Pics, walkthrough of my brewday method, notes and observations
Having crunched the numbers here's what I was shooting for...
IBU 39. OG 1051. Estimated ABV 5.1%
4500g Maris Otter. 5 EBC. Added 12.5litres of water to steep at 66°C. Got pretty close and this soon dropped to my target level. I have to say it was the most dough-ball laden mash and took an age to whip into a good clean slurry. I didn't lag the coolbox as it was roasting hot outside.
Hop Schedule.
10g Amarillo 9.4% as 'first wort hops'.
20g Amarillo 9.4% @ 60 mins for 21 IBU
10g Amarillo 9.4% @ 20 mins for 12 IBU (mostly aroma)
10g Amarillo 9.4% 0 mins or rather - after flameout and just as soon as the chiller has taken the fierce heat from the wort. I was aiming for 80°C but they went in at 74°C - my chiller runs super efficiently at first.
After primary has mostly completed I'll rack into secondary and dry hop with the addition of another 10g of Amarillo hops.
Ebay Gizmo. Small scales that are accurate to 0.1g and will weigh up to 1kg. Just the ticket for weighing out your hops or salts for water modification.
After the alloted hour was up I did an Iodine test. No two ways about it -
more conversion required! My strike was a touch warmer than planned but as this was a mid-range mash for a good mix of easily fermentable sugars and some body I was happy to let it run on and cool off a little.
Longer than I'd planned but after 90 mins I tested again and we were all done.
Starting the runoff and the first few litres are recirculated... and then I bank it when it starts to look clear(ish)
Liquid gold coming out from the Maris Otter... at 1088 it is sweet and syrupy.
45 mins later - I've drawn 8 litres and have my fly sparge underway after eight litres of runoff from the tun the last tube on the right that's filled is now brilliantly clear and coming through at 1058 still.
I'm draining the first runnings onto the first wort hops. I'm not sure of the science/theory behind first wort hopping but the practical aspects are evident. That warm syrupy wort rapidly rehydrates the flowers and giant wafts of hop aroma are coming out of the vessel. Not the usual hoppy brewery type smell you get when you've got a boil on but something different - far more perfumed and akin to the grassy fresh smell you get if you've ever spent a few hours picking hops.
Now, flush through 20 litres of sparge water @ 76°c. I hand-sparge taking a litre at a time from my HLT and passing it through a pierced stainless pan to create shower on top of the grain bed. I do half a dozen and let the sparge trickle away. It affords the opportunity to run around doing other jobs, go for a coffee etc. etc. A friend turned up in the middle of this so I was distracted and busy chatting away at one point and returned to discover... what... a
stuck sparge? Very strange. On further investigation. it was stuck at all... the grain bed had run dry.
Oops. Shut the taps, refresh the tun and start to re-circ some sparge liquor and once I'd got a head of water back up above the re-settled bed I continued on with the fly sparge until complete.
When I'm all done I had a total pre boil volume of 25.5 litres at 1042 - bang on the money.
Kicked the boil off and a big 20g dose of bittering hops goes in on top of the FWH. Just 30 mins into the boil and a massive, wildly swarming hot break appears. Loads of protein binding onto the hop flowers. Impressive stuff and this is
before any Moss/protofloc has gone in.
And that's pretty much that. Hopping followed the schedule above so one more addition at 20 mins. IC went in at 15 mins to sanitise and a protofloc tab as well for good measure.
Ground water temp was 17.4c today and I was really surprised at that. The IC was initially super quick to drop the temp from boiling to 80 degrees when I added in some steeping hops for the final addition. Thereafter it took a long time to bring the wort down to 30°C when I knocked off the chiller and brought the lot indoors. A heroic quantity of break material had formed so I'd let it settle out for 3 hours before transfer to FV, aeration and pitching my US04 starter. Hit my target volume at 1053.
My process works well... I'd hit all the numbers and a little number crunching is showing a >78% efficiency. In small run quantities like this it doesn't really make a great deal of difference of course but it's good to know that the process itself is on track. All the gravity readings here were taken at 21C.
I've got a pump on it's way here in a few weeks which will afford the opportunity for a re-design of my rig and I think the first two things I'll be trying will be...
A controlled fly sparge. The pump is a totton magnetically coupled one so I can restrict the outbound flow rate of hot water from the HLT and should be able to match the mashtun fill rate with the outflow of sparge liquor.
A kettle
whirlpool/wort re-circulate during the chilling phase
Then, once I've got those two new process elements nailed it'll be time to design a proper rig.
So, SMaSH. It was very strange during the day to watch the grains go in to the mashtun in a plane-jane vanilla boring kind of fashion. It seemed odd not to have any bits and bobs of caramel malt for colour, amber for body, wheat for head etc. etc. I'm an inveterate tinkerer when it comes to recipes. Similarly... the hedgerows are teeming with elderflowers now... my mind was wandering during the steep phase and I wondered... could I chuck a bit in?
No. Some self control was called for and I made it as per the recipe I'd designed. It's in FV now, I'll dry hop it in secondary and will be tasting it towards the end of July.
