Home Brew Forum

Well, my bar's been dry for way too long, and moving house has prevented me from keeping my stock levels up. The weather is due to be pants for the next week, and as my new house doesnt have any ideal locations for which to keep my brews under 23 degrees during the ferment, this weekend is going to be a mass brewing weekend.

Melvin at the Bedford HBS has held back a sack of malt and a load of ingredients, so i'll be there first thing tomorrow morning picking them up. tonight i'm off to tesco's to grab a few ingredients for a TC and a ginger beer that i felt inspired by elsewhere on the forum.

So tomorrow and Sunday will be spent making the following brews:

2x 5 gallon batches of Genius, a tweak of the guiness clone found in the brewing beers like those you buy, using northern brewer hops.

1x 5 gallon TC using whatever apple juice i can get my hands on

1x 5 gallon Ginger Beer using a recipe recently posted (and i believe still fermenting) elsewhere on this forum

1x 5 gallon random ale, depending on what other stocks of hops and malt are in the bedford HBS.

1x 4 or 5 gallon Red wine kit

that's about 30 gallons!!!

OK i have a couple of questions, but first a little detail:

My HLT/boiler only permits me to boil 5 gals at a time, but i wish to do a 10gal brew of Genius. My mash tun (those blue brupak coolbox jobbies) states it can mash up to 10kg, which is slightly shy of my total grain bill for both runs. My grain bill will be as follows:

3.75kg Maris Otter
1.00kg Flaked Barley
0.50kg Roasted Barley

so 5.25kg or 10.5kg total grain <---Edited, sorry i cant count

I was hoping to do a batch sparge this time around because i want the runnings i collect to be identical for both boils (but i'll have to collect it in two seperate fermenters as i dont have any containers large enough to do the whole lot in one). this is because i want to try a slight variation with my hops, but want the malt liquor to be identical so i've got a more consistency before the boils.

First question: Would my mash tun be big enough to carry out a batch sparge for this amount of grain?

Second Question: i've never batch sparged before, only fly sparged. Is it possible to batch sparge the entire grain in one sitting? or is it always done in parts?

There's probably a really obvious answer to this question, ie "No!" but any ideas on how i can get my malt liquor identical in both fermenters that the runnings will be collected into will be a great help

cheers!

10 kilo's is pushing it a bit in those mash tuns, 9 is more like it, you might get closer to 10 if you really thicken the mash.

One thing I have done a few times is grab another cool box, if you have one lying around, and conduct two mashes at the same time. Batch sparge one, tip away the grain, tip the mash from your unconverted box into the lauter tun, then batch sparge that.

no i dont have a spare coolbox sadly

i guess i'll just have to mash them seperately then try to mix them together as best i can. hopefully that wont leave them too different from eachother.

how's it going stew?

it's going good... sort of hehe.

I had a friend around to watch and we drunk quite a few tinnies then headed into town... i'm nursing a substantial hangover right now

The wine kit is on. a 5 gal merlot.

the first genius went well without a hitch, but the second ended up with an extra malt ingredient by accident! i'll elaborate more when my head stops hurting but it looks as though i'll only be doing the ginger beer today

right, here's the update as my head is now clear and i've been able to catch up on the housework i neglected

my mate was with me the whole time, watching, helping, learning as i talked him through the process.

the first brew went without a hitch with the exception of snapping my hydrometer

Genius:

Batch Size (L): 24.00
Total Grain (kg): 5.250
Anticipated OG: 1042-1045

Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar
3.750 kg. Pale Malt - Maris Otter (added 75gms due to package size of barley)
1.000 kg. Flaked Barley
0.500 kg. Crushed Roast Barley

Hops
70.0g Northern Brewer Hops (60 minutes Boil)

5g Irish Moss Fining 15 Min. (boil)

Yeast
Safale 04

90 minute mash @ 66 deg C
Boil for 60 minutes

went in the fermenter at 1.045.... result!


While that was mashing I managed to get a 5 gal red merlot wine kit on. was simple as so i hope that comes out nicely.

the second brew had a little glitch. an error on my part. I had purchased Wheat malt for another brew, and in my absent mindedness while having a natter i accidentally handed my mate the 500g packet of wheat malt and one of flaked barley instead of two packets of flaked barley! i only realised this after he'd poured it and mixed it in.... WHOOPS! so this one turned out as follows:


taRd: < I let my mate name this one so he thought he'd call it taRd because of the cock-up hehe

Batch Size (L): 24.00
Total Grain (kg): 5.750
Anticipated OG: Christ knows!!! i cocked it up

Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar
3.750 kg. Pale Malt - Maris Otter (added 75gms due to package size of barley)
1.000 kg. Flaked Barley
0.500 kg. Crushed Roast Barley
0.500 kg. Wheat Malt

Hops
70.0g Northern Brewer Hops (60 minutes Boil)

5g Irish Moss Fining 15 Min. (boil)

Yeast
Safale 04

120 minute mash @ 66 deg C
Boil for 60 minutes

this one was mashed for 120 mins because i juggled the first brew with this one to cut down on some time... so this was mashing while the previous one was boiling... took a little longer than i thought :S

the OG i didnt measure from the start as i was a hydrometer down but it got plopped in today and it's 1.040 and has a bigger yeast head on it than the Genius.



Ginger Beer:

taken from elsewhere on the forum, but with some slight differences

1.2kg fresh root ginger, peeled and grated
3 x cinnamon sticks
10 x cloves
1 x Kg Granulated White sugar
1 x Kg Honey, boiled as i wasnt sure if it was pasturised as it didnt say.
250ml Jif Lemon juice

Boiled for about 20 mins

Got to 24L and reached 1.046 on the hydrometer.

this one smelled lovely in the boiler


Was going to do a Towne's IPA to see what all the fuss was about but as previously mentioned the wheat malt got added to the Genius... Now called taRd... that and i was deeply hungover yesterday

So this weekend i'll attempt to do a Towne's but without the wheat malt, and i got some fuggles in so i might do an identical brew but with fuggles so i can appreciate the different flavours of the hops