Home Brew Forum

HI all

After many months of reading i've finally done my first brew.

I got the recipe is on the forum some where and

http://www.hopandgrain.com/recipeSearch ... %20Stunner

Styrian Stunner
23 L
4.76 Kg Maris Otter 2-Row
51 Grams of Styrian Golding alpha 3.5 at 90 minutes
24 Grams of Styrian Golding alpha 3.5 at 15 minutes
11 Grams of Stryian Golding alpha 3.5 at 7 minutes
Irish Moss at 15 minutes

Yeast
I used S-04

All in all it took 10 hours I kid you not.

It got off to a good start but i spend an hour and half sparging and still only ended up with under 15 litres in the ferment which i later diluted with another 5 litres of boiled then cooled wort

The boiler after draining had about 2 L of wort after I removed all the hops

Just a few more pics
That's before i topped up with some more water

I really need to mark of more accurate volumes on the side of the bucket but i can do that when i'm drink some of it's contents

And as it's been kind of hot i teated my self to a 3 pound asda gardening bucket to use as a water bath.

Congrats on the first brew. Nice setup you got there. A few more batches and you'll have it down to about 5 hours.

that looks like one seriously stuck mash mate.... try regulating the sparge flow with the drain. a sight tube for liquid level on the side of the mash tun is immensly beneficial

critch wrote:that looks like one seriously stuck mash mate....

That might explain my slow sparging.

The sight tube would be a good idea as I'm sparging with the lid on the tun and only checking the water level sporadically, at one point my few centimetres of clear water at the top disappeared. Only for a while but still it's something I need to watch out for more carefully. Obviously as this was my first time I wasn't sure what rate of flow I'm actually looking for. What is the general rule of thumb 1 litre per minute?

I don't fly sparge unfortunately but having seen it done and also reading much about it around here 30-45 minutes for a 23l finished brewlength (~30l pre-boil) would be about right.

its dependant on so many factors like lots of brewing! (grist make up how much doughing in done liqour grist ratio in the mash etc,etc ,etc)

i use a sparge arm on my tun and look for one revolution per second and even then im playing with the flow in and out of the tun on certain days

usually i can set it and bugger off and wash a cask out or bottle another brew or one of the million other jobs that lie around our gaff.....