Home Brew Forum

Hello,

Gonna do a brew this afternoon using Brewlab Sussex 1004 (my first time)

25L, 90min mash, 90 min boil
Pale Malt 90%
Crystal 40L 10%
Challenger 90mins to 25IBU's
Challenger 10 mins to 3IBU's
Brewlab Sussex 1004 yeast

Will try to remember piccy's

Having discovered my water is not terrible for brewing, I'm not going to adjust it now for a while as long as the mash ph is ok. It's my water and therefore my beer

Gonna do the same brew but changing the yeast next 2 brewdays; Harvey's, and Hook Norton strains.

Cheers all.

Have a good one, should be interesting of what you think of the yeast

Have a good one

Where are you in sussex ? I'm in Ringmer and haven't got round to water treatment yet ... therefore haven't noticed any difference if i do treat .. i'm off to the HBS in Brighton today so will pick up some ph sticks ...

Hope it goes well SH!

I checked the website for our local water supplier: no data, so emailed them requesting water quality report. They have these things as PDFs as they are required to produce them by law. the response was expect a reply in 28 days!

Hi Danny.

I'm in Copthorne, near Crawley.

I can't tell if water treatment is making a difference or not. My efficiency is pretty stable at 75% and if I use Aux & IG I get clear beer quickly.

I've got some ph strips to measure the mash after 90mins. The 2 times I've done this previously it's looked about ph4.9, perhaps I'd over calculated CRS required or mis-made-up the alkalinity test kit? Dunno.

Anyway no water treatment today bar a campden tab.

Everything went OK until the presumed lack of hops combined with a wicked coagulation of break material meant the hop strainer blocked.

Got photo's to upload tomorrow, and an improved strainer to consider . Still the flying starter will have a chance to multiply whilst I wait 'til the morning before racking the wort off the break, it having hopefully settled during this time.

Oh well.

Bloomin hop strainer....53g of hops in 25L didn't handle it


Brew Sheet

HLT Warming Up

Dodgy looking white powder (crushed campden tab )

Pre-heating the MT

Distracting beers

Olde English Grain Store

500g Crystal

Pale Malt

Grist in placcy bag

12L of liquor for doughing in

Slit sack dough in

Nosey bloomin kitty

Equalising temperature with 10 mins stirring (always seems to take ages)

Watch it pussy

90 min wait - the mash

Rubbish sandwich with some strange sauce I bought. Effin hot stuff.

Raw ph strip

After a 3 second swim in my MT, looks OK to me.

First runnings, good colour

Draining a batch

Paltry looking hops, 7% mind (wish they'd been less now 'cos I'd have used more and break might not have blocked strainer)

Final batch draining into boiler

Brewlabs Sussex 1004 sitting in Weizen starter from 1 week ago

Dinner - Chicken Shish

Quite a floury looking tun left there

Just after the smooth crust and into the bubbly big boil stage

All died down now so in with the 90min hops

IC in

Done its job



Yeast with 1L of wort taken from the boil

The wort sitting until tomorrow when I'll try to separate the top part (clear) from the bottom part (cruddy)

The hop strainer that didn't cut the mustard tonight. It's usually great but I think it needed a filter of more than 53g of hops.

Excellent pics Si, shame about the stuck strainer. Looks like you'll be well down on your target volume, will that impact on your target gravity or did you plan on topping up at the end?

Hi Daab,

The run-off from the boiler to FV ground to a halt after about 5L. Checking back through my records the other time this happened was when I made a mild that had 63g of hops in 25L. Everything else has had a min of 95g. When I brew this recipe with the other 2 yeasts I'll add some aroma hops, basically to assist filtering the break.

Hi stevezx7r,

I racked 17L into another vessel this morning, SG was 1.048. So luckily with my addition of 1L of water to correct to 1.045 and the 1L starter the brewlength should suit a corni OK.

Great pics Si! Cute cat too.

Great pictures. Always good to get cats involved in brewing

Continuing with my compulsive sample taking it's 1.031 this morning.

Taking samples with tap, i hope