Home Brew Forum

This is for tomorrow:
I put this up in Recipes a couple of days ago, I was going to use PM but I had wrongly ordered 6kg of uncrushed lager malt a while ago.
I was going to offer it for postage only to someone who had a crusher, but the post would have been more than the malt cost... the birds would have ended up with it, but then I remembered the grain attachment for the Champion Juicer sitting doing nothing after it did not work for coffee. So now I am using 6kg of self milled LM. It will probably stick!
I will be cutting back for a few months, so I want to use up most of the opened packs of hops.
I am currently considering if an extra 50gm of Chinook and 70gm of Goldings would fit in, but I can always keep the Chinook for the next Improper Jobbies and use the Goldings for dry.

Lager Malt 5 EBC 6000 grams 88.2%
Wheat Malt 3.5 EBC 500 grams 7.4%
Crystal Malt 130 EBC 300 grams 4.4%

Chinook 12.7 % 90 mins 10 grams 3.8%
Styrian Goldings 5.5 % 20 mins 20 grams 7.6%
Tettnang 4.1 % 20 mins 15 grams 5.7%
Hallertauer Mittlefruh 4.3 % 20 mins 15 grams 5.7%
Styrian Goldings 5.5 % 10 mins 40 grams 15.3%
Tettnang 4.1 % 10 mins 40 grams 15.3%
Hallertauer Mittlefruh 4.3 % 10 mins 30 grams 11.5%
Willamette 4 % 0 mins 38 grams 14.5%
Cascade 7.6 % 0 mins 24 grams 9.2%
Golding 4.0 % 0 mins 30 grams 11.5%

Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.061
Final Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol Content: 6.2% ABV
Total Liquor: 37.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 17 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 38.9EBU
Colour: 21 EBC

I intend to use St Austell re-claimed yeast now that it has done Improper Jobbies and Amarillo (goes better than the latest NASA rocket )

It will either turn out as a bland wall of vegetation, or something to talk about.....

You really are both totally insane, yet also brave.

Please do post pictures when you do this. I for one wish there was smellyvision as those hops hit the heat.

I can almost smell it from here

A 7 hop APA - truly unique!!!!

Have a good one!

Its Friday afternoon and the boiler is on to remove chalk. I will lose about 10L in the boiler and pipe work and the HLT sight tube starts at about 15L, so I am boiling about 65L with about 30gms gypsum, 20 gm Calcium Chloride. 10.5gm Epsom, 2.5gm common salt and 1 camden are going straight into the HLT. The boiled water, once it has cooled to about 80C, will be pumped backwards through the counter flow cooler to give it a good wash. If anything ends up in the HLT it won't do any harm!
Here is the grist which I am going to dump dry into the mash tun.



This is the current drain manifold, its slotted underneath and wrapped with #22 SS mesh.



Next the false bottom which is 2mm perforated SS plate with #22 SS mesh. Currently the mesh is underneath the plate, I had hoped to have time to put it on the top more tidily and seal the edge as Oxford Brewer, with silicone tube cut lengthways. This will be easier to clean and makes more sense with the mesh above the plate, but for now...



I am planning on underletting the mash with the liquor at about 70C, then raising the mash temperature to 66C for 90 mins.
The underletting will be via pantsmachine's randy little stuck mash line (oohh eerr missus all over again...) - a use I never considered when I put it all together!!
I have an idea that underletting might carry the smaller particles to the top, but if I have to stir much, that probably won't happen. It will be RIMed, if that's what RIMMERS call it (come back Arnold and don't let the Cat at the wort... Kristine Kochanski - lust - lust )
http://www.comedy.org.uk/guide/tv/red_dwarf if you're lost.

The grist waiting to be gently lifted and separated......



Ooo, I've got all excited again, got to lie down now, more tomorrow.

Looks good so far, hope you have fun with the rest of it

Good luck with it, don't fall asleep with your hop sauna.

Looking good, can you say HOP BOMB children, a say a say HOP BOMB!

Must admit to borrowing the stuck sparge underletting line from the CAMRA book homebrew classics IPA by Clive La Pensee and Roger Protz. I love that book, must have read it 4 times plus, every time i learn something new or an existing dim lightbulb grows bright and i act on it.

Life is a collection of dim and flickering lightbulbs, you get the odd bright ones, then some flicker and pop...

I'll settle for my dim-glow

Last nights dim glow is below

A bit of tipsy photography while out with the dogs

pdtnc wrote: A bit of tipsy photography while out with the dogs

Nice! That has a Halloween feel to it

Bloody 'ell pdtnc, that's a bit awsome, I got the impression you were a bit serious!
I'll stick to my 570UZ for now, it's a bloody sight easier than my Canon stuff which sits on the shelf and gathers dust coz it's too complicated and heavy!!

Anyway, on with the day:

I must have had some sort of mental seizure last night because I thought I would have another two brew day after all. I must have that brick between my ears adjusted.. It turned out to be a bit of a lesson...
Up at 06:30 to get the boiler and HLT on.
07:15 With grist already in the tun, I underlet 18L of liquor at 78C. (Later Addition: Damn, I've got that book on the shelf Pants, looks like it's time to read it properly!!) It does need a bit a gentle doughing in but it seems easier than pouring the grist into the water, any lumps are easily broken up. So I think I will be doing this all the time now.

The liquor coming up:


Here's some chalk for all of you that don't need to deal with it:


07:30 All stable at 66C, so RIMS on.
09:30 Increase RIMS to 76C to mash out - I've never tried this before but it seems to go well.



