FINISHED -
Well it could of gone a bit smoother than that - bit of a nightmare, mainly because of equipment
Firstly, i need some decent scales, our kitchen scales only show increments of 50g and only go upto 2kg - should of checked first, found some old, more accurate ones in the shed, that were in pound and ounces, so I converted all my weights to imperial.
Then, bit of a faff weighing and mixing all the grains - they seem to expand when weighed, so I had to find some big saucepans to mix in.
My main problem was not being able to get the water hot enough, the pan was across all four burners to get it to temp, took ages and had to half cover with foil to keep the heat in. - Eventually got a boil and once I had one I could keep it going on two burners.
Bit of a problem after cooling, I did a whirlpool, which worked well, but because of the width of my pan, there was loads of wort left in after syphoning had finished, so had to jug out through a sieve, bit messy and had to do a quick sanitise on jugs, seives etc.
In the end I ended up with 4 gal, which I was a bit disappinted with, I think because of such a long boil and the size of my pan there was too much evaporation. I stared with 27l and ended up wth 18l - not good. Final gravity 1048, which is stronger than it should be, must be due to the boil off - Could I top it up with boiled water, until it reaches the proper gravity? or is it too late now, yeast went in at 11.30 this morning.
Overall i'm happy with what i've got, and the mash tun worked well, only losing 1 degree in 70 mins and at the end of sparging the runnings measured 1012, so that was good too.
So I think i'm going to ditch the stock pot gas boiler and get a Leyand 33l elctric boiler - are these any good, can I comfortably do a 5gal brew in one?
Pics to follow later - need to reduce them in size!
