BarleyBottom's 'Wooly Jumper' brew day

[onelegout]

Hi guys,
I work from home, but don't finish until late so brewing can be a bit hard to fit into my day - Today however, I'm trying a 'no hassle' brew, the focus is on making a non-herms brew with basic equipment while only putting in the minimum amount of effort. The idea being to make my brew day so easy that I am able to do it whilst working, spending only a few minutes here and there to complete each stage of the brew. I got everything prepared and ready last night, and I've just started the mash

Here's my recipe:

Wooly Jumper (recipe from Barley Bottom - Homebrew Shop, Homebrew Supplies, Hops, Grains and Sundries)
Style: ordinary bitter
OG: 1045
IBUs 33.9
ABV 4.5%

Mash 90 minutes with 3 gallons of water, then sparge with 5 gallons
4kg Maris Otter
200g Crystal Malt 120L
150g Torrified Wheat
10g Roast Barley

Boil:
42g Goldings, East Kent 5.8%AA 90 min Boil
12g Goldings, East Kent 5.8%AA 15 min Boil
25g Bobek 5.2%AA 1min boil
1 Protafloc Tablet 15 mins boil

Cool with dodgy homemade immersion chiller
Pitch 1 sachet of rehydrated US-05 yeast.

10 days primary
5 days secondary
crash cool in kegerator last day of secondary
bottle half, keg half
bottle condition 3 weeks
keg for 3 days

DRINK!

[onelegout]

This barleybottom.com all-grain recipe kit comes pre-measured in vaccum packed packages. The grain is crushed and mixed well, and it's all very simple and hassle-free.
This is my second all-grain recipe after my first one (a weiss) turned out very spicy after I added a load of cloves, bananas and cardamom pods to secondary!


Here's my low-budget mash tun that I built. Yes, I know what you're thinking - that tap is completely wonky! Well I was so dumb I didn't think that the thread would expand under heat and so I screwed in the tap mounting point with the tap screwed into it cold, and when I mashed with it the tap was suddenly loose! So now it's wonky but it does the job fine.


Here's my new 5 gallon boil kettle - it doesn't completely hold the 6 gallons that I get from the mash but I add the extra gallon as it boils off during the boil.


The grains added to the MT; this is going to be a tight squeeze with the 3 gallons of liquor!


Heated the liquor to 73*C or 162*F, added it to the grains and hit 68*C or 154*F which is a little higher than the recipe calls for (66*C/150*F) but it shouldn't be a problem should it?


Now the clock's ticking as I wait the 90 minutes for the mash to finish, before adding the sparge water which is heating as I speak.

- oneleg

[onelegout]

45 minutes in and the mash has only lost 1*C - sitting quite comfortably at 67*C/153*F

[onelegout]

Sparge water is up to temperature.


The hose on the end of my mash tun is too long so I have to wrap it round the chair to keep it in check!


The first few litres of wort contain grain particles so I put these back into the top of the MT.


Once the lautering wort is running clear, I let it lauter into a bucket so that I can measure the volume. I'm aiming for 6 gallons here to compensate for evaporation during the boil.



I sparge the water by gently pouring it over the grain using a jug. I sparged at 70*C/159*F.


When I get near to the 6 gallons of wort, I check the SG of the wort that's being lautered just to check that I'm not going below 1.010. I've been told that you risk getting nasty tannins from over-sparged wort.


Here's the 5 gallons of wort in the boil pot. I said I was aiming for 6 gallons of wort, and I usually use the last gallon to top the boil off as it evaporates, but somehow I forgot about that and stopped at 5 gallons! so now I'm going to top up with water as it evaporates and see how it goes; should this be a problem?


Next is the 90 minute boil, which I thought was a 60 minute boil, so my girlfriends expecting to go out for dinner to celebrate our 2 years since we met anniversary, but she's gonna have to wait an extra half hour now... shes going to be aaaangry

[mctoon]

Did you say Sparge at 70c,, sparge water should be around 82-85c,,im no expert but that seems low to me,, wats the 0G?

Cheers Mal

[arturobandini]

Not much point adding water until you're finished as you'll just be diluting the brew as you go. See what you collect once it's in your fermenting vessel and check your OG and see ,if you've got less than you hoped, whether it's worth diluting it a bit with water to bump up the volume. The way you're going about it means that you're not able to excercise any control over your OG.

[onelegout]

Okies, the only reason why I added the top up water during the boil, was for sanitation. I figured that the boil would sanitise the water, so that I didnt have to boil any top up water.
It turns out though that I forgot to factor in the displacement of the hop additions, so I do need to dilute it anyways. nevermind!
H

[arturobandini]

You don't need to sanitise tap water if you're adding it to your beer post boil. You may want to dechlorinate any water you add though if your water is high in it.

[Parva]

My dad's made plenty of 'Geordie' beer kits and never done either and they've been ok (for a kit). If it's good enough to drink from the tap it's sanitary enough to brew with. I agree that the addition of some campden would be prudent.

[onelegout]

Unfortunately I got no photos for the rest of the brew! It all went well until it came to straining the wort into the fermenter - I have lost my other hop socks so I had to just chuck them in. They clogged the syphon when transfering to the primary, so I tried to pour the liquid through a sivve, which worked remarkably well.... until the sivve fell into the fermenter

I ended up with only 4 gallons in the fermenter, but my efficiency was higher than expected so I was able to top up to 5 gallons with water, despite losing a gallon of wort to the trub, hop absorbsion, and floor (my syphon jumped out of the fermenter some how! )

I ended up hitting the predicted OG bang on, pitched the yeast, and this morning there's an inch thich krausen and the beer's violently bubbling away

What difference am I likely to see from using US-05 instead of S-04?

Cheers,
H