BrewDog have now released all 215 of their recipes online for free in one handy PDF. 

Titled DIY Dog, the free download includes a manual on equipment and ingredients needed for each beer - and suggests food pairings for each one.  

BrewDog have made all of their 215 recipes available for download on their website, via www.brewdog.com/diydog. 

With each recipe being scaled down to home-brew volumes of five gallons or 20 litres.

This is amazing news, as a fan of their Punk IPA Im really excited to give that one a go first off and trying to recreate some more of their beers now I have an actual recipe from the brewery themselves. Will this inspire other breweries to follow suite? I probably don't think so (I hold my breath) as BrewDog do like straying away from the norm. 

Regardless the PDF is immense! Especially as they could charge for a full book format, considering the only other official recipe came with the pre-packed beer kits that are on the higher priced side. 

I'll save this document just encase this is a timed free exclusive, the works printer best not run out of ink come Tuesday when Im back in.

Time to get punked! 

Until Next Time........Happy Brewing

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If you are like me and have been struggling on what to do with all the spent grains after brew day?  

It seemed to me wasteful to just throw them away, I don't have a dog and although my parents have a small allotment and compost bin, if I wasn't going to see them for a few weeks I didn't really want them laying around until that point. After some searching I found a recipe on Beer Drink Run. I believe they got the recipe from somewhere else originally.

You will be able to substitute some items if you don't have them in the cupboards and some are also optional. 

Ingredients:        

2 cups spent grains- dried
2 cups rolled oats (quick cooking or old fashioned)
1/2 to 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1/2 to 1 cup chopped dried fruit (optional)
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup barley malt syrup — can be substituted with Maple Syrup or in my instance Black Treacle as I didn't have enough Maple Syrup
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon salt

You can also add some milk chocolate chips (I had these on the side, staring me out and I forgot to actually add them in the end).

Directions:

1. Spread the grains on a cookie sheet and dry in the oven at 80°C (175° F) for 2.5 hours shifting the grains around every 30 minutes.
   
2. Increase the temperature to 160°C (325° F) for the final 30 minutes with the oats and chopped nuts to roast everything together.
3. During the final 30  minutes of roasting, start to mix the “wet” ingredients. Take a small saucepan and slowly heat the syrup, honey, butter, peanut butter and salt. 
4. Bring that to a boil and them simmer for 5 minutes stirring frequently. Once the syrup mixture was done simmering, mix it with the dry ingredients completely combining them.
5. Combine all the dry ingredients and set them aside in a large mixing bowl.
6. Spread the mixture out in a wax-paper lined 13 x 9 baking pan. Allow this to cool several hours at room temperature, cut the bars, and wrap them in a wax paper square.

Mixture left to cool. Hardens pretty quickly only took 40 mins or so, then a sharp knife was required. 

The verdict: They were very good, very moorish.  I could taste the malts especially since I brewed with Chocolate & Medium Crystal (60L) malts. I had a background flavour of the syrup with the honey coming through. A bitter sweet snack. 
They would be nice for a mid-day snack, I can imagine it going well with a coffee or an even an evening snack with a beer. 

A cheeky test corner.  

If you feel like you want to give it a try, the only other thing to remember is to properly store the grains you want to use before you start. So if you froze them for a few weeks and make sure you put them in the fridge for a day to thaw them before to keep them fresh.

Until next time.........Happy Brewing

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Do you listen to music while brewing? Do you have a dedicated playlist or create one based on mood prior to the big day?

Regardless if I've only brewed a kit or an extract on the cooker top I've always liked to have something on in the background. I write what I'm listening to in my beer journal to keep track of what I've been listening too, its a nice little remembrance thing like in a normal diary, a piece of history. Even though current musical tastes are lent towards the Alt. Rock side of the spectrum. 

Like the saying that people play music to plants to encourage growth, its like in beer you wont get the same outcome playing two different styles of music. My wife must even think I talk to the brew during fermentation. I've haven't done this yet, but I've been very close to and always "tuck it to bed". 

With now not owning a dedicated CD player and not really using my iPod very much now, I've virtually gone digital within the "cloud".

