Description

Tribute to Old Speckled Hen – All Grain Kit

Dark Rock Tribute to Old Speckled Hen is a delicious amber beer. It has a full, smooth easy drinking flavour. Its rich amber colour and superb fruity aromas are complemented by a delicious blend of malty tastes. Toffee and roast malt flavours combine with a subtle bitterness to give a balanced sweetness. The finish is refreshingly dry. The Dark Rock Tribute to Old Speckled Hen kit produces 40 pints of 5.4% ABV amber beer.

This top of the range kit will produce a beer that you can be proud of. No compromise has been made on quality and only the freshest hops and malts have been selected. The kit also includes a sachet of Pure Brew water conditioner and yeast enhancer to ensure a pure commercial taste is achieved. Starbrite finings are also included. The kit is suitable for vegans as it contains no animal-based products

What is the Dark Rock Tribute Range?

The Dark Rock Tribute range allows you to produce beers which mirror the classic commercial favourites. We carefully selected and matched quality hops, malts, and yeast to provide you with the closest possible result. Each brewery will have unique factors such as water source and yeast type; therefore, Tribute beers are not intended to be clones. We recommend you have fun by comparing the commercial beer against your own to see how close you can get.

Commercial brewers with extensive knowledge and a passion for craft beers and real ales carefully research and develop each Dark Rock kit. Dark Rock Kits enable you to produce commercial quality beers, all within the comfort of your own home. We add malts and hops at controlled stages of the brewing process to create rich aromas and depths of flavour that are not only stunning but also simply unparalleled.

What makes the Dark Rock All-Grain range so special?

Dark Rock Brewing’s All-Grain Beer Kits provide everything you need to make a superb ale.  All-grain brewing is a rewarding process, which puts you in full control of your brewing. It takes a little longer than making a standard beer kit or partial mash but the results are absolutely stunning. All-grain mash brewing is great fun and really allows you to develop the necessary skills to master your craft. We use commercial-quality malt and hops in each kit, placing a strong emphasis on freshness.

Dark Rock’s all-Grain Mash Kits represent fantastic value too. You only buy the exact amount of ingredients you need so there is no waste. Unlike making up your own recipe you will not have leftover quantities. With all grain brewing, it is important not to keep stocks of grains and particularly hops at home for long periods. The quality deteriorates quickly. Therefore, it does not make sense to buy larger quantities of grains and hops than you actually need.

We weigh Dark Rock All-Grain Kits to precise quantities required for each brew, ensuring the freshest ingredients and excellent value. We store hops in temperature-controlled rooms and vacuum-pack them immediately upon opening. This ensures the optimum quality of your brew.

The Commercial Brewery:

Old Speckled Hen is produced by the Greene King Brewery, which was founded by Benjamin Greene in Bury St Edmunds in 1799. In 1836 Edward Greene took over the business and in 1887 it merged with Frederick William King’s brewing business to create Greene King. Greene King has grown over the years via mergers and acquisitions.

It’s portfolio of businesses now includes Rayments Brewery (1961), the Magic Pub Company (1996), Hungry Horse Pub Restaurants(1996), Morland Brewery (1999), Old English Inns (2001), Morrells Brewery (2002),  a large part of the Laurel Pub Company (2004), Ridleys Brewery (2005), Belhaven Brewery (2005), Hardys and Hansons (2006), The Loch Fyne fish restaurant chain (2007), Cloverleaf (2011), Realpubs (2011), the Capital Pub Company (2011) and the Spirit Pub Company (2015).

What’s Included?

• Genuine Brewer’s Yeast Sachet
• Malt Grains
• Hop Pellets
• Pure Brew (water treatment and nutrient)
• Britewort clarifier
• Starbrite Beer Finings (Vegan-Friendly)
• Fermenter / keg ID sticker
• Full instructions

Allergy Advice: May include barley and other cereals, containing gluten

Specifications

• Makes: 40 pints / 5 gallons
• ABV Approx: 5.4%
• Bitterness: 42 IBU
• Colour: 25 EBC
• Target Original Gravity: 1050 (approx)
• Target Finishing Gravity: 1010 (approx)
• Fermentation time: 10-14 days approx
• Conditioning time: 4 weeks minimum (it will mature further if left longer)

Ingredients

Malts: Pale Malt, Crystal Malt, Black Malt
Hops: Challenger, Goldings
Yeast: Premium Beer Yeast
Extras: Britewort, Beer Finings, Pure Brew

What Equipment Do You Need?

Basic beer making equipment (5g fermenter, airlock, syphon tube with sediment trap, hydrometer, Suresan sanitiser, bottles or barrel). These are available under the starter kit section on this website. You will also need specialist equipment to make all grain beers.

The process involves three stages. The first stage is mashing. Your mash equipment will need to maintain the grains and water at a constant temperature for an hour (usually 66C). This is important as only slight variations in temperature can affect the taste of the final beer. The second part of the process is sparging. This involves rinsing the grains with water slightly hotter than the mash (77C). Finally, you will need to boil the wort for around 70 minutes and then cool it to fermentation temperature as fast as possible. From this point, the fermentation process is similar to standard kits. You can use numerous techniques and equipment styles to make full mash beers.

In the past, brewers used a floating mash tun and insulated ice box as the most basic method. Alternatively, they used a Pico style Electrim Bin. Whilst these are still available, there are now easy to use all-grain brewing systems available. The initial cost is higher but these systems are superb and allow you to achieve bang on results every time. They also cut down the time that you have to be present during the process. All grain systems are so effective that most commercial breweries use them for testing experimental recipes prior to full-blown scale-ups.

RECOMMENDED EQUIPMENT

We highly recommend the Grainfather brewing system. You can expand this system as your skills develop, to include conical temperature-controlled fermenters, sparge water heaters, and even an integrated Glycol Chiller. This ensures precise temperatures down to 4 degrees centigrade, which is useful for lager production and summer brewing. A wide range of all-grain brewing equipment is available on our website and we are always available to offer advice.

TIPS

This kit includes a sachet of Pure Brew to achieve a commercial quality. Pure Brew is a professional beer enhancer. It feeds the yeast with essential nutrients, which supercharge the fermentation and support yeast development (even in limited oxygen conditions). Pure Brew treats brewing water, eliminating problems that Chlorine and Chloramine create. These problems can result in a medicinal or “homebrew” taste.

Overlooking the condition of brewing water can impact results, even though it’s critical to achieving optimum results. By using Pure Brew, you can effectively and easily condition brewing water, and maximise effective fermentation. We strongly recommend using Pure Brew with all of your beers to improve their quality.

You could consider investing in a metal hop spider to effectively manage hop additions into the boiling process. The hop spider would sit inside your boiler and allow you to drop hops into the boil in a controlled way. Hop Spiders allow hops to boil with more free flow space around them. You can easily clean them and re-use them over and over again. They also prevent hop sediment (known as trub) from clogging up pumping systems when using all in one brewing equipment.