05-12-2010 - Simonds (1880) Bitter

[coatesg]

This one straight out of the durden park book which I have been meaning to brew for an age...

Went with the book recipe but overshot the gravity so added more hops and diluted to hit the right gravity. Also adjusted the bittering hops for the 4.5% assumed AA as stated in the book.

5970g Pale Malt
1140g Pale Amber (Home roasted with the method for producing diastatic pale amber malt)

150g Fuggles 3.8% 90min
26g Goldings (Home grown) 10min

14g Goldings (Dry hop - to add later)

WLP002

Got 25L @ 1062, but had the same issue again with the syphon effect not working out of the kettle - even when the pipes inside the kettle were still completely covered in wort - -a syphon failing when it's completely under liquid... I really don't know what's going on here. I have tried (after cleaning up) moving the tap to be vertical rather than horizontal (in case the top most level of the pipes draining the kettle is filling with air when the tap is off, but other than this, I'm stuck for what I can do short of buying a pump to get it all out...

[WishboneBrewery]

what DIA is your external take-off pipe? mine is 15mm for about 300mm then down to an 8mm reducer... I always get great syphon effect Ooo Err!

If you have a larger diameter right to the bottom you can get air going back up the pipe and you loose the effect.

[coatesg]

It was 15mm, to ball valve horizontal, to 15mm, to right angle, to CPC quick disconnect, to (I think) a 3/8 barb and hose. I say was as I've now put the ball valve vertically in case the horizontal pipe was filling with air and getting trapped up by the ball valve when the valve was closed.

The setup it little different on this keg than the previous setup I used to have (it used to be on a Nordic Optical pot and used to work fine - it's now on a keg). The difference I think is the increased rise from the hop filter pipe to the pipe exiting the keg (needed because of the shape of the keg) coupled with the shorter available pickup pipe length (about 60% of the original). I guess there's not as much "head" to continuously force the air out of the pipe when the syphon goes perhaps (allowing air back up to break the syphon as you say. Odd though, that the first brew with this kit worked perfectly...

Anyhow, I think I'll go for a pump here(my wife needed Xmas present ideas ) - it allows me to start to reorganise the brewery a little and start adding pumps all the way along the process - the March pump is the one I'm looking at (so I can recirc boiling wort). Of course it's the most expensive part of the lot...

[coatesg]

Day 8 and it's down to 1.016 so probably not far off done. Currently sitting at 16C - will leave it a few days before racking so it tidies up (might drop a point more as there is low level activity still). Will dry hop in keg - probably just leave the whole lot in there rather than adding dry hops and taking them out again - I guess the historical casks would have been hopped and then left.