Home Brew Forum

Hi All,
Well having been off work for a couple of days with a strained shoulder due to a muppet agency worker I was teamed up with dropping a sofabed we were delivering without letting me know it was slipping and my 3 YO son Adam at nursery all day, I decided to do a mini brew of 10 ltrs to try out my new mini mash tun of which are a couple of pictures below.
Also it's my first attempt at creating my own reciepe so be kind to me. It's supposed to be a session bitter with an OG of 1036 and around 30 EBUs

Byfleet Bitter

1500 gms Pale Malt
50 gms Crystal Malt
40 gms Chocolate Malt
24 gms Fuggle @ 4.6 Alpha 90 minutes
10 gms Fuggles 15 minutes.





The box hold 8 litres of water, so with the grain and 4 litres of water it was just right.
I wrapped the box with a blankett but it did lose about 3.5 degrees C over the 90 minute mash time. I threw the old duvet I used to use away as one of the cats started sleeping on it and it looked disgusting. So more insulation needed next time.
I also batch sparged for the first time.



Grains after sparging.



Getting near the boil.



Just about there.



Rolling boil.



Bittering hops.

That's it for pics I'm afraid. Sorry about the quality, took them on my iPhone.

Wort is now sitting outside cooling.
I have Danstar Nottingham and Windsor yeasts handy. Which do you think I should use?
Right off to check the wort temp now.
I had forgotten how I love the smell of boiling wort in the afternoon.
Remember no laughing and be gentle with me, it's my first AG in over 3 years.
Regards, Mark

Nice, so your mini-Mash tun worked well for the run-off then?
3.5c isn't bad really, the real action will be over in the first 60mins (so less temp loss) you could maybe just mash a degree or two hotter next time

OK I decided to go with the Windsor yeast which has been pitched.
I have measured the OG which is 1044 @ 21.5 C. Not sure how I got that considered I was aiming for 1036. At the end of the 90 minute boil I had lost a bit more that I anticipated. At the start of the boil I had approx 12.5 litres and guess I had 9 litres post boil. I topped it back up to 10 litres but still missed the target. So much for my session bitter.
Any ideas where I went wrong?
Cheers, Mark

pdtnc wrote:Nice, so your mini-Mash tun worked well for the run-off then?

In testing to see how much would liquid would be left, I filled the tun about half way then opened the tap and let it drain
till it stopped, closed the tap and tipped the remainder into a measuring jug to find there was only 300 ml left, so was pleased
with that.
So, yes pleased with it.
Cheers, Mark

I actually meant, your Mash / Sparge ran freely without sticking etc...
Though 300ml is pretty good

Yes, no problems at all.
Cheers!

the recipe looks fine to me, if you come in too strong you can always dilute it more...