AG#3 - BYOBRA Marston's Pedigree

[Texy]

As a relative new 'real ale' drinker, I,ve only recently discovered this beer in one of the local pubs, so I was pleased to see a recipe in Graham's Book. My previous two AG brews viewtopic.php?f=24&t=40444 and viewtopic.php?f=24&t=41655 have been relatively successful, but there are still aspects to improve on (see recent updates on each thread).
Anyway brewday for the pedigree was yesterday - I brew out in the garden and the weather was great! Another hobby on mine is hobby electronics and since AG#2 I,ve been building my own 'beer monitor'. Its really just a glorified thermometer/timer. It has a built in piezo buzzer which can go off when a certain temperature is reached, either higher or lower than the current temp, or also when a certain amount of time has been reached.
I,m still tweaking the software, but it's basically working as I want it now.



Also for this brew, for the first time I have used CRS to get the pH down. I have been using the paper strips which only have a range of 3.8 to 5.4. On both of my previous brews, the mash has been off the scale, at or over 5.4. Although I don't know the alkalinity of my local water, putting the caco3 hardness into the water calculator shows I need to about 33ml's. Not very scientific, but I added 3 tablespoons to the 1st sparge water and measured the mash only to find the pH had gone down to 4.8. For the 2nd sparge water I added only 2 tablespoonfuls hoping it would go up to nearer the desired 5.3 only to find it had fallen to 4.4 !!
Hopefully this hasn't ruined the brew, well its all a learning process isn't it

One other pic showing the boiled wort getting plenty of air, (the black lead is the temperature probe):

As with the 2 previous brews, the O.G was more or less spot on and its fermenting nicely as we speak. I will be very interested to see how this one tastes.
Cheers,
Texy

[unclepumble]

In my experience this recipe tastes far better than draft pedigree, especially if you dry hop with 20g of WGV.

Remember when taking the Mash PH that PH changes with temperature, you strips could be 3 points out at mash temp therefore your strips could be indicating 5.6PH with the same sample giving 5.3PH at 20 deg, Just check what temp the strips are designed to be used at, & get a decent meter if you want true a PH reading. Saying that paper strips are pretty close for what we want at home.

[Texy]

Cheers Unc.
I dry hopped with 'a few' hops of WGV as per Grahams instructions, but I bet it was only a couple of grams at most.
When I measure the pH, I just add a few drops to a diner plate to get it to room temp.
Do you normally bottle or keg it? I'm just wondering about the priming sugar.
Texy

[L2wis]

Loving the home made temp monitor very cool. Does our use a pic chip?

[Texy]

Yes it does, a 'picaxe' chip - a pic with a Basic language front end. FYI, the 'T' time is the time counter, and the 'A' is the time in minutes that the alarm goes off. It would of been 90 but I was stiring the mash for a few minutes.

T.

[L2wis]

Brilliant! I use a pic chip of some kind a long time ago in my a-level electronics. it might have been a pic axe but I don't really remember. Do you have the little programer board thwart you plug the usb backed into and the chip?

[Texy]

The picaxe chip uses in-circuit serial programming which is done via a usb programing cable so a seperate programmer board is not required and I can update the software without removing the chip. For more info on the picaxe see here : http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/index.php

T.

[unclepumble]

I keg it, ferment for 4-5days transfer to keg with finings no primings, and can be drinking it after 7 days,it tends to be better after 10days though. I dry hop in the fermenter just after pitching and ditch the yeast after.

UP

[Texy]

Bottled this week, and although its not quite ready yet, it tastes great - definately the best of my 3 brews so far. Whether that's due to the recipe, the water treatment, or just more practice who knows.


Cheers,
Texy