The beer has been ready for a couple of weeks now, but today it’s been moved into my bar ready for the weekend. I’ve done this early as it allows the beer to settle out again after being moved… Roll on the weekend!
Posts Tagged homebrew
Beer
Just a note (if you’re keeping track) that the beer was racked at the weekend (put into a barrel) and proofed with about 80g of fairtrade cane sugar. I use cane sugar as it leaves less flavour changes in the beer.
When you rack beer, you’re basically taking the beer off the trub. Trub is spent yeast that settles at the bottom of the primary fermentation vessel.
Usually I either wash it down the sink or compost it, however this time round I tried an experiment (see next blog post)
There is still some yeast in suspension in the beer – this is often seen as a clouding effect or haze on the pint. By adding the 80g of sugar in the keg I’ve racked to the yeast will reactivate and produce a little more alcohol and more carbon dioxide. This CO2 will ensure that infection doesn’t sit on the top of the beer and will give it a very slight fizz.
After racking it is left in place for a couple of days in a warm location and then transferred somewhere cooler – in my case the dark corner of the garage for as long as possible. Mine will now rest in place for about a month or so.
Ginger Beer #2
The new Ginger Beer Plant arrived last week, liberally flattened by Royal Mail.
I set up a starter batch (just sugar and lemon juice) as soon as I could and when I returned from a weekend break it was bubbling merrily away.
I’ve just started the first brew from it, will let you know how I get on with it!
The first image is before I added the ginger, the 2nd is after!
Dig for room to plant stuff…
View of the coldframe
May is very much upon us and if you’d not noticed, spring has very much sprung. This has caught us by surprise again (like last year and the year before) because about now is the time to be planting everything out that you’ve carefully nurtured in your fabulous coldframe or greenhouse. This year its caught us out with extra surprise because the stuff we planted a few months ago hasn’t been eaten by slugs.
By Jove, I think I’ve solved the problem using the coldframe, which at present seems fairly slug proof (But not maretail proof)
We have brussel sprouts (unheard of), cucumbers, peppers, beans, more beans, sunflowers, chard, lots of lettuce, tomatoes, chilies etc. And oh so much more. So the first thing I did today was dig three beds (one was a supersize one) to plant stuff out. We’ve put in five cabbages, lots of mangetout (a supersize variety from realseeds), cucumbers, runner beans, chard, various herbs, leeks, the tomato that survived the lack of watering and then did yet more seed sowing.
Finally, apart from one small corner we seem to have actually reached capacity down the plot. Every bit of bare earth has now got an owner, some are doubled up even and even now we’re starting to get some produce. Today I’d eaten a bit of lettuce, tried some baby rhubarb (apparently you can eat the stems raw dipped in sugar, but I’ve never done it before today and to be honest, I won’t be trying it again.
Damien popped over and gave us some pond weed for our pond (which now supports a frog!) and some cabbages. A guy I used to go to school with (Simon) popped over and sampled the homebrew which ought to be ready for next week and gave me the thumbs up – in gracious return I gave him the best part of twenty half cut bottles to use as mini pollypots to cover some of his more ambitiously planted crops.
I’m looking forward to this summer. I know we’re supposed to be honeymooning in early July, but I hope some of that time off is going to be spent down the allotment enjoying a BBQ or two…
Before:
After:
With beans and a few sunflowers
The pic below shows the new bed dug
And with plants!
First frog of the year