I'm brewing my second extract brew (Hob Goblin Clone) tomorrow and have setup a Spotify Playlist built around the punk rock songs from early 2000. Clocking in at just under 4 hours for a complete run of the playlist should cover most if not all of the brew day activities.
Feel free to follow the playlist yourself (or play via the embedded player below) and enjoy some classic songs! On your own brew day. 

 Until Next Time.......Happy Brewing 

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Are you like me that have limited space & resources, unable to have variations of equipment for brewing? 

Do you struggle to get through 40 odd pints of the same beer because you are unable to brew two batches in close succession, allowing them to condition over the same period of time? Or just find 40 pints of the same beer too much?

The last statement is quite generalised, I haven't had a problem with my 'Way to Amarillo' Pale Ale, its a very nice brew (best one Ive done to date) but every brew after the 30 something pint I really fancy a different beer - variety is the spice of life! 

So now that I have got into Extract brewing & starting to either devise my own recipes or scale down others -  small batch brewing is on the cards! 

3 Gallons batches (11 Litres) which is roughly 20 pints, if you take into consideration the trub and other loses during fermentation, you'll probably end up with 18 or so 500ml sized bottles. 

I did need to do some research however as I only have a full sized 23/25l bucket, I had a small 12.5L bucket in the shopping cart ready but before I committed myself I wanted to check if I was able to use my original, existing bucket.

And you actually can! 

Many people have done the same, fermented 3 and even 2 gallons in a 5 gallon bucket. 

For example, for every 2 gravity points creates one volume of CO2. So a gallon of beer, dropping from 1.050 to 1.010, will make 20 gallons of CO2 over the course of its fermentation. So any oxygen will be purged from the bucket. 

If you decide to condition a beer for a longer period of time in secondary, like if it's a very high alcohol beer, you would want as little headspace as possible to minimise the risk of oxidation so then I recommended to rack into a similar sized vessel. 

For the duration of primary fermentation (up to 3 weeks) there appears to be no problems using a 5 Gallon bucket.


This not only will allow me to potentially brew two batches within weeks of each other but I can now scale down a recipe to test it out to see if I like it, rather than having tons of bottles of 'meh' beer to get through. Essentially giving them away to associates just to clear the numbers. Some people windge that they don't get any beers but others have, but that's another story for another time. 

If you find yourself in the same predicament like me....I would say give small batch brewing a go. 

Until next time..............Happy Brewing

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When I started this new hobby some six or so months ago, I knew I would like the whole home brewing scene but if you told me that I'd get the chance to write for an established community I would both be hesitant with the idea and tell you that there are other more seasoned and experienced Home Brewers out there. 

Over the last few weeks, I have been contacted by one of the Admins of TheHomeBrewForum asking if I would like to write some articles for them, they have an excess amount of topics that they would like publish. It was quite a coincidence as this was the same kind of time that I was setting the ground work on this blog. 

I gladly said yes, my knowledge on aspects of Home Brewing has increased quite considerably over the last few months. Its a hobby that not only gives you 40 odd pints every few months but has a lot of Science and a bit of Math involved, so if you open yourself to wanting to learn more then it gives more back.  Besides all this, it is a very interesting subject matter.

So two weeks on from my initial contact with the Admins, I now have a list of topics (78 to begin with) that I can pick and choose what I would like to cover. Some topics I already know quite a bit on and others that I'd probably need to research into, however those would be good for future projects, such as using Raspberry Pi in Home Brewing. 

To my surprise any articles will not only be syndicated on TheHomeBrewForum.co.uk (which alone has over 15,500 members) but also HomeBrewSupply.com and WinemakingTalk.com. It must be a week of exposing my name, as at work a project statistics email I distributed to my internal team was eventually pushed right up the chain to effectively what would be 'The Board' or the Bosses of my Big Boss's Boss (try saying that when you've had a few Home Brew!)  

It was all good and proving that the work I was doing is becoming successful but when you get your big boss sending the email chain back to you and notice who its gone to its quite exciting and unnerving at the same time.  I'll have to think how I word the emails in future. 

Exciting prospects on the horizon, 

Until then..........Happy Brewing

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