First brew on new kit

[hopsinjoor]

This was more a test than anything else, I wanted to see how the kit worked (and more importantly, what didn't work).

I got the water up to temperature in the keggle, I mashed in at 74 degrees, so that I had a mash of 66 degrees C. I didn't have much in the way of malts and grains, so I threw everything I had left into the new keg MT, I had 2.775kg of MO (77.41%), 425g of dark wheat (11.85%) , and 385g of dark rye (10.74%) to which I added 9 litres of hot liquor.

At the end of the mash I tried to use my new sparge system (John Guest fittings and copper tube), but there wasn't enough pressure to turn the bloody thing. I reckon that a pump will be in order fairly soon.

That said, the boil went well, a decent, and vigorous boil. and my first use of the counterflow wort chiller I've made went well. It dropped the temperature of the wort from boiling to 18 degrees C in a single pass.

I need to fix the sparge problem, but this brew, without the sparge, gave me the highest efficiency to date, of 75%. This was at a higher mash and sparge temp than previous, so the numbers would be different if I'd carried on the low temp mashing, but I'm aiming for a different body and feel on my beers.

All in all, a pretty good brew, for a throw together. I pitched into the FV the brettanomyces that I'd cultured up previously, so it should be a dark, hoppy, bretty, low ABV beer. Hmmm.

https://twitter.com/hopsinjoor/status/3 ... 76/photo/1