Woodville NanoBrewery

Brew 6 - Wake Up Call! (Coffee & Oatmeal Breakfast Stoat) Brew day: 30/06/2020  Bottle day: 13/07/2020 After 4 consecutive IPAs - it is time to go back to the dark side and brew a stoat. On of my favourite beers is Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stoat and this is my next aim - an Oatmeal based Stoat with a twist.  I am loosely following Brewdog recipe #129 (Dead Metaphor) but have made some changes to the suggested ingredients. Firstly, I am going to use Northern Brewer hops in place of Magnum (this is all I could source at the time). Secondly, I have increas ed the ratio of Flaked Oat so that my beer with have more Oats. The third twist comes at the end of the boil, more on this later.  I've also decided to use a liquid yeast again - Get 'Er Brewed had a smaller selection of dried yeasts and nothing really suited to a stoat so after some reading online around the various Wyeast strains, I opted for 1318- London Ale III  as a liquid yeast smack pack. I almost forgot to g...

Brew 5 - Gardener's Gloves IPA (Orange and Grapefruit IPA) Brew day: 20th June 2020 Bottle day: 3rd July 2020 Another brew day beckons and I've been thinking this one over a lot. My dad has wanted to brew a beer again for ages so this is his Father's Day present - a brew day with his son. I haven't been that happy with the low efficiency I've been reaching after the mash and the resulting low gravities need to be rectified. I've been researching mashing efficiencies and deciding how best to increase my sugar conversion. I bought a new digital thermometer and have decided to insulate my mash tun lid with tin foil as a starting point. The next step is to mash for 90mins (as close to 67 deg C as I can keep it) and then finally, give the brew bag a really good squeeze.  There seems to be a bit of debate around the need to squeeze the bag - some say do and some say don't. I have squeezed the bag a little before and it hasn't resulted in any iss...