First AG - 10l OtterLord Brew in a bag (With pictures now)

[craigmarshall]

Hi,

I've decided to go all grain, so I ordered a 20l stainless pot on ebay (it came with a 16l one too), £22 for the both. I bought some polyester voil from the fabric shop (£6 for 2mx1.5m) and made a liner for my new pot. I made sure before I bought it that the pot went in the oven and sink. I don't want to be making mash tuns and immersion coolers. I'm keeping it simple, I'll mash in the oven, and cool in an ice bath in the sink, or with cold water if there aren't any ice cubes left.

Here is my pot and brew bag:



I'm using ingredients from barley bottom. The whole lot is enough for 2 or more brews of this size and it came to £24ish.



6.54pm, The start. Preheated oven to 50C, I've previously calibrated it with my digital thermometer so I can ferment yogurt in there. Yogurt bacteria like to be kept warm just like the enzymes in malt. I put my safety stand in the pot, which was previously a microwave/grill rack, for browning stuff, we've never used it, so I straightened the three legs out and bent them at a different point (further out), so it fit the bottom of the pan and holds the bag off the bottom inch, prevents it burning.

7.09pm, I put the pot on the hob, put the bag in it, filled it with 14.4l of hot tap water (55C), heated it up to 67C on the electric stove, added 3 campden tablets (mistake?), moved it to a cool stove, and mashed in. stirred in 2.2kg of pale malt.

Here is my pot with the water in it. You can see my nifty thermometer here, and the 2.2kg pale malt in the next pic:





Here it is all stirred in:



7:25pm, The mash is on. the pot is in the oven keeping warm, I hit 64.8C on the mash temperature, I was aiming for 65C. I plan to mash for 90 minutes.

Here is our oven, the pot fits perfectly:



7:36pm, temp in the mash is 64.7. If it loses .1 every ten minutes, it'll go down to 63.9 in 90 minutes. Not too bad.

7:58pm, been to the train station and back. The mash has been on for 33 mins, and is at 64.3C, losing temp faster than I thought it would. Do I need to switch the oven on for 10 minutes?

8:22pm, that's one hour in the mash. It cooled quite quickly, down to 63.8, so I added 600ml water from the kettle which took it quickly up to 68.3C, It's cooled now to 67.9. I want it to stay at 65, and there are 30 minutes to go, so I think it's going fairly well. It smells lovely.

8:38pm, 14 minutes to go! temp is 66.8C, slightly high now, oh well, I'll be able to get it more accurate next time.

8:56pm, took it out after exactly 90 minutes. Just bringing it up to mash out temperature: 77C. I've been looking at an IBU calculator, and have adjusted the amount of hops I should add, based on the AA% written on the packets. I'm shooting for 35 IBUs in 10l of grain, OG aim of 1042, and I'm using the following:

21g golding @ 60min
14g fuggles @ 60min
8g golding @ 15min

If I have this way wrong, please let me know in the next five minutes!

I hope I'm in bed by midnight tonight.

Cheers,
Craig

[craigmarshall]

Well I'm tired of editing that other message, so I'll stick the new bits in new posts now.

9:23, the wort is almost to the boil, I have measured out the 60min hops, ready to add...

Craig

[Anavrin]

Have you removed your grain and sparged out the remainig sugars or are you intending to boil everything in the bag?

[craigmarshall]

I've removed and drained the grain bag. Now I have a different bag I'm about to put in with hops. When this bloomin pot boils!

Cheers,
Craig

[craigmarshall]

9:35pm, Okay - bittering hops are in! 60 minute boil.

Craig

[craigmarshall]

More pictures. Here is my first idea for balancing the too-small colander on the pot...



I quickly decided that it was the Black Sheep Ale talking and upgraded to a safer idea:



Here is the wort after draining:



And here are the hops for the 60 minute segment, ready to go in (Goldings and Fuggles):



Any idea what all the white floaty bits are?



Cheers,
Craig

[Anavrin]

ok, you said you used 2.2kg of malt and 14 ish liters of water, normally I mash with a 2 - 1 ratio of water to grain so in your case 5ish liters of water then have another quantiy of water maybe anothe 6 or 7 liters to sparge the last sugars out of the grain, and stop when I have the correct volume in the boiler.

But as you are using such a high amount of water you might get away with just removing the bag, also 2.2kg of malt is normaly too much for 10 litres of TTL but again taking in acount that some sugars will be left in the grain you might just get away with it,

By the way the malt in your pick is Maris Otter, TTL use's Golden Promise but who cares anyway I just want to know if you can hit 1042?

watching with intrest, realality forum brewing, love it!

[craigmarshall]

Hi anavrin,

10:05pm, I'm 40 minutes into the boil now, 5 to go before I put the final hops in.

I didn't realise there was a difference in the grains I was using - oops! I'll call my brew Otterlord.

Yes - I jacked up the grain a bit because my sparge wasn't going to be as efficient, and I was going to lose some efficiency.

I am just sanitising hydrometer, FV, etc. so I will take an OG reading after it's cooled to 20C, or I'll correct the reading if the temp doesn't get that low, that easily.

Eek - I have to go and re-hop the wort!

Craig

[craigmarshall]

10:11pm, rehopped with aroma hops at 15mins!

Here is a pic of the stuff I'll use for fermentation:



There's a hydrometer and tube for testing, a racking cane (to use as a beer thief), fermentation vessel and lid, and I'm sanitising the probe from my temperature gauge, because I want to test the OG it after the wort has cooled.

Cheers,
Craig

[Anavrin]

I just brewed a Timothy Taylors Best Bitter yesterday, just wanted somthing with less hop flavor and a tad darker than TTL, I have a TTL that has been in the keg about 2 weeks, tastes quite good considering I used ingredients for a 25l brew in a 23l brew, my mistake as I never mesured my FV properly, Ive had it for years and just assumed it was 25l, in the past I only made beer from kits, malt extract or county wine's, AG brewing shows any floors in your kit/techique, but its still the best beer I've ever made.

[craigmarshall]

10:27pm, off the boil, cooling in the sink.

[GARYSMIFF]

keep it going, enjoying the pics,I expect you have a smile on your face, I remember I did and still do.

Good stuff.

[craigmarshall]

Hi Gary,

I've had a smile until now... The wort has been cooling for 23 minutes and is currently only just down to 52C. There's meant to be a proper cold break, isn't there?

What will happen if it cools more slowly than the common 20 minutes I hear about?

Edit: Now 30 minutes of cooling, and it's down to 44C... Not good!

Cheers,
Craig

[GARYSMIFF]

What are you using to chill the wort?

[Anavrin]

I wouldn't worry too much if it takes longer, without a wort chiller its always going to be slow, especialy with the outside temp at the monemt, I bet even the cold tap water is not that cold anymore?

You asked earlier if you will get to bed before midnight? not a chance I would say, you could allways get some ice in your sink if you have any