Red Triangle - First AG Brew

[GymCee]

Hi Guys

I've just come and checked the fermenter this morning following my first ever All Grain brewday and all seems well.

I chose the Bass Draught Ale recipe from the Graham Wheeler booker and modified it slightly - hence the name.

23 litre brew

4196gms Pale Malt
230gms Crystal Malt
50gms Torrefied Wheat

Mash at 67degC for 90 minutes

Boil for 90 mins
15gms Challenger 90mins it was supposed to be 30gms but I only had 15gms so substituted SG for the rest as alpha acid practically the same
15gms Styrian Goldings 90mins
1 Protofloc 15mins
20gms Fuggles 5mins

I'm using Safale s-04 in a 300ml starter.

Well it was a learning experience. I used my boiler as a HLT and boiled 30 litres the night before as very basic carbonate reduction (one step at a time).
I then heated the water and transferred 12 litres to the mash tun (a schengler thermos with a copper ring main as a strainer) to pre heat it. Now this was a little unsettling moving jugss of near boiling water around, I can see why people are attracted to permanent set ups.

Once the liquor in the tun hit 73degC I doughed in the grains. The mash temp was 67degC which was my target and the pH was approx 5.5. After 90 mins in the tun the temp was still over 65degC although it was tricky to read.

I decided to attemptto fly sparge by making a pad of alu foil with holes in it to help distribute the sparging liquor. I added jugs of hot liquor to the tun and waited for it to flow through. At first the flow rate was dismal so I lengthened the pipe on the tap to improve the siphon effect and blew back through the strainer then sucked the spargings through to form a siphon. This improved the flow rate and I let it run through. Initial running were 1.086 sg and after an hour I'd collected approx 17 litres and the spargings were 1.006 sg so I called it a day there.

I had about 4 litres left in the HLT/boiler so simply added the spargings to this and began the boil. This boil went well and the hot break seemed to go well. I added the hops at the required stages then as soon as the time was up dropped in the immersion cooler and brought the temperature right down to approx 30degC.

I transferred this to the fermenting vessel and took the OG which was 1.056 at this point. Once all of the wort had been run in I had about 18 litres and a good layer of hops and trub in the bottom of the boiler. I topped up the fermenter with cold tap water until I reached 1.043sg my target OG which coincided with my total volume target of 23litres.

I used a sanitised hand whisk to beat air into my wort for 5 minutes then pitched my Safale starter.

It looks good 12+ hours on so here's hoping all goes well.

[Bryggmester]

Sounds excellent, a relatively trouble free first go. I am sure you will be more than pleased with the result!

[GymCee]

Well 36 hours in and it's all still looking good. I roused the yeast after 24 hours, although I don't know it needed it, and now the foam has died away a little the wort seems quite active with lots of little bubbles rising.

I think I'll give it another 4 days then check the gravity.

[Tony01]

Good man, seems you had a lovely successful brewday there!

[trucker5774]

Well done on your first AG. Sounds like it all went well..........you dont need to make a starter with s04

[monkeyboy]

congratulation on what looks like a great first brewday. So what's planned for #2?

[GymCee]

Not sure yet, I have a lot of black malt and crystal malt so I'll flick through GW's book and see what takes my fancy.

I made a S-04 starter simply because my yeast was repacked from bigger bag by the look of it and I wanted to make sure my fermentation got a flyer. I haven't read that you can overpitch so played it safe.

Anyway Red Triangle is looking good I'm racking Friday for sure and then bottle Saturday morning.