film of maltose over my kitchen walls.
My first brew is Eskimo Stout (recipe here) except calculating for 70% efficiency
using Beersmith, rather than 85%.
As you can see, my set-up is a basic plastic boiler and a cool box with copper
manifold. I have to say that the manifold is fabulous. Run-off was a dream.
However, the first thing that indicated that this was going to be a long day
was the output of the boiler. It's LHB's cheap-and-cheerful plastic boiler
and it took the best part of an hour to bring tap water even to strike temp.
But after the delay, mashed in at a strike of 71C and kept the mash temp
at around 65C for the 90 mins, with minor adjustments.
Recirculated and ran-off the wort and then started sparging with my
patent-pending Sparge-O-Matic watering can rose.
Sparged down to 1006 but was disappointed to be a good couple of ltrs
under the expected yield. (as opposed to being over the expected yield to
take into account evaporation during the boil)
Nevertheless, back into the boiler it went, and after another laborious wait
for the 2400w element to kick in, under it's 90 minute boil, adding all the
hops after the first 30 mins.
Copper immersion chiller brought into action to bring it down to pitching
temperature, and then the fun starts.
Please feel free to scoff, but I neither have a hop filter nor hop bags, and so
running the bittered wort out of the boiler was just sheer farse.
After about 30 minutes I got impatient and tipped the remainder of the
boiler through a sieve into the fermenter.
After evaporation I ended up with even less yield and so topped back upto
the 19L with water.
Came out with an OG of 1049, 2 points below the target 1051, but as SteveD
has explained to me, is well within the the threshold of a commercial brewery.
Efficiency turned out to be 69%. Pitched my dried Nottingham,
which I started in a sugar solution a couple of hours before pitching and
away we go!
All-in-all, I'm really pleased with the first brewday.
The only frustrating thing is the time it took. I turned the boiler on at 10:30am
and popped the airlock in the fermenter at 17:15!!!
Immediate requirements are a 2nd element for my boiler and some kind of
filtration for the hops. That'll shave off 2 hours to start with.
My God, look at the size of this post!
Going to wrap it up quickly by saying thank you to everyone who's posted
advice on Jim's forum.
I've gotten through a virtually snag-free first brewday almost exclusively on
the advice posted across various topics on this site. I toast you all.
Dave.
