Evening brew 2009-06-17

[Invalid Stout]

I don't know what this is going to be yet, but I have mash water heating up as I'm writing this. 100% pale malt, a bit of gypsum and I shall see what hops I have in the freezer.

[Invalid Stout]

Mashing now. I overshot my strike temperature by quite a bit, because I'm sloppy. So I had to add cold water to cool it down, but I've added too much and now the mash is only 59º, so I'm boiling a bit of it to heat it up again.

[mysterio]

Improvisation, I like it!

[Invalid Stout]

I expect I am going to have too much wort, but that's OK as I need to make a starter. I should probably look around for something to put the wort in.

[Invalid Stout]

First wort hopping with 22g Northern Brewer and 12g Liberty (it's only a small batch and there will be more Liberty as late hops)

[GARYSMIFF]

Any updates?

[Invalid Stout]

Yes! Another 30g Liberty at flame out. The wort is now cooling (in the bath).

[Invalid Stout]

My starter is only bubbling very lightly, so I pitched a packet of S04 instead. OG 1034

[mysterio]

So... what are you going to do with the starter ?

[Invalid Stout]

Make porter tomorrow!

[coatesg]

Make porter tomorrow!

Nice improvised brewday!

[Invalid Stout]

Due to the low original gravity this was already down to 1010 24 hours later. Should I still give it the week to 10 days in primary to clean up?

[Invalid Stout]

I'm kind of merging two brews into one.

I'm making an XX dark mild this morning. I kept the hops from Wednesday's brew and am using them for bittering this one, on the basis that all the late hops still have alpha acid in them to be used. I'm not sure if Liberty has the right kind of hop profile for mild, but what the heck. It makes it impossible to know how bitter the beer is likely to be, but I've done this once before and it was the best beer I've made yet.

I am also making a hop tea to add to the K I made on Wednesday. Once it's done the hops will also go into the XX.

Anyway, here's the mash:
1820g pale malt
40g black malt
100 chocolate malt
1 tsp gypsum
Mash with 5L water at 79ºC — on adding the goods the mash reached 70º so I added some cold water which caused it to plummet to 55º. People who know what they're doing do this deliberately and call it a rest. I addded more boiling water to heat it up to 65º again and it's mashing away nicely now (I hope).

[Invalid Stout]

The XX turned out to have an OG of 1046 and a kind of creamy dryness. Brewed on Saturday and it's down to 1012 already.

[mysterio]

70C is a good temperature to mash a mild at - I would have left it!