3rd AG - Amber Lightning

[craigmarshall]

Hi,

This is my first "full size" batch of beer, and it's part way through the boil as we speak. I am aiming for 23l of 1.044 wort. The recipe has mostly pale malt, some crystal and a pinch of flaked barley. I'm using fuggles, goldings and bramling cross hops and this time I'm using Irish moss in the last 10-15 mins to help with clearing protein. The last couple of batches I've brewed. I posted on here as I went along, but that was very tiring, and I'm using all new kit for this batch, so I'm going to post it after the brew hits the fermenter this time. I'll including pics of the brew-day and of my new stuff. I shall try and compact the info down a bit, because I'm aware the others went on a bit and were long-winded.

Watch this space.. Updates in an hour or two.

Cheers,
Craig

[craigmarshall]

Well - it's done, in the fermenter and no problems occured - it went rather well - all wrapped up and I've had tea as well in about 5 and a half hours.

I did my previous two batches of all grain beer in a pot on the stove using a voil bag that I whipped up on the sewing machine. It worked quite well, but I felt that I was missing out on something that other people were getting with the standard kit (mash tun cooler, boiler with hop strainer, etc.), so I decided to knock some kit together and have a go, see how different the results are. Clearly I don't know yet, because the beer isn't ready for a month or so, but I'll let you know then.

I ordered myself a couple of mango chutney containers (only needed one though), a couple of basic cordless kettles from sainsburys, a ball valve, tank connector, few bits of copper pipe and fittings and knocked up a thunderbird, the kind Floyd Meddler made. Here is a pic:

01 Boiler.JPG (35.71 KiB) Viewed 1779 times

I also ordered a coleman 28l cooler from amazon and chose the supersaver delivery so got it delivered free. It turned out to be a campingaz brand cooler, but I understand they're now the same company. I attached the same kind of tap and tank connector (both from screwfix). Here is a pic:

02 Mash Tun.JPG (28.05 KiB) Viewed 1777 times

I made a simple rectangular mash tun manifold with slots, and a flattened pipe hop strainer. I added an additional movable elbow to the hop strainer so I can angle the strainer itself up and down against the bottom of the boiler, for maximum efficiency. I tried the mash tun strainer and after adding some ptfe tape to the loose joint and a pipe to the outside, I found I had 250ml dead space in the bottom. The boiler was even better, so little I didn't bother to measure, but it wouldn't have filled a teacup. My problem was more to do with sealing the unsoldered joints, but with a long outflow tube, there is more suction and the slight leaks don't seem to be as important. Also I have a theory that the leaks aren't as important in practise because before the water level drops below the joint level there will be suction at the joint, and it will probably be covered in a piece of hop or trub or grain. Anyway, here is the manifold and hop strainer:

03 Manifolds.JPG (56.37 KiB) Viewed 1780 times

Continued..

[mysterio]

Good work, and nice pics. 5 and a half hours, I still spend the whole day

[craigmarshall]

I started the day by drilling the hop strainer and attaching the boiler elements, as I hadn't done it in advance. I also made a rudimentary measuring stick for the mash tun using a piece of white pvc pipe, it seems to work okay. I then measured out my grain bill. This is a made-up recipe and I don't know how nice it is, so don't copy it unless you're prepared for it to turn out bad! I'll post here and report on how it turns out. I recommend waiting until then. Here is the entire recipe for reference:

Fermentable Colour Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 4300 grams 95.6%
Crystal Malt 130 EBC 200 grams 4.4%
(And I added 25g flaked barley as a last minute decision)

Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Fuggle Whole 3.6 % 60 mins 0 lbs. 2.7 oz 77 grams 67%

Bramling Cross Whole 6.3 % 40 mins 0 lbs. 0.1 oz 4 grams 3.5%
Golding Whole 4.6 % 10 mins 0 lbs. 0.7 oz 20 grams 17.4%

Golding Whole 4.6 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 0.3 oz 9 grams 7.8%
Bramling Cross Whole 6.3 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 0.2 oz 5 grams 4.3%

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4.4% ABV
Total Liquor: 33 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 35 EBU
Colour: 15 EBC

And here is a pic of the grains ready to go:

05 Grain Bill.JPG (49.28 KiB) Viewed 1766 times

I decided for simplicity that I'd add the strike water and sparge water to the boiler at the same time, The sparge water only lost about 10C, and I only did a 60min boil, so it wasn't a horrendous waste of energy to warm the whole lot up. (Yes - mysterio - I had a short brew day because I cheated and decided on a 60 min boil and a 60 min mash). So I had 33l of water up to temp, and doughed in. I added a blanket to the coolbox just in case there was no insulation in the lid (how do people tell?):

09 Mashing.JPG (52.45 KiB) Viewed 1764 times

The mash happened, and I the grain didn't stick in the manifold, so I was very happy. Here is a pic of the first batch, after 3l of recirculation:

11 Clear First Runnings.JPG (30.79 KiB) Viewed 1763 times

Continued..

