Home Brew Forum

... for one week only. That's according to the BBC, who say the temperature's not going to rise above 20°C until the weekend. Time to stick the HLT on for a Timothy Taylor Landlord...

23 Litres
4.6kg Maris Otter
45g Styrians, 3.8% (90 mins)
20g Fuggles, 4.5% (90 mins)
24g Goldings, 5.3 (15 mins)
Windsor Yeast, all that was in the fridge.

Mash 90mins, Boil 90 mins

OG: 1042

Here's the brewery at present, with new mash tun on right. (It's the old thermos coolbox mash tun in a new case and a zillion camping mats in between. Today is its maiden voyage.)


Filling the HLT: (EDIT: um, the MT, I mean.)


The grains, and some last minute plumbing:


Filling it up for the first batch. The mash had dropped about half a degree over 60mins. Annoyingly, the corners were still much cooler.


Mash tun doesn't have a tap yet. Might not even need one. I plugged the pipe with the lid of a felt tip pen...


... recirculating is easy enough...


... and so is the run-off into boiler:


The boil:




The hops. Time to defrost the fridge, perhaps. But I swear that's not a frozen guinea pig in the centre.


The run-off: It's the first time ever I've had the cooling water going full blast through the CFC and still not getting the wort down to 20C. Blooming August.



Cameraman gets bored and starts trying arty shots:


23 Litres @ exactly 1042, happy about that. Beer put to bed and a much-needed pint.

good job that man!

I like the space saving feature of having the CFC wrapped around a vessel, very tidy.

excellent set up

Nice set up, Hogarth.

I'm surprised you're having trouble cooling with a cfc - even in the height of summer I find I just need a trickle of cooling water.

Great photo's H, lovely job on the beer too. Hope that ceiling light is SELV though , or shoot your spark

Jim wrote: I'm surprised you're having trouble cooling with a cfc - even in the height of summer I find I just need a trickle of cooling water.

The best way to describe my tap water at the moment is tepid...which is odd considering the weather.

Thanks guys. It's bubbling away like a nutter already, and a lovely fruity smell coming from it, like mangoes ... a pleasant change from the sulphurous stench I got from my last brew. I'm assuming this is down to the yeast -- Windsor this time and WLP013 last time.

Wort temperature is 21.5°C and shows no sign of coming down. Ah well.

Jim, the problem was that the cooling water itself was above 20°C. It comes from the tank in the attic, and it's like an oven up there in the summer. Even my super-efficient CFC can't deal with that.

The lighting's low-voltage, SiHoltye, but I'm not sure about SELV. Dangling the bulbs off cup hooks is probably not approved practice.

Hogarth wrote:.... [the cooling water] comes from the tank in the attic, and it's like an oven up there in the summer....

Ah, now I understand - my water comes straight from the mains.

Great job and great pics!

That's a real tight space your are brewing in - excellent job on the brewery design. Do you have extraction during the boil?

nice

Very nice setup, that man.

Good work H

Nice one

Thanks!

There's a little window to the left, Blighty, and the steam's not so bad in warmer weather. But in the winter it's like a sauna, so extraction is definitely the way forward.

I hope this Windsor yeast doesn't mind higher temps because it's bubbling away at 22.4°C despite the ambient being only 19°C.