First up I did an AG lager based loosely on HH's recipe and informed by other members' recent experiences. Aimed at 63 litres into the FVs and 4.1% A.B.V. Hops were Magnum for bittering and Hallertauer for flavour/aroma. Yeast was provided by the W34/70 slurry left over from 3 kit lagers. Water treatment this time, with CRS to restrain the alkalinity to 15mg/l plus campden tablets as well as gypsum in the mash.
Second up was 42 litres of ale from a recipe I put together using BeerSmith: pale, crystal, amber and torrified wheat made up the grist with Super Styrian for bittering (could not find the Pilgrim I had wanted to use) and Bramling Cross and Bobek as the late additions. Yeast-wise I went with Nottingham in one FV and US-05 in the other. The water was treated.
Photography started off OK but waned at the point of changing over from lager to ale production
. Here's the snaps;
Burco HLT fitted with Cewal thermometer showing liquor getting close to temp (find these thermometers show roughly 4/5c over actual temperature).
Grist for the lager, 11.5kgs of it.
Strike temp almost on the money. I invested in a proper thermometer (waterproof too) after dropping my last one in the mash.
All wrapped up and no place to go. Mash lost 1c over the 90 minutes.
Recirculating the first runnings. I was going to make a stainless tray to re-distribute the wort but I'm not so sure I will be sticking with the Coleman mash tun. The volume can be a push to be honest, especially if doing 2 batch sparges (had to do 3 here to avoid overspill) and the MT strainer doesn't work as well as I'd hoped. Thermobox with false bottom is the aim now.
Getting toward the end of the wort collection, starting to look like lager already. I got the volumes pretty much right this time after struggling with my first AG stout. 28 litres mash liquor followed by 3 batch sparges of around 22 litres each gave me 79 litres +/- into the Boiler. Maybe my boiling is not as vigorous as it should be as I still had 74 litres left after a 90 minute boil, though this worked out perfectly with losses to hops and deadspace giving me 3 FVs with exactly 21 litres in each.
No rest for the thirsty, here's the spent grain being cleaned out of the MT ready to adorn my neighbour's compost heap. MT was soon to be ready for the ale grist.
Here's the lager with the Magnum first wort hops in coming to the boil. Managed to sort out my issues with the gas burner so I got to boiling point quicker this time round.
Again, the Cewal thermometer shows 4c over. This is at boiling point. This snap shows the Y-strainer on the end of the ball valve which is doing a good job of keeping hop debris out of the pump/FVs. It's stainless, so it can be boiled up to sanitise.
Ale grist awaits the MT. There was a bit of time lag in getting the mash liquor ready for the second brew but that gave me time for a pint of my 4-month conditioned Brupaks Colne Valley Bitter.
And here it is, winter backdrop and all. Good pint this, though it lost the early hop explosion evident at month 1 from some additional Perle and Fuggles I used in it.
Back to the lager action, the IC is in waiting to be hooked up. The yeast slurries had been left overnight in the house so I decided to cool the wort to 20c and run it on to the slurries. They were then left at 9-12c to ferment with a short diacetyl rest of one day at 20c before being crash cooled awaiting racking into corny kegs.
There was just 4 hours lag before the yeast started doing its thing though this photo was taken the next morning when the W34/70 had really started work.
Unfortunately I didn't get a single worthy shot of the ale being made but it went OK. It's supposed to be a 3.6% session beer and the OG was 1.039 so I guess it will be in the ball park. There was a noticeable difference in the yeast lag times with the US-05 off to a flyer within hours and the Nottingham kicking in over 24 hours later. I was nearly on the forum asking the classic "shall I pitch more yeast" question.
Getting to know the equipment a bit now and was able to pump sparge liquor direct through the MT ball valve rather than via hose this time round simply by bleeding the transfer pipe first.
I got treated to a copy of Graham's book for Christmas so I can start doing some proper recipes now. Happy New Year's brewing
, which was frustrating as they are my go to hop when I make lager kits. So I used Magnum and Hallertauer instead. It's all racked to corny kegs now and the sample was really promising, a million miles away from kit lager even though I have managed to get the kit lagers quite good by using lager yeasts, proper fermentation temps etc. Most of this batch is for the summer, so it will get a proper 6 months of conditioning time, maybe in a temp-controlled fridge if I get round to it 