right... here is the sober version of what went on on christmas day...
my dad was my brewing assistant for the day who is a kit brewer but had never seen a.g. done at home. he also took the pictures.
recipe:
single infusion mash at 66c
5.25kg pale malt (everything i had)
500g crystal malt
76g first gold hops (7.5% AA) 90min ---- = 50 EBU's
20g first gold hops 10 mins
1 whirfloc tab 10 mins
20g first gold hops at boiler turn off
at this point i had the brew penciled in my book as "Santa's strong bitter"
i mashed the grain for 90 min and then got ready to fly sparge. heated the sparge liquor and filled the insulated sparge bucket
then i set up my 3 tiers and started the run off. i didn't even fill my jug of first runnings when the mash stuck... problem no.1 i blew up the pipe, my mash bubbled but still no run off. eish... so i decide to stick a sparge bag in another bucket, tip my mash into there and try again. this is my first stuck mash and so 1st attempt at trying to fix it...
i thought i'd just try and sparge straight out of this bucket but had to stop when i realized that the liquid was running over the top of the grain and down the sides, ie, no sparge... damn. problem in the mash tun was the manifold had come away from the tap, whole tap was clogged with grain. after a quick clean i got it all back in the cooler box, this time the manifold held in place by some shot glasses from the kitchen.
and away we go... some time later, things are back on track...
great, everything sorted, small mishap overcome, back on course. the boiler is filling and is now on, great. at this point i kick the boiler tap, it comes loose and my precious hot wort starts spilling onto the floor. after a quick rescue mission, we get the wort into another bucket, fix the tap and return to sparging. at this point my dad is questioning me about why we bother with a.g., kits are so much easier... and i have the mutters... "santa's strong bitter" is renamed....." a nightmare before christmas brew"
finally we get the boiler filled with clear sweat wort and await the boil.
thats it, just a boil now, what could go wrong (apart from possible boiler tap malfunction, which i have accounted for by placing my bucket of excess wort, which is waiting to be added to boil after some evaporation, under the tap). i weigh out the hops and when all the foam has subsided i chuck them in. they start to roll around when i notice an inch long black object rolling with the hops, when i manage to catch it and get it out for inspection i find that it is a piece of rubber, looks like from a car tyre. lovely....
this can only have come from my compressed block of hops, not happy... glad i got it at the beginning. my dad is now convinced, a.g. is way to much trouble... from this point on everything did in fact go smoothly and i got 23l of clear wort at o.g. 1057.
here i am, alone in the cold now, supervising the boil. dad is challenging my mother-in-law to rounds and rounds of bowling on the wii, "brewing is a silly waste of time... and cold..." he says...
whew, all done. cooled, gravity read, now just for the yeast. i open my yeast container to get my sachet of so4 and what do i find... nothing but 1 lonely sachet of safbrew t-58, oh my god. how could i make that mistake. should have checked ingredients before i started, i have to just use the t58, have no idea what it's like or whether it will taste good. as far as i know this is for euro style beers, and was gonna try it in my next kiwi weisse... in it goes anyway. the beer is once again renamed to "car crash christmas bitter"...
all i can do is hope for the best and get on with what i should have been doing all day, drinking my beer...
