Second AG - London Prude

[craigmarshall]

Hi,

I'm hoping to get a brew on this evening, starting at about 5.30pm. I made and tested an immersion cooler this morning, to help with a reasonable cold break. My previous pale ale is still cloudy and I think this could be the reason. Here is the cooler:

01 cooler.JPG (66.75 KiB) Viewed 1880 times

I've measured out the ingredients and rehydrated the yeast already, to save time later on. The cooler should also knock at least 30 minutes off too, let's see if we can beat the previous time of 5 hours - I'd like to be in bed by 10 tonight.

And here is the recipe I'm planning to use.

9l brew length, full volume, no sparge, BIAB method:

total water volume 14l

2kg pale
200g crystal

12g fuggles 3.6%AA @ 60m
24g east kent goldings 4.6%AA @ 60m
6g east kent goldings @ 15m
4g east kent goldings @ 0m

Here is a picture of the ingredients:

02 ingredients.JPG (66.04 KiB) Viewed 1880 times

Other differences from the last batch, I won't use 3 campden tablets, 1/2 a tablet at most. I also won't mash in the oven, I will try and find a setting on the electric hob to keep the temperature correct. I won't use a second grain bag for the hops, I'll let them float around however they want, then sieve it all out as it goes into the fermenter, this might make it hoppier, and will aerate it properly, I syphoned it across last time. I will also let the grain bag drain for longer, while I bring the pot to the boil.

I'm still looking for a name for it, assuming it's sufficiently different from London Pride to warrant it's own name.

Does all this sound sensible? Any other advice, before I have another crack at it?

Cheers,
Craig

[Hogarth]

Excellent cooler there. Very elegant.

You can use it to drop the temperature of the wort to 80°C before putting in those last hops, which will preserve more of their aroma. Maybe some dry-hopping too? Also, for toffeeish London Pride style beers I like to take a litre or so out of main boil and caremalize it by boiling it vigorously on the stove in a frying-pan or wide saucepan for a few minutes. You can overdo it, mind you.

Good luck!

[craigmarshall]

Excellent cooler there. Very elegant.

You can use it to drop the temperature of the wort to 80°C before putting in those last hops, which will preserve more of their aroma. Maybe some dry-hopping too? Also, for toffeeish London Pride style beers I like to take a litre or so out of main boil and caremalize it by boiling it vigorously on the stove in a frying-pan or wide saucepan for a few minutes. You can overdo it, mind you.

Good luck!

Thanks for the nice comment about the cooler.

And thanks for the idea about caramelising some wort, I've never heard of that (but then, I'm new to this). Will the crystal not add some caramel colour and flavour? I ask as I've never use it before, Ideally it'd also darken the beer enough to cover any haze that I might still suffer from, but we'll see.

Edit: And yes - I'll cool it to 80C before adding the aroma hops, good idea. I think I'll pass on dry hopping though, as I don't fancy having to deal with them later when it comes to racking or bottling...

Cheers,
Craig

[Hogarth]

You'll certainly get a lot of sweetness and body from the crystal; caramelizing it just gives it some extra oomph. They manage to pack a lot of flavour into London Pride, which is why it's one of my favourite beers, and I'm always trying to make it myself. Caramelizing the wort, mashing at a highish temperature, and using Fuller's yeast seem to help. The danger is making it too sweet.

[craigmarshall]

6:12pm Just about to start warming up the mash liquor.. Starting later than I wanted, but oh well.

6:25pm 14l in the pot, 3l of boiling from the kettle, 11l from the tap. Currently at 45C and rising. I've got the bag-burn-protector and the bag in there too. Oh, and a single crushed campden tablet.

6:36pm Mash water is up to about 56C. Here is a pic:

03 mash water.JPG (58.89 KiB) Viewed 1816 times

And in case anything goes wrong, I have some of these to help:

04 beers.JPG (90.76 KiB) Viewed 1817 times

6:49pm Mash water reached 69C, started dough in.

6:55pm Finished mashing in, hit 67.4C, about right, will try and maintain that. Due to finish mashing in 1h30m, or 8:25pm. Here's another pic:

05 doughed in.JPG (62.74 KiB) Viewed 1808 times

7:02pm Looks like it's going to be easy to maintain mash temperature. I have the lid on the pot, and four tea towels on top to minimise heat loss, and the electric hob set to 2 (out of 6), and it's sitting at exactly 67.7C, and hasn't moved for five minutes. Nice!

7:08pm Spoke too soon about the temperature. It's dropped 0.3C, so I've clicked it up to setting 3.

7:16pm Temp nosedived all the way down to 65.4, I've got the hob on full now, I'd like to maintain approx. 67C

7:18pm The badger golden champion seems to have vanished. Not too sure about that beer, slightly too zesty for my liking. Now onto the Leffe - never had this before either, I don't think I've served it cold enough, still very pleasant though.