[craigmarshall]

I was so happy with the clear wort that I put some in my favourite glass (an Ardbeg whisky tasting glass), and it didn't look dissimilar to a whisky. I took another pic of this:

12 Clear Wort.JPG (37.42 KiB) Viewed 1757 times

When I refilled the mash tun, I didn't have room for the full amount of water (22l) plus what was in there already (grain), so I had to discard 2.5l of water, this is reflected in the final brew length, it came out slightly stronger than planned and was slightly too little in volume.. Here is a pic of the mash tun with the second batch:

14 Mash tun Refill.JPG (85.08 KiB) Viewed 1759 times

And the runoff from this was much lighter and still very clear:

15 Second Runnings.JPG (40.83 KiB) Viewed 1759 times

Continued..

[WishboneBrewery]

looking good so far

[craigmarshall]

Into the boiler it all went, and it boiled very quickly. I did have a boilover (I was shouting at my wife to bring the plastic stirring spoon from the kitchen, which she wasn't grateful for - sorry if you're reading), but we caught it just in time with a swift stir. I probably lost less than 50mls of foam, but 10 seconds later and it could have been 500ml probably. I didn't get a picture of this, in case you're wondering...

Here is a shot of the very vigorous boil from just before the foam-over started: (edit: Actually, it must have been just after the boilover ended - there's foam all over the sides of the container!!)

16 Very Vigorous Boil.JPG (56.09 KiB) Viewed 1747 times

Needless to say this was quickly turned down, so that only one element was burning. I didn't get any pics of hop additions for some reason (I was getting into it). But here is a pic of post-boil cooling:

18 Cooling.JPG (41.5 KiB) Viewed 1744 times

And this took about 25 minutes to cool down. I cooled it to 30, aeration should take it down a few more degrees. It did in my last brew, and I was better about aeration this time, I did the sieve thing that I've seen in other people's pictures:

19 Straining the Hops.JPG (34.74 KiB) Viewed 1744 times

Continued..

[craigmarshall]

Here is a picture of all the wort I collected boiled and cooled, and sieved. It's sitting in the fermenter waiting for yeast with a nice thick head of aeration foam

20 Nice head.JPG (38.29 KiB) Viewed 1740 times

And here it is after a sprinkling of 12g of safale S-04. Looking forward to sampling this one:

21 Dry pitching.JPG (67.74 KiB) Viewed 1739 times

I forgot to mention, I obtained some irish moss for this brew and it went in at the 10 minute addition phase, so I should be looking forward to a much clearer beer this time. And the flaked barley might do something towards head retention...

The yeast was pitched at 7:10pm-ish, and it's 8:35pm by my watch, and there is already lots more yeast! It's never happened this fast before..

Cheers,
Craig

[craigmarshall]

Last thing which I forgot to mention, I collected 21l of 1.052 SG wort, but this measurement was taken when the wort was probably at 28C, so corrected for temperature, the SG would be 1.054. This makes my overall efficiency 83.7% according to Graham Wheeler's beer engine. I've just started using that software and it is great. Saves a lot of time messing around with the calculator and getting things wrong. Thank's Graham if you're reading.

Cheers,
Craig

[craigmarshall]

looking good so far

Thanks pdtnc, that's what I was thinking, let's hope this one turns into a pub-beating beer, the last two didn't, but were palateable. I keep hearing great things about AG, and this is about as close to doing it the mainstream way as I can imagine getting, so I am hopeful!

Craig

[WishboneBrewery]

Beer Engine is rather good isn't it, it has to be the simplest, most logical, sensible piece of brewing software

Glad your brew went well

[craigmarshall]

Beer Engine is rather good isn't it, it has to be the simplest, most logical, sensible piece of brewing software

Never used any others, can't see any reason to! Particularly with people saying this kind of thing ^

Glad your brew went well

Thanks, it's a relief that it's over, I get to put my feet up now, until bottling day, then it's elbow grease again.

Craig

[craigmarshall]

And here is a picture of the yeasty head that's developed overnight:

22 Yeast Head.JPG (54.91 KiB) Viewed 1673 times

Cheers,
Craig

[craigmarshall]

Here is the beer 36 hours after pitching the yeast, the reproduction seems to have stopped and the eating seems to have started (This is just my guesswork, not necessarily factual):

23 Some Krausen.JPG (65.68 KiB) Viewed 1580 times

Craig

[Invalid Stout]

Looks fantastic, I need to get on and start building my mango chutney bolier too