AG4 - A better version of AG1

[craigmarshall]

I'm doing another otterlord (otterlord is a screwed up landlord recipe, that actually tastes very nice). I started at 7, collected all my gear together, ground my grain in my home made grinder, this is it's first outing, so we'll see what kind of efficiency I get. Currently mashing for an hour, taking it off at 9.20am

Here's the recipe:

2.5kg pale malt (I've used 2.75 in anticipation of my grind not being optimal, but I'll tweak this in future based on the efficiency of this batch)
14 EBUs of fuggle @ 60 minutes
14 EBUs of golding @ 60 minutes
27g of golding @ 10 minutes

This makes 15 litres - smaller batch to save time. Mashing and boiling for an hour each. Mashing at 66C with 7l of water to start with, then re-mashing/batch sparging with another 15, after losses (grain, hops, boiloff), I should end up with 15l.

[floydmeddler]

Any chance of a photo of your grinder?

[craigmarshall]

I will post a photo of the grinder, yes - watch this space. I have changed my mind about the recipe - looking at others in BYOBRA, it seems that 25g of late-ish hops in a 15l batch is way too many. Here is the revised version:

16 EBU EKG @ 60 mins
16 EBU Fuggle @ 60 mins
10g EKG @ 10 mins
Maybe a few an flame out (or electrons out).

[craigmarshall]

Home made grain mill:

Grainmill.JPG (113.23 KiB) Viewed 1086 times

It's made from MDF, a couple of old router bars as shafts in 8mm sealed bearings. bed bolts and 6mm threaded rod for the adjustment.

I had problems with the wheels gripping the grains and pulling it through, so I carved some lines and this helps a lot.

As you can see I don't yet have a hopper or stand, deciding whether to remake it slightly bigger or not. Although with a hopper it would do about 1kg a minute as is. The drill gets warmish in bottom gear already though!

Cheers,
Craig

[floydmeddler]

That looks brilliant. Keep us posted with your efficiency!

[WishboneBrewery]

Good bit of engineering

[craigmarshall]

That looks brilliant. Keep us posted with your efficiency!

Good bit of engineering

Thanks for the encouragement - let's just see if it works first!! I will let you know the efficiency as soon as I have it worked out. Just taking the second runnings now, it's not quite as clear a wort as the last batch I did, but there were no whole grains going in, and there is no stuck sparge, so things are looking good so far.

Cheers,
Craig

[craigmarshall]

Well - I collected slightly too much wort - 17 litres, so I'll have a lighter strength and lighter flavoured beer, I'm glad I added another 5g of goldings for aroma in at flame out now.

SG was 1.038, so I got an efficiency of 78%, which I'm sure is down to my grain mill, I will see what tweaks I can do to it before my next brew! My last batch efficiency was in the 80s, I think 84%.

So I'll actually have 17 litres of pale 3.7% ABV, 31 EBUs - might be a touch bitter, but I don't mind that. I think I read somewhere not to use more than 10 EBUs per 1% ABV, is that right? Is there a similar rule of thumb for flavour/aroma hops at the end?

Craig

[craigmarshall]

Fermentation is happening slowly and steadily, I had a thick yeast head on top very soon after pitching, and it's five days in now. I shall probably leave it 7-10 days before racking through a sterilised fine nylon mesh bag (to remove any remaining gunk). Then bottle it a day or so later. I normally give a good squirt of CO2 into the secondary container beforehand, just to prevent or minimise oxidisation. Looking forward to trying this one!