Home Brew Forum

Today saw me crossing the line into AG with a Summer Lightning clone. Many thanks to Garth for coming over and helping as I realise if I had done it myself, I would have made even more of a monkey's breakfast than we had managed! I'll explain later.....

The shedule was...

Pale Malt - 5.5kg
Torrified Wheat - 0.3kg
@ 60 minute mash.

Batch sparge.

Boil:
Challenger 0.45kg @ 60min
EK Goldings 0.20kg @ 15min
EK Goldings 0.45kg @ 0min

I treated my liquor to a crushed campden tablet, and set it away. The HLT/Boiler took around 40mins to heat the mash water to 80c. Mashing was done in 60 mins without the coolbox mashtun loosing any temperature, not bad for nearly 20 years old!
Sparging was by batch sparge using a Youngs FV with grainbag and produced just shy of around 30litres of pre-boil wort. ***having read this again, I think it was more 27 litres***

The copper was set away to attain the boil before adding the hops. At this point I must explain that the boiler is an aluminium stand-alone boiler powered by gas....
As it produced the foam and hot-break, I didn't add the hops quickly enough to counter-act the foam and resulted in a boil-over all over the kitchen floor before the gas was turned off. Result = One sticky floor. My dogs seem to love it though!

As the boil finished and the chiller running, we waited until the temperature had dropped to 25c and then transferred to the FV. When it had finished, Garth noticed that the cold break was actually happening in the FV and not the Copper. As neither of us have used an immersion chiller before, we believe that insufficient time was given between the chiller finishing and the transfer to the FV. It could also be down to the boil-over though. As a result I have a lot of crap in the bottom of the FV

I was using Promash and getting confused with it, I forgot to include the loss of liqour to hops in my calculations which resulted in a brew-length of 19 litres instead of 23 . At the end of the day, today's brew was trial to a) test the equipment and b) to get the 'knack' of it.

As a result of seeing what is in the FV against the time taken to do it (4.5hrs), I am going to up the stakes and go larger to produce at least double the amount. For the sake of an extra hour or, I can double the amount of beer which in turn means I won't need to brew as often (I say that now though! )

Even though it went with hiccups, I am in no doubt that AG is the way to go! I'm currently looking at S/S boilers and tuns

Many thanks to Garth for giving up your time and effort and putting up with my disorganised madness and the scruffiness that is Chatteau Sh*thouse!

Well done mucker, just done my 2nd AG which was Summer Lightning... Looked and smelt great, fingers crossed for both of us....

Happy Days

Nice work Scotty.....the next one will be much easier.

If it helps any, I've been working out the amount of wort absorbed by whole flower hops over the last few brews and it's averaging out at around 14=15ml per 1g of hops - or about 1.4 = 1.5L per p100g. If you work out your boiler dead space using just cold water (chuck a few litres in, then empty out through the tap until it stops, then pour whatever is left into a measuring jug), then add the 1.4 - 1.5L per 100g hop absorbtion factor, you should come out with the right amount of wort next time around.

Don't worry about the cold break in the FV, it'll settle out just fine.

thanks adm, the cold break is starting to compact quickly. As my FV is fitted with a tap, I may have to syphon off to obtain more beer against using the tap. No worries though!

Thanks for the hop info, I can use that as a guide for next time

Well done Scotty. Don't worry about your hiccups, it's all part of the learning process & you will still end up with a darn fine brew.

As I use a counterflow chiller, all my cold break ends up in my fv & it is not a problem. As adm points out, it will settle out in the bottom of the fv.

good stuff there Horden!

Hopefully Garth will be along soon with the pictures!

aye, it was an interesting day!

Scott's boiler can remove leg hair at a metre.......it is a beast!!

That's quite helpful Alasdair, nice one! I knew you could lose quite a bit to leaf, at least we know where 1.5 litres of wort went, we did allow for boiler deadspace

Thanks to Scott for a good day and the takeaway beer, although for some reason I did feel like an alcoholic carrying the 2 litre PETs into the house!!!

I'll get the photos up as soon as I get back home, at me Ma's at the mo.

Looks like a good day, summer lightning is a great brew.

Garth wrote:
That's quite helpful Alasdair, nice one! I knew you could lose quite a bit to leaf, at least we know where 1.5 litres of wort went, we did allow for boiler deadspace

And the rest ended up on the floor!

there we go, mystery solved

Well done on breaking your AG duck, Scotty!

Here's a few pictures of the brew afternoon


Hop weighing


The 'Immac' boiler, (leg hair remover)


Chilling in progress

Congratulations on your first AG brew.

Brewing up an SL clone today as well.

I was drinking Summer Lightening last night in the pub. Delicious! Going to have a blast at Graham Wheeler's version.

Don't worry about the crap in the fermenter. I brewed a beer once with 100g of hops left in there and it turned out great. (That's what happens when you get pissed whilst brewing) Mind you, that was a dark beer. Was probably cloudy as hell. Great tasting though!

These days, I hop in a mesh washing bag which I got from Asda.viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21366&hilit=+asda
When the brew has cooled, I squeeze the wort out and loose very little.

Hope your brew tastes great.

Well done Scott, brought back memories. Many of mine were horror stories and the beer was still very drinkable. I'm sure yours will be great.

I've never boiled in the kitchen and remember once during the boil returning there to clear up after the mash. When I got back to the garage there was a most fabulous smell but it was from the drive and front street where most of the beer had gone in my absence.

Great pictures Garth.