Product V

Expecting weans to be groggy and slumpy from their late nights doing sleepovers and the forecast rain arriving as forecast I decided to pull a long shift in the brew shed and try out my experimental Black IPA.

Black IPAs aren't actually experimental - there's plenty of them about - but the only recipes I could find online were big strong double IPAs - 9-11% ABV and I can't be doing with that kind of beer. They also wanted malts and hops that I didn't have so I decided to use the grains and hops from Stewarts Black IPA (which I've previously enjoyed) and just guess the proportions (based on the amounts used in other recipes). We'll see.

While I was waiting for the grains to mash I set about bottling some of the cider made from the apples from friends' trees. This stuff's really nice. Still dry but very appley and very drinkable straight away. Be nice when it's had a few months conditioning in the bottles.

Also did a second mash of the beer to do the small beer thing again. The last one has turned out OK. Nothing special (though small beers were nothing special) but drinkable and perfectly good for a sipping cold on a school night. But this time I tried to make it a bit less thin and watery by topping up the water after taking off the worts from the first mash and adding some more grains - about 1.5kg. Similar, in principal to refilling the teapot and adding another bag. That seems to have worked reasonably well. Again, we'll see. At least this time I managed to take proper notes so that I can see what went wrong (or do it again if it works well).