The recipe was a further manipulation of the Golden Pippin clone I formulated. I was going to follow the original recipe but seeing as cascades aren't plentiful I decided to conserve them and tweak it into a slightly different pale ale:
Batch size: 16 litres
6lbs pale crushed 2-row (70 minutes at 67 deg C)
0.5oz Target 11.3%AA for 50 mins
0.5oz Amarillo 9.1% for 10 mins
0.5oz Amarillo 9.1% for 4 mins
0.6oz Cascade 7.3% at flameout, 10 minute steep (this was the last of the old bag of hops hence the oddball quantity).
The mash went well, my method for mashing itself seems to be very effective. I use a 12 litre stockpot in the oven. Seems to hold about 67 deg C almost exactly throughout the entire volume of the mash during the 70 minutes. My sparging method leaves a lot to be desired though. I was going to use a collander with the grains till in the grain bag, but unfortunately it didn't hold well at all. Instead, I refilled the 12 litre stockpot with water and heated to 77 deg C, then placed the bag back in again, stirred the grains well for a few moments, then removed them, giving them a gentle squeeze to get as much liquid out as possible. I was worried about my conversion success, but I came up with the following figures though:
16 litres collected at a gravity of 1043 (at 21 deg C)
If I have done my maths correctly, this equates to about 74% efficiency which I am very pleased with given my very crude means! I was expecting about 65% to 70%.
The rest of the brew was textbook, although I didn't get the vigerous foaming prior to the hot break as I have done in the past with extracts . . . .
In case you were wondering, 16 litre batch is due to my 18.5 litre boiling pot putting a limit on me. However, it has the advantage that it should leave enough headroom in the Betta Bottle for the krausen without the need for a blowoff tube (although that said, the overall volume ended up closer to 17.5 litres due to the starter being 1.5 litres or so).
All in all though, a good brewday! Things more or less went to plan and I will definately be doing AG again!
