New brews

Last night a friend came round to drink beer and help me brew some more. I now have a load of empty bottles and a batch of K in the fermenter. I was about to post a picture, but to be honest it looks just like any other plastic carboy with beer in it.

Just now I'm bringing the wort up to boil for a batch of Pale Beer. Because I'm a manky bastard, and just to see the effect, I am re-using the hops from last night. There were a lot of late hops in last night's brew, so I'm hoping to get enough unused alpha acid out of them to bitter today's beer. It doesn't need too much bittering because it's a low-gravity brew and the addition of some Bramling Cross for aroma near the end should be all it needs. In fact, I've just tasted the wort, it's only just come to the boil and is already nicely bitter. The reason for a low-gravity one is that I'm hoping to be able to bottle this after Christmas and be drinking it at New Year, but this may be over-optimistic; it depends if it carbonates in time. I rather suspect it won't.

After Christmas, once these two are bottled, I'm now planning to brew an X, which will be a low-gravity ale with a bit of crystal malt and sugar, and a Brown Beer, which will basically be X with more hops.