020 )  OG = 1.064  Efficiency: 52%  ABV: 6.6% Brew 11 - Bramble Pie IPA 03 (22/11/2020)  OG = 1.062 Efficiency = 68% ABV = 5.8% B...

Brew 13 - Bramble Pie IPA Mk3  (Larger Batch) Brew day: 22/11/2020 Bottle day: 21/12/2020 Another wet weekend and a chance to get brewing again. I spent the first part of the morning bottling my small trial batch (Brew 12) which took less than an hour. This left the best part of the day to have another brew day. This time, another go at Bramble Pie - this time I'm trying something different.  I start by stretching the brew bag over the rim of my kettle. I didn't realise it fits so perfectly onto the rim and I'm able to pour out my malt without any issue. This gave me an idea. I'd tried using the stock pot as a mash tun before but wasn't happy with the outcome. This time, I left the brew bag open, allowing me to stir the contents regularly whilst maintaining a view of the temperature which I could then control using the gas.  Next up, I'm toying with water chemistry. I'd found a water report for the local water supply and had input the values into a calculato...

  Brew 12 - Bramble Pie IPA  (Small Batch trial run) Brew day: 08/11/2020 Bottle day: 22/11/2020 Back in May, I made a lovely IPA using Bramling Cross hops that I had left over from the previous Autumn. I enjoyed the bitterness that the hop provided and really wanted to make this brew again - this time a little differently.  Last time out, I was under on my ABV and also below where I wanted the IBU to be. This time, I have 200g of the hops so I can put in a bit more.  I ordered 7kg of the malt (6.5kg Maris Extra Pale, 400g Crisp Caramalt and 200g Light Crystal) a few months ago with the view to brewing this as one big batch. The malt has been sat there for ages so it is time to use at least some of it.  I'm running a 'Science of Brewing' project at work (FE College) and have always thought about really small batch brewing (5 litres) and this is the opportunity to try it out before the project kicks off. I have Brew 11 sat in my main FV at present so I'm going to...

Brew 11 - No More Lands to Conquer?  (Golden Ale) Brew day: 31/10/2020 Bottle day: 14/11/2020 I'd been chatting to my father in law for months about doing a brew day and had been pestering him to let me know which style of beer he would like to make. He'd tried a few of my previous brews and isn't a huge fan of the citrus hopped varieties so I suggested we make something a little more traditional. I've recently enjoyed a few Golden Ales and find that the style is quite underrated in the current world of dank NEIPAs and full on Stoats.  I started of with a bit of research. I knew what a Golden Ale tasted like and I enjoy a few quite a bit (Bay's Devon Dumpling springs to mind). The brew should be pale/light with very low SRM. I selected a base Extra Pale Malt and then chucked in a small amount of Light Crystal to raise the colour just above what it should be (I don't like to follow convention too much).  Next job was to select some hops. I wanted to add a decent ...

  Brew 10 -  Incognito IPA (First Gold Extract Kit) Brewday: 10/10/2020 Dry hopped: 14/10/2020 Bottle day: 27/10/2020 Venturing into the extract world again - we decided to experiment with a Wilkinson's First Gold IPA kit. I've had some success with this brand before (a Chocolate Stoat) and our last kit experiment (Brew 8 - Sheepstor IPA) wasn't too bad. We are adamant that we can improve so here goes. The kit came with a standard packet of yeast and a tiny (less than 10g) bag of First Gold hops. A quick pop onto Get 'Er Brewed and we selected some hops to add. We decided to up the bittering hops with some extra Golding hops (East Kent) and then dry hop with some Ekuanot and Bavarian Mandarina (neither of which I have used yet). To add the bittering hops we made up a 'hop tea'. Boiling up the hops in some water for about 45mins will have given the Alpha Acids from the EKG hops chance to isomerise adding the desired flavour profile. The rest of the hops are added...

Brew 9 - Evil Pea IPA (Chocolate  HopNob Revisited) Brew day: 25/08/2020 Bottle day: 08/09/2020 I'm going to revisit Brew 3 - a Black IPA. The brew was a bit of a disaster from start to finish - the beer wasn't black and it ended up very, very cloudy and full of trub. The ABV was very low and my mash efficiency was lower back in April. The hop flavour was actually pretty good so I think with some tweaks, I can make this much better.  Firstly, the malt bill. I need more dark malt to bring out the black colour. I'm going to double the amount of Carafa I and increase the content of Carmalt and Light Crystal slightly, as well as slightly more of the base Pale Malt. This looks to give me a target ABV of 5.5%.  I'm also upping the hop bill - going with the amount from the Brewdog recipe - 256g of hop pellets on order - most of which is dry hop. This is going to be a hop bomb! I saved brew day for a rainy day in August - saves wasting a sunny day indoors. I'm using 2 new a...