Bigfoot APA
Date: 14th May
Gyle Number: 12
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 13 lbs. 11.7 oz 6230 grams 100%
Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Challenger Whole 6.6 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 2.2 oz 63 grams 52%
Amarillo Whole 8.9 % 10 mins 0 lbs. 0.8 oz 23 grams 19%
Cascade Whole 6.1 % 10 mins 0 lbs. 0.8 oz 23 grams 19%
Cascade Whole 6.1 % 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.2 oz 6 grams 5%
Amarillo Whole 8.9 % 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.2 oz 6 grams 5%
Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol Content: 6% ABV
Total Liquor: 36.7 Litres
Mash Liquor: 15.6 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 50 EBU
Colour: 10 EBC
Grain bill was nice 'n' easy, just Marris Otter pale malt with 10g of DLS.
Added some CRS to the mash liquor, then a couple of litres of boiling water to get the mash temperature up to 66c, leaving it looking like this.
Mashed for 2 hours as I had a couple of jobs to do in between. Only lost 0.5c over the 2 hours. Then a ghetto sparge:
Now this is where I got carried away. I prepared 25l of mash liquor but only really needed 20. I wanted to use all of it and ended up with 35l of wort and had to fill a pressure cooker with 4l of that. This wouldn't all fit in my 32l boiler so I started boiling 30l and topped up every now and again. I ended up boiling for 2 hours, boiling the malt alone for half an hour before adding the bittering hops. When I added them it looked like:
Hop additions at 10 and 5 minutes. The Amarillo and Cascade smelt divine. Here's the 5 min additions:
So then I cooled and measure the OG. 1.072!
Way over target so I clearly sparged for far too long. Maybe the wort's not distributed evenly, I though so I transferred to a trial jar and measured it. Still 1.072, at 25c.
Usual gunk at the bottom of the boiler. Dead space is about 1.5 litres of wort.
Then I pitched my yeast, Safale S-05. I know you're meant to be able to pitch it directly, but I was worried that 25l of 1.060 beer might be too much (let alone 1.072) so I prepared a starter on Wednesday night. It went absolutely mad, going straight to the alcohol producing stage by Thursday morning and Krausen went to the very top of the flask. Not really what I wanted but should still be OK and there was a good crop of yeast at the bottom. Slowly poured away the beer and pitched the yeast left at the bottom.
This morning it's doing nicely in my brewing fridge at 19c.
Given it's going to be so strong (7.5% I reckon) it's going to need a powerful hop punch. Maybe I should have made it more bitter, but I'm going to add some aroma when I dry hop it in a secondary vessel (Better Bottle) for a week before barrelling.
