Home Brew Forum

Had a great brewday today. Tried out my new boiler as well and my improvised IC which I cobbled together last night. All good.

This was taking notes from the thread I posted up about a hoppy, pale ale. The recipe I ended up with was:

4.55kg crushed pale (66'C mash for 90 minutes, stirring every 30 minutes)
250g wheat malt
50g Cascade for 60 minutes
35g Cascade for 12 minutes
15g Cascade, 20 minute steep at the end

Whirlfloc tablet
1/2 Campden Tablet
Danstar Nottingham yeast

Pics will follow shortly (when I can get the hosting site to get it's act together). One thing that really puzzles me is the apparent efficiency I've obtained. Previously, when doing 16 litre boils (so I've had to stop the sparging at that volume), I've achieved about 75%. Now with sparging a full 25 litres, I was expecting an increase, so I budgeted it at 77% to be on the close side, the beer software giving me an estimated SG of the finished wort of 1051.

Interim measurements were much higher than this but I decided to wait until I had a cool and ready to ferment wort to try again. The reading was 1061. This was with the correct temperature adjustment too. I did top up the fermenter slightly with some water (as the new boiler seems to "steal" about 5 pints at the bottom of the barrel which is below the level of the tap) with a new SG of 1059. But even so, that's still considerably more than the calculated OG.

There is only one thing I can think of: this was using my new 25kg bag of grain, which I had emptied into two 25 litre containers. I think I might have taken the grain from the last of the two and the flour etc. which was settled at the bottom of the grain sack had been at a greater concentration for that last bit, resulting in a lot more convertable material in my mash? Thoughts?

Still, was a good brewday. About 6 hours, but I wasn't as efficient with my time as I was with my mashing.

Hoping to have this one ready for Christmas!

Looks good I do have a mind to do an American pale ale or IPA in the near future

Here's some photos from today.

Mash going well:



Getting the sparge water ready in my now redundant 19 litre stockpot:



First clear runnings into the boiler



Sparging



Sparge complete and time to switch the boiler on!



Meanwhile time to weigh out oodles of lovely Cascades



Hot break



First lot of cascades (for bittering) go in



Nice rolling boil now



Brewhouse setup. Note the deskfan which directs the steam from the boiler outside through the open back door (just out of shot to the right of the boiler). Really works too!



Cooling time with a rather unelegant (but effective) IC



Running off the cooled wort into the fermenter



Yeast now showing slightly odd behaviour, clumping into lumps and floating about. But I've seen this before so I'm not worried.



It was a good brewday!

love the pics. I could spend hours watching yeast flocculate

Said flocculated lumps of yeast are now doing laps of the carboy beneath a 2" thick krausen.

Maybe the amount of grain you started with as yeilded an high OG, i just did a brew with only 4Kg of Marris Otter and i`ve ended up with an OG of 1050, i was hoping more for around 1040 to 1042, as i dont like my beers too strong.
Usually i only use around 3.25Kg to 3.5Kg of Marris Otter but the recipe stated 4Kg so went with it but obviously the more grain the more sugars.

Checked the gravity today - 1009. It seemed to ferment furiously for 4 days then go dormant, I was concerned about a stuck fermentation, but looks like I need not have worried! Estimate 6.7% ABV at this time! Tastes nice (although not amazing). Probably needs quite a bit of maturing. Odd as my 4.0% abv-ish session beers tend to taste fantastic from the FV at gravity reading time. The HIPA didn't taste that hoppy either, a bit odd given that 100g of cascades went into this one.

I had one of the 330ml bottles of this beer during a brewday yesterday. Wow! Even this short extra maturing time has made a world of difference! Fantastic flavour, really pronounced grapefruit with a complex bittersweet aftertaste. The alcohol level is quite well masked (6.9% AVB ) but I could tell I had a bottle of the stuff! Carbonation is nice, perhaps could do with a tad more as it needed a little agitation to get a nice head (although maybe I was pouring a little too carefully for fear of an unstable sediment, but it actually glued itself to the bottom of the bottle!).
As good as it was, it's going to be left for another few weeks at least - things can only get better!

Little piccy! Duvel bottles come in handy for "scientific progress checks" on a brew.