Recipe is not exactly like demanded in several verisons I've seen for this beer due to my own changes and restrictions on availability of ingredients, but as long as I'm close I'll be happy.
Brewlength
23l into fermenter
Liquor
Untreated local tap water (very hard with high Mg content)
Grist
5.5kg Pale Ale Malt (82.7%) (Weyermann)
1.15kg Carabohemian (17.3%) (Weyermann)
Hops
Fuggles 40g 90min
Goldings 35g 90min
Goldings 20g 15min
Mash
16.5l 90mins Target 67degC
Yeast
Wyeast 1056 American Ale
Ferment
19deg C
The changes I made -
I subbed weyermann carabohemian for the crystal malt as I can't get crystal for a reasonable price and this seemed a pretty close match.
I reduced the crytal over fear that the 25% demanded in some recipes was simply too much. I remember the beer to be not overly sweet.
Due to a mix up in ordering I received a surplus propagator pack of wyseat 1056 American ale. The yeast strain description on the wyeast website seemed to match the style of beer so I thought I'd take the plunge into liquid yeast for this brew.
The prep:-
Wyeast propagator smackpack smacked and puffing up nicely
The pack was pretty old, so hopefully this nice big starter will work OK. According to MrMalty.com calculator I should use a 6l starter and 3 packs of yeast with this age. Stuff that!
Boiling up 200g of DME in 2l of water for the starter
The starter cooled, pitched and covered on Friday night ready for the brewday Saturday
Brewday
The pale ale malt (unfortunately not english, but still pale "ale" male, not just pale) One day I'll get some marris otter and do a comparison brew to see any differences.
The carabohemian. Unfortunately the colour doesn't come across really well in the photo but it's almost dark rust coloured. Really nice!
The biggest beer I've made so far my some margin. That's a full mash tun!! At one point doughing in I was worried it wouldn't all fit in!
The mash didn't really go too much to plan. I was aiming for 67deg but I found a big difference top to bottom in the tun. 70deg at the bottom and only 65 at the top. I stirred some more but the difference was still there. Ah well 67 average I suppose, lid on!
An hour into the mash I gave a quick stir and the temp at the top dropped to 63deg or so - I added a few litres of boiling water to boost it.
After 90mins I then broke my long glass thermometer so couldn't measure the temp at the bottom. D'oh! According to my small electronic thermometer the mash had fallen to 59deg at the top too! I did a starch test and I didn't have full conversion. I filled the mash tun up to the top with boiling, gave a good stir and achieved 67 at the top - who knows what temp at the bottom.
I wonder if my glass thermometer was reading low which resulted in low conversion rate from a cold mash??
30mins later I got full conversion so I lautered out.
I would like (need evidently!!) a way of coltrolling mash temp better - any advice? I've heard people talking about HERMS. What's this?
The wort was a really great colour. Amazingly deep ruby. Well pleased with the colour at least!
A coule of transfers in and out of the boiler due to dropped equipment (!) later and I had 20l total at 1.070. Bang on what I had calculated. I need be slightly short due to a small boiler, then I top up with cold and the starter to reach 23l in the fermenter.
Boil went fine- nearly boiled over despite the decent headspace. Do heavier gravity worts foam up more as a habit?
I then transferred to the fermeter and pitched the starter. I use hop pellets and a lot of the gunk at the bottom of the boiler transfers to the fermenter. Anyone know a good way of preventing this? A normal hop filter seems a bit coarse to catch this fine gunk, no?
I hit perfect 23l at 1.060 in the fermenter.
The starter had fermented well overnight - this is about 18hours after pitching. The best time for max cell growth apparently. I had a sneaky taste before pouring to check for infection but it was completely bland so all good I hope! Pitched at 24deg.
The fermenter is sitting nicely at 19deg now and has a nice big krausen already this morning, 15 hours or so later. Job done.
Dunk