[craigmarshall]

7:53pm Oops - the brew got too hot, don't know how much, because my thermometer only goes up to 70C, then it says HHH - hopefully I haven't killed any enzymes or what have you.

8:15pm Well - I might have mucked the whole thing up, but I'm trying to go ahead anyway. I've done the last 1/3rd or 1/2 of the mash at 63Cish, kind of a reversed decoction mash or whatever it is. Let's just hope I get a reasonable gravity out of this. The Hoegaarden wit-beer was very, very nice, but not enough of it for the price.

8:42pm I let the mash run on a bit, to try and extract some more at the lower temperature (not sure if this will help at all). It seems to all be fine anyway, because I just took a sample and it showed 1.042 @ 28C, which, corrected, is 1.045 according to some website. This is fine, let's just hope that most of those sugars are fermentable! Just bringing the mash up to mash out temperature 77C, and sampling the wonderful courage directors. I think my brew might turn out a bit like a Director's too, dave line's book has a recipe, and it's not a million miles away from what I'm doing. Here's a pic of my brew so far, the colour's good too:

06 gravity 1.JPG (37.78 KiB) Viewed 1757 times

[craigmarshall]

9:06pm Finished with the draining, had a minor spill, but didn't lose any significant amount of wort, I need to make a proper stand for the colander... Just bringing the wort up to boil temperature. Currently about 86C (Oh yeah - I have a meat thermometer too)

9:16pm Almost boiling. I'm trying something new, straddling the pot on two hobs...

9:20pm Don't try the straddling technique, it makes the hob go red... Here's some steam to look at:

07 near boil.JPG (56.41 KiB) Viewed 1742 times

9:26pm The rolling boil has just started, and I have my first set of hops in. Yay! At 10:11pm, I'll add the next set, and at 10:25pm, I'll take it off the heat.

boil + first hops.JPG (52.81 KiB) Viewed 1741 times

9:32pm The guinness original is lovely, I might get some more of these. Or try and make some.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Do yourself a favour and make a mash tun.

[craigmarshall]

I've just realised you're totally right. I am already at the stage where I'm thinking about 25kg sacks of maris otter pale malt, I'm going to stick with this new hobby. Why the hell haven't I spend a few quid putting together a mash tun and made life easier for myself? It's more energy efficient anyway, so it'll pay for itself, if it gets used enough.

Craig

[craigmarshall]

10:30pm Right the boil has finished, I've sanitised the cooler, and reduced the temperature to 80C (very quick!) and the final hops are in. Just waiting for 15 minutes now, then a fast cool to 25c, hopefully. The tap water is reading approx. 18C on both thermometers at the minute.

08 cooling to 80C.JPG (61.95 KiB) Viewed 1712 times

10:52pm Done! It cooled to about 28C in less than 10 minutes, but I didn't notice a protein cold-break, as I was stirring it. The sieve did a good job of keeping the hops out of the fermenter. The finished wort measured 1.052, higher than I wanted but I only got 8.5l of beer out of this one, so more boiled off than normal, but I still think my efficiency improved. I really don't know how the definitive efficiency measurement is made, nor how many competing methods there are or what the methods are...

I missed my 10pm bedtime!

I've read about skimming the head of the yeast, and I didn't do this with the previous beer, should I try and remove all the foam as it develops? And keep doing this until fermentation is complete?

Cheers,
Craig

[Anavrin]

Hi Craig

You probibly only got the higher gravity due to boil off in the boiler, I always check it and add water until it reads what I wanted, this works fine so long as your gravity is high of course.

your cooler looks good by the way

[craigmarshall]

Hi there,

I guess I could add a litre of boiled h=then cooled water, to bring it up to 9.5l, and knock the gravity down a tad.

The thing is, the yeast is bubbling up nicely already, I don't want to disturb it!

Craig

[craigmarshall]

It seems that I actually have about 8.25 litres, and it's gravity is 1.055. I'm trying to figure out how much to dilute it to bring the strength down to the planned level (1.046), it looks like I have to add water to bring it to about 10 litres (better efficiency than last time), but then I'll only have 90% of the bitterness, because I planned for 9 litres. Perhaps I should split the difference and do 9.5l

Craig

[craigmarshall]

the specific gravity is down to 1.026, so the fermenting is about 1/2 to 2/3 done. It's been in the fermenter for just under 48 hours now. If I want to top it up with boiled, cooled water, what's the best way to do it? Just pour it in carefully ASAP? I realise it would have been best at yeast pitching time, but it's too late for that...

Thanks,
Craig

[Philipek]

I will try and find a setting on the electric hob to keep the temperature correct.

I use a water bath to keep my mash temperature using the same principle as cooling my wort. I fill the sink with 67 degree water, dunk the pot in, cover with a duvet and check on it every 10 minutes or so and top up with boiling water. It's very labour intensive but seems to do the trick.