Brewing Beer
The Seven Stiles My Newt Brewery Project
Late 2018
Andy, Steve and Joe on the Seven Stiles site obtained hop roots from Marple Potato Day
and planted them on their respective plots. Andy's hop vines were the most
successful and the female hop flowers were collected in late September and dried.
Marcus offered to make the beer using the following recipe adapted from Graham Wheeler's
Home Brewing book:
Pale malted barley extract (spray malt) 2400g
Crystal malted barley 200g
Ordinary sugar 300g
East Kent Golding hops 60g
Allotment hops 5g
Half a tablet of copper fining to clear protein haze
Water 20 litres
Dried beer yeast packet
The water was brought up to 50 degrees C and the spray malt added to dissolve it then the
mixture was brought up to a boil and the Golding hops & crystal malt were added. A rolling
boil was maintained for 90 minutes and in the last 15 minutes the allotment hops and half
a tablet of copper fining were added. The reason for putting the allotment hops in only in
the last 15 minutes was that this would maintain the aroma and taste of these hops whilst
the Golding hops would mainly add to the bitterness of the brew. This was all done in
Marcus' shed on a camping gas stove.
The mixture was passed through a nylon bag to remove the hops and malted barley and then
allowed to cool to 20 degrees C when a hygrometer reading was taken of 1042 original gravity
and dried beer yeast was added. The beer was moved to a warm place and left to ferment for
4 days and another hygrometer reading taken of 1004 suggesting an alcohol content of about
5% by volume. Bottles for the beer were painstakingly de-labelled by Joe and half a
teaspoon of ordinary sugar was added to each bottle to allow for a secondary fermentation in
the bottle to produce a good head on the beer. In total 33 bottles of beer were crown capped,
although the last of these was more sediment than beer! So it was a minute brewery
production for the My Newt Brewery!
The bottles were stored in a cool place and sampled after 2 weeks, although it will store for
about 6 months. Labels for the brew were designed by both Andy's daughter, Nina, and Marcus.
At the allotment AGM Marcus was asked to give a short talk on the project
and other home brew tales.
Quotation from Charles Papazian, US nuclear engineer and home brew guru, who said:
Buy a man a beer and he wastes an hour, but teach a man to brew beer and he will waste a lifetime!
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