For my first AG brew in a couple of days time I have decided to use a recipe posted by NorthernBrewer (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18930) called Folding's Guggle. The main reason being is that is seems very simple and my local homebrew shop stocks the ingredients:
Folding's Guggle
4KG Pale malt
300g Crystal Malt (7%)
20 IBUs Fuggles (55g if 4.2%) 90 mins
15 IBUs Goldings (45g if 4.3%) 90 mins
15g Fuggles 15 mins
10g Goldings 15 mins
S04 Yeast
Primary 10-14 days then keg.
Mature for 4 weeks before drinking (or at least try to).
Today I finished building the last part of my equipment and I believe I am ready at last
Can somebody please tell me if my planned approach (yes, I really want my first attempt to be bang on!) is correct as I am unsure of a few things? From the limited knowledge I currently have i plan to do the following on brew day:step 1. Mash the 4.3Kg of grain at 66C for 90 mins using 12 litres of water.
step 2. About 30 mins before the 90min mash is complete I will use my boiler (it's a 10 gallon one) to bring 5 gallons of water up to 180 degrees F to use as fly sparging
step 3. When the mash is complete I will run off via the tap a few pints of wort from my mash tun and return them to the top of the grain
step 4. Begin sparging the grain in the mash by opening boiler tap and opening mash tun tap to run in to 5.5 gallon bucket ( 3 tier system). I have a watering can rose on a hose attached to the boiler for sparjing assuming the spray will be fine enough
step 5. when i have collected about 6 gallons of wort I will empty the boiler of any remaining sparg water and pour my 6 gallons of wort in to it and bring it to the boil
step 6. When boiling is reached add 55g of fuggles and 45g of goldings. 15 mins before the end of the 90 mins boil add 15g of Fuggles and 10 of goldings.
step 7. After 90 mins when the boiling process is over I should have about 5 gallons of wort due to evaporation. Now, I think i need to wait for 5-10 mins for the hops to settle to the bottom of the boiler. Is this correct?
step 8. open tap of boiler and drain wort in to fermenting bucket and insert my immersion chiller in to the fermenting bucket and turn on tap to try to cool the wort quickly.
step 9. When wort is between 20C and 24C, take hydrometer reading and then add my already activated i(n a bottle) beer yeast. Move fermenting beer somewhere warm and sit back and crack open a cold one to celebrate a successful first brew assuming fermentation will not screw up
My 3 main queries are:
1. After the boil do you always have to wait for 10 mins for the hops to settle and then immediately cool the wort either in the boiler or fermenting bucket?
2. no irish moss is present in this recipe. Should I add it? anything else missing?
3. On step 8 i think I read somewhere that it is good to pour a few kettle fulls of boiling water on the hops at the bottom of the boiler to extract some more goodies and top up the wort with this. Is this a common practice for all brews?
thanks very much for your thoughts guys