I joined in with the Jim's Brewalong #02 & made the WeeBee.
I brewed with Asda spring water due to my home water being rather poor tasting and heavily chlorinated? following the local flood works
My recipe also had to be changed slightly from the original due to lower %AA hops 12.5% instead of the 13% called for, so I scaled up accordingly, and not knowing the efficiency of my invention I stuck an extra 100g of grain in too just in case
My system is designed around getting 11.5L ie half of a 23L batch into the FV so all quantities are simply half of your normal recipes. Brewtarget print out below:-
WeeBee
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Batch Size: 11.661 L
Boil Size: 15.000 L
Boil Time: 60.000 min
Efficiency: 75%
OG: 1.046
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.8%
Bitterness: 68.9 IBUs (Tinseth)
Color: 16 SRM (Morey)
Fermentables
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Name .........................Type Amount Mashed Late Yield Color
Pale Malt (2 Row) UK Grain 2.200 kg Yes ....No 78% 3 L (added an extra 100g more due to unknown equipment efficiency)
Special B Malt ............Grain 250.000 g Yes .....No 65% 160 L
Wheat, Torrified .........Grain 60.000 g Yes .....No 79% 2 L
Total grain: 2.510 kg
Hops (scaled up to allow for 12.5%AA from original recipe 13%AA)
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Name Alpha Amount Use Time Form IBU
Chinook 12.5% 19.000 g Boil 60.000 min Leaf 42.4
Chinook 12.5% 13.000 g Boil 20.000 min Leaf 17.6
Chinook 12.5% 11.000 g Boil 10.000 min Leaf 8.9
Chinook 12.5% 12.000 g Boil 0.000 s Leaf 0.0
Misc
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Name Type Use Time
Irish Moss Fining Boil 15.000 min
Wort Chiller Other Boil 15.000 min
Yeast
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Name Type Form Amount Stage
Danstar - Nottingham Ale Dry 5.500 mL Primary
Mash
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Name.......................Type ....................Target Time
Phase 1 38 deg .......Temperature --- 38.000 C 20.000 min
Phase 2 66.5 deg ...Temperature --- 66.000 C 30.000 min
Mash Out 76 ...........Temperature --- 76.000 C 10.000 min
Sparge ....................Temperature --- 76.000 C 1.000 min
To give the system a full work out I decided to try the stepped mash profile above
The grain shot
Ready to mash in
Underletting mash in
Mashed in, no dough balls 
Grain pipe in the kettle starting the flow
Wort clearing nicelyThis is where the problems began
the flow slowed to a stop, I switched off the pump, let the grain bed settle & some of the liquid contents reverse backwards into the kettle via the pump due to gravity / syphoning. Then started the pump again. Within minutes of the wort overspilling again it then stopped again. This was a cycle that was repeated throughout the mash, unfortunately I didn't think about the temp sensor being exposed due to the descending wort in the pipe leading to it's registered temp. dropping & the boiler kicking in again By the time I noticed the water in the kettle was nearing mash out temps which by virtue of the bottom of the grain pot being in the liquid will have lead the mash to be quite overheated as well & further so when I kept re-establishing the flow. (Top filter screen is currently undergoing a re-design with larger holes than the current splatter guard affair to hopefully rectify this.)At the end of the mash I tested for conversion with iodine, all good
& then I wound the pot up & finally when liquid was down to almost the grain top I removed it and placed on the "sparge rack"
Sparged with 2l of water but the grain tasted very bland and the Refractometer was registering very little so the 2L were mainly to get to my pre Boil Volume.
Pre boil gravity PRE BOIL BRIX = O.G. 1.0534
On the boil with the Hop SpRoCket
Boiling nicely with the fan (balanced on the windowsill) extraction working as per my extract brew
Now the pressure was off I unwound with a bottle of Normski's brew he did with me watching him pre Christmas, Cheers Norm
A lovely brew
CONVERTED POST BOIL BRIX = 1.0577
& HYDROMETER CONFIRMS
Cooling went well & hop SpRoCket allowed good squeezing of the hops with the spoon.
Into the FV via syphon tube via sieve "ala Jim", yeast re-hydrated as per instructions 30-35 Deg C in 100 ml of water for 15 mins & then pitched.
More problems now
28 hours no activity, moved to warmer room, further 12 hours, still no activity, hydrated the second half of the yeast again as the instructions, quick bit of research led me to believe it was OK to re-airate the wort for the second pitching as fermentation hadn't started yet so oxidation wouldn't be a problem. So I'm leaving it till tomorrow morning and if still not going I'll have to assume dead yeast & as my back up packet is from the same batch I won't risk that & will throw in a Us 04 which I've had success with in the past.
I was concerned that with the higher mash temp's I encountered that perhaps I had the "wrong sort of sugar" for yeast to ferment effectively but perhaps not I'll just have to wait and see....
That's it for now, back to working on my top filter plate, making the holes bigger in the mesh, about 1/3 of the way so far so some way to go yet......
& I planned on doing the second attempt tomorrow, could be another late night!
CHEERS ALL
