Home Brew Forum

Made this on Friday night after finishing my last pint of Summer Lightning clone from the barrel.

So based on Vossy's recipe I added some Black Malt.





Mashed at 66c for 2 hours.





First runnings







Sparging







Hops in at boil....decided to only boil for 60mins



Chilling didnt take long, only around 15-20mins as it was freezing outside.

Running off into the FV





Managed to get a starting gravity of 1042 just what i wanted.

Only problem was there was a lot of wort left in the boiler and it didnt seem to fully drain. Probably around a few liters left. Wasnt that bothered as I collected my 5 gallons but makes me wonder why it didnt work right.

Lovely!

i might try that in a few weeks time. That recipe seems to get rave reviews and I do love a good stout.

Nice one! Think this will be one of the first brews of the new year for me - though if I can just squeeze two in before Christmas... Good to see the mushroom box sparger getting good use

Looking nice that!

With reference to your issue with poor draining from the boiler, I had this until another member on here suggested to get some siphon action going! The problem is the outflow on the tap is too wide to act as a siphon, so you end up with the level of the tap being the lowest the liquid will drain to. So using some jubilee clips and some progressively smaller piping (which starts off inside the tap, rather than outside - I enlarged the tube with some hot water and a wooden rod to make sure it was a snug fit), then with a nylon tube at the end (which is quite narrow) which I made as long as possible to create quite as lower pressure as possible in the pipe near the tap, I manage to drain out pretty much all of the useable wort. The only stuff I can't get is what the hops hold on to, but I guess that's just something to live with!

Here's a pic I took yesterday when I was racking my porter into the FV:



The other advantage of this system is the siphon effect through a narrow bore tube creates quite a powerful jet of wort, perfect for aeration.

Thanks for the advice, will try that on my next one.

Got this barreled at 1012 so works out at 4%, happy with that.

Managed to fix my Humbelton barrel as it would never hold the pressure. Used an old boots barrel lid instead and it worked very well.

So here are a few more images.

Added some Creamy Top











Tastes pretty good and looking forward to seeing what Creamy Top does.

I've seen that as a food additive before, but never seen it in beer:

Propylene glycol alginate (PGA) is an emulsifier, stabilizer, and thickener used in food products. It is a food additive with E number E405. Chemically, propylene glycol alginate is an ester of alginic acid, which is derived from kelp. Some of the carboxyl groups are esterified with propylene glycol, some are neutralized with an appropriate alkali, and some remain free.

I'll be interested to see how that works out.