860g Pale Malt
40g Crystal Malt
12g Fuggles (5.5%) 60 minutes
4g EKG 15 minutes
70g invert sugar
1g Irish Moss
90 minute mash
90 minute boil
Had a couple of minor issues along the way, the biggest of which was when I came to run off the mash in the tun the holes got blocked more or less immediately probably caused by my dodgy drilling (had nothing to drill into the back of so had to trim swarf bits off form the inside of the bucket). Luckily I managed to rescue the situation with an Ikea colander-come-sieve and using that to hold the grain in whilst sparging. Not an ideal solution but it actually worked quite well.
Ended up with around 6 litres pre-boil, seemed to have high evaporation during the boil, lost at least 2-3 litres which seemed very high. After the boil I adjusted the volume to try to hit the guide sg of 44, due to a slight bit of heavy handedness ended up with 1042 and near as dammit 5 litres.
Aerated for a few minutes using paddle and drill method.
Pitched with re-hydrated S-04.
Have come home from work to find a quite healthy yeast head so now only time will tell how it turns out!
Despite the problem with the blocked holes and having to come up with the colander-come-sieve solution on the fly, I found the process to be quite relaxing and not as hectic as I thought it would be.
Given the problems I had with the tun holes, I may try to find a hard plastic plate and make it into a false bottom as I should be able to drill cleaner holes in a hard surface!
I certainly think this could be me heading towards the dark side
I would have thought 60 as a minimum.