09:20 Mash at 76C, begin drain HLT at 61L so down to 41L
This is the hop filter I am starting with:



There are no real "first runnings" with RIMS, but this is the start of the drain:


09:40 Boiler burner on
09:50 Boiling with 19L collected so far
10:00 Stop sparge water with 25L collected, drain OG still at 1.020 (at ~75C)
10:05 Draining water 1.014, 28L in boiler
10:10 Finish draining tun with OG=1.004 (~75C). Ended up with 33L. Total drain/sparge time is 50 mins

2nd. 3rd and 4th hops:


11:10 Boiler now has 25L, getting a bit low so I add boiling water to get up to 28.5L. The sample I took at the beginning of the boil is OG=1.066 at 27C in 33L.
11:40 Second hops
11:50 Third hops
12:00 Burner off. The hops... If it wasn't for the sodding great big extractor fan, I would be wafted away to....

This is what I like to see, lots of empty bags:


12:15 Boiler temp has dropped to ~85C, forth hops in, recirculation on without cooling



12:30 Boiler temp ~75C, start cooling, the idea is to cool and aerate, leaving the hops and trub in the middle. I said the idea is......


12:40 Boiler temp now 25C, rest without recirculation
13:15 Start gravity drain. Ah...Murky as hell and it does not seem to want to clear - buga!


In the end I got about 21L at 1.076 in the FV; should have been 1.061. The boiler measured 25L before I started draining so I lost about 4L in the boiler and wet hops.
Oh look, NO cone of hops and trub (before I made a hole in it):


I am thinking that I got the cold drop while cooling and re-circulating so the trub just got broken back up again. Time to find out how to get rid of a serious protein haze!
The smell is wonderful and the taste - ohh nice, extremely sweet, but not too harsh, even at this stage. Definitely a hop bomb, but currently a thick broth hop bomb!!
Later note: I have just realised - I forgot the copper finings....buga!

In the meantime and in complete contrast I am going to do a lower strength golden single varietal, "Progress" (somewhat inspired by Ollosson's" Jemma"):

About 10:30 clean out tun and put 6000gm of Pale malt in.
10:50 Underlet again but get carried away, putting 25L in instead of 16L - buga! Wrong valve, operator cock-up again... Remove about 8L with jug. Incredibly, the mash ends up at 66C so I start the re-circulation.
12:50 Slowly drain tun into underback (spare FV!) while boiler is busy with the Euro APA
13:20 Put the 8L back into the tun. RIMS it to 66C and let it run
14:20 Start drain and sparge into the cleaned boiler with the remaining HLT liquor, underback tipped into boiler
14:30 Boiler temperature ~55C, burner on
14:45 I've ended up with 31L, with OG=1.036 at 62C. This will give 1.053 at 20C which is a lot higher than I want for this one, add 4L cold water.
15:00 Boiling with first hops in, 100gm of Progress
16:15 Just going out to do the second hops (50gms of progress) and COPPER FININGS!!
16:30 Burner off
16:50 Boiler temperature 85C, steep hops in (50gms of progress)
17:10 Boiler temperature 73C, start slow re-circulation with cooling
17:30 Stop re-circulation at 35C for a rest - currently murky

After half an hour or so, much better than last time, but look at the OG!, this is supposed to be a mid strength easy drinking beer!!



The hops left in the boiler. Not much sign of trub....



This was the filter I was using this time:



So lessons for today are:
Underletting is good.
Mashing out with RIMS works well, but I don't know if it actually makes a difference.
There is a lot going wrong with my ideas on whirlpool cooling.
Don't forget the COPPER FININGS.
It really is about time to allow for much higher efficiencies, but xmas is going to be good.
Try not to forget which valve does what.
RIMS can get you out of a hole very nicely.
It might not be the best idea to design recipes to use whole packets of hops.
(But it does the world of good for the sinuses!)
Two-Brew days = half the cleaning up, but three times the anguish.
Don't keep sampling the PWB while you are trying to put up a post...

befuggled wrote:Bloody 'ell pdtnc, that's a bit awsome, I got the impression you were a bit serious!

Occasionally serious about stuff, but that just sounded poetic. I need to get out taking more photos, this was the first time in ages.

Looks like the brew went fairly well then

pdtnc wrote:Life is a collection of dim and flickering lightbulbs, you get the odd bright ones, then some flicker and pop...

I'll settle for my dim-glow

Last nights dim glow is below

A bit of tipsy photography while out with the dogs

Cracking photograph, love halloween, out for a pint last might with SWMBO and a mate and his SWMBO. Loads of people dressed up and many many hot chicks in fishnets etc. A great night!
Befuggled, looks like you had a cracker of a brewday! Not sure where you are getting your hops grains etc from but its worth a look at Barleybottom site. Many people on here buy from him.

I have been getting some stuff from BB, but found the hop range a bit narrow. I will soon need another 25kg of PM and will stock up on a few other things at the same time. It is remarkable how strong support for him is here! - must be good!

Its about selling things for a fair price

There's also the Hops specialist on ebay. I just bought a kilo of hops. Liberty and Glacier 1/2 each for £18 incl delivery. That's the cheapest i have seen. I have not used either Hop before and they will both be going into my next IPA with US05 yeast so i can get the full hop bomb with no yeast cluttering it up. If anyone has used either hop i'd be interested in their opinion. Sorry befuggled, not trying to hijack the thread just increase knowledge and awareness of who's out there selling what. At this price and with a few IPA's on my radar it would be stupid not to. If they don't work out well as aroma hops they will be primarily bittering hops.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWNX:IT