Home Brew Forum

So here it is, my first attempt at both a 'logged' brew day, and at some form of Golden Champion.

The theory is, for 25 litres...
Marris Otter – 5kg
Crystal Malt – 250g

First Gold – 40g (90mins)
First Gold – 10g (15mins)
Elderflower – 50g (15mins) – fresh flowers
Irish Moss – 1tsp(15mins)

Whitelabs 002 – English Ale Yeast.

As I say, that's the theory, what actually happens is anyone's guess! I also tried a first for me by filtering my water through a cheap 'brita' style water filter, as the water round here is really hard. After reading through some of the posts on here I found a make (called Aqua Optima, from Robert Dyas) that claims not to replace anything with any salts...hopefully!

After a tiny bit of simple woodwork I made a simple rig which let me get on with some important beer drinking while it did the filtering itself, yey! It did 30 litres in about 75 minutes, not bad I thought.

Right then, on with some cleaning...
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Have a good one!

Should be interesting with the Elderflowers.
Keep me informed

DaaB wrote:Filtering through a brita or simlar filter wont remove any minerals or hardness but it will remove chlorine and chloramines which you don't want in your beer.

Ah, ok. Well, at least It won't have a chlorine tang. I like to think I'm fairly intelligent but brewing!!! OH MY GOD, it's sooo complicated if you go into all the science of it...Maybe I should just stick to drinking it? Naaaa, wouldn't be half as much fun.

Anyway, I popped out this morning to get some more elderflowers as mine smelt of cat wee (from other posts it look slike I may have got some rowan in there). I think this lot smells better...hopefully.

The mash is now on at 68 degress, and with the help of a tsp of gypsum at 5.2 ph.


Notice my homemade mashtun with a copy of Dave Line's Big Book of Brewing as added ballast!

Looking good so far, CB!

Just a quick one, here are my 54g of fresh elderflowers picked this morning...yummy! Mash going well, only dropped 0.5 of a degree in an hour.

great pics there CBF,

And I'm sparging!!!

Woo hoo, look at me sparge.

Sparge, sparge, sparge, sparge, sparge...sparge.

I'm surprised Phil's arm doesn't get tired with all that sparging.

cracking brewday by the looks of things

So, sparging was fine. Needed to return about 5 litres, but after that it was fairly clear. Kept it going until it dropped below 1.008...BUT, remembered a little too late that I could have gone on for a bit longer because I didn't correct the reading for the temperature!!! Bum!

Never mind, I got 21 litres from that, and I'll probably still be able to top it up after the boil.

Just wondering what is going to go wrong – a little too smooth at the moment. That probably means that it won't want to drain through the hop bed...better get the sieve sanitised!

Well, that'll teach me.

Just as I was clicking send on my last post, the whole thing boiled over!!!

ARGHHHHHHH!!!

I guess that means my hot break it ruined???!
Oh well, better get the mop out.

yep, you'll have that lovely kitchen ruined within 10 brews..

what with spills, boilovers, steam and condensation...etc

Garth wrote:yep, you'll have that lovely kitchen ruined within 10 brews..

what with spills, boilovers, steam and condensation...etc

Funny cause it's true

Bubbly, bubbly, bubbly...

Notice the rather grim remains of my hot break down the side of the boiler!
ps: I built the kitchen, so I can do what I like with it!... although don't tell the wife i said that!!! lol

So the boils done, and I gave the Irish moss a bit of extra time (30mins total) to hopefully compensate for the boil-over. You never know, it might work.

Chucked in the elderflower – absolutely NO aroma from it what-so-ever... may need to rethink that next time.

Just off to get the wort cooler ready...