Home Brew Forum

Brewing this today:

Malton Brewery Co. - Owd Bob
from Marc Ollosson's book.

With a remarkable bit of planning (for me) this is to be my Xmas brew which is going into bottle eventually.

Water just about at strike temperature - will post more in a while.

Spooky - I was looking at this today with a view to being a Christmas Ale - good luck with the brew BB

So this is the recipe:

• Pale Malt (MO) 5840g
  Crystal 200g
  Black 170g
  
  Challenger 97g (90 mins)
  Challenger 19g (at switch off - Marc has it at 15 mins)
  
  1 Whirlfloc 10 mins
  
  Yeast: White Labs Dry English Ale WLP007
  
  OG 1055
  Final 1009
  ABV 5.9%

Described as an ale with a dry, fruity character without the sweet edge of high gravity ales.

Doughed in a few minutes ago at a mash temperature of 65.6C.

This brew gives me the chance to use a few new bits of kit:

• A bright, shiny Burco as HLT for the fly sparge
  Wort aerator
  refractometer

Just a couple of questions though.
1) In Wheeler's Home Brewing he suggests emptying the mash tun of the mash liquor and then fly sparging the drained grist rather than keeping the grains 'afloat'. Anyone tried this technique? Usually I keep the grains afloat.
2) How do I convert the brix reading on the refractometer into gravity?

Good luck to all those who are brewing today.

Re no 2, there is a tool in Beersmith if you have that, but IIRC you multiply by 4, so 10 brix = 1.040

I drain mine - it probably matters once you're looking at efficiency and so on. The other thing is that the grains will cool down - you want them nice and warm so they don't cool the sparge water, which wants to be at 77 or 78 degrees C when it hits the grains. This is the temp where you get the highest solubility of sugars. Various people on JBK have cunning swan-neck things on their mash tuns, so they can run-off at a rate that is replenished by the sparging, either with just the surface of the grains exposed or indeed with the surface covered. I haven't got that far yet.

Brix to SG: here and here.

Have a great day!

Enjoy BB

That's great - thanks all.

Because of higher A/A% (7.0% c.f. 6.2% in the recipe) I'm going to reduce the weight to 86 grammes at 90 mins.

I will try to take a few pics but I've missed the early stages.

Minor problem - I've fitted the hop filter to the mash tun so now I've got to sparge the lot into another vessel, then retrieve the filter and fit it to the boiler before I can switch on the heat. Bugger! And the run-off is already very slow - I hope it doesn't stick................

There are some days when you just aren't meant to brew. Finally retrieved the hop filter from the mash tun, fixed it to the boiler transferred lovely dark wort from other vessel and set it off to boil. I went out 15 mins ago to find steaming hot wort dribbling through the heating element washer all over the garage floor.

Everything transferred back into the FV, replaced washer and it's back on the go again while I wash the FV AGAIN!

I'll laugh about it on Xmas Day when I'm cracking into a bottle

Great perseverance BB you deserve a pint!

Hope the rest went well for ya BB

Thanks folks (sorry, I'm not getting much chance to post on here at the moment and getting round to dealing with pics requires, for me, another half hour!)

The remainder did go well and yeast was pitched at about 6.30 so the whole process because of cock-ups took an inordinate 9 hours.

However, the good news is that by the next morning the yeast was beginning to do its stuff and last night, 36 hours later, I dropped it into secondary to rid it of all the initial gummy resins. This is a technique recommended in Graham Wheeler's Home Brewing. Within a couple of hours a new and clean head had formed and this morning it's going like a good 'un.

I was really pleased with the new kit I introduced to the process: the HLT contributed to a much improved efficiency and I just love the refractometer - what a breeze!

I'm really not sure I can wait 'til Xmas to taste this one.