First brew of the year...

[drjim]

Day off today and bizarrely (for South Manchester) the skies were clear this morning with no rain so I went out to clean up my brewing area. It's under a roof but outdoors and has had a lot of footballs kicked at it since last used! Green liquid in the bottom of the mash tun, and some of the copper pipes linking the valves in the HERMS had magically disconnected themselves.

Got it all cleaned out and running nice hot chemclean through all the pipework. Then set to a BIAB in my Buffalo boiler.

It's a new recipe, H-ale to suit where we live. Supposed to be a dark mild but I've probably gone too far with the hops and it's more a bitter!

Brewfather link to recipe...

https://share.brewfather.app/dduau58GQW9XTr

Continuing to use up the pride of ringwood my Mate brought over from Oz as bittering. There's some in foil vac packs I will use to make my Aussie pale ale with, but the others are unsealed and somewhat old now. Should be 9% AA according to the packaging so a nice 60 minute boil for them!

It's tricky to get the water volumes bang on with the first of type BIAB recipe, and I undoubtedly didn't put enough in the kettle in the first place. I did a bucket sparge of the bag while the kettle was reaching boil, topped up with a few litres of water mid boil, and still ended up with 25L at 1040. I decided to leave it there rather than add more water.

Cooling went well, used the contents of my IBC based hot tub circulated through copper coil and went off to Aldi while it was running. Came back to kettle contents at 18C.

I'm going to let it have a week or so in the house, then it can go outside to the shed at whatever the outdoor temp is for a week or so to settle out. Planning to stick it in Kegs for springtime drinking, although a few bottles is always a good idea!