Its been far too long since i brewed but seperation , moving and trying to stay sane have kept me away from brewing for far too long. In the end I had to brew ....and this time it was to be on a very small scale, with basic equipment only.
Prepared the night before by cleaning everything and leaving what i could to soak in a brew bucket of sanitiser.
weighed out the grains and the hops, put grain in a bowl in the kitchen so it wasnt too cold (ah bless)
The Grist:
Lager malt -a kilo
Wheat Malt-half a kilo
Hops:
90min Saaz 10g
30min Saaz 10g
15min Saaz 10g
thats it. K.I.S.S
and as I printed the recipe from beer engine it came to me - I was now running ...
The K.I.S.S artist brewary
Looking for 8l at the end of the day ( my copper was a smallish stock pan on a halogen hob that could handle 11L to the brim)
Used the calculators on the site and hit my strike temperature of 67 deg on the nose
Lost about 1 deg over 90 min in my coolbox mashtun and batch sparging proceeded with no dramas. my copper manifold that had failed with AG1 (epic fail) tossed aside in favour of the SS outer of a flexible pipe (so easy...) kept sparging til I started to taste a change in the wort signalling the start of tannins.
Having recycled the first runnings i had got the wort on the boil as it came out of the mash tun so getting a full copper boiling took very little time at all.
The hops went in on schedule and i was amazed how low i could get the hob and still maintain a boil- had a lid on to stop the kitchen steaming up !
added some irish moss with the 15min hops and allowed it to cool , giving the whole thing a fast stir to get a nice cone of hops and trub on the bottom of the pot.
jugged into a brew bucket through a sieve when cooled to pitching temp and then run into my youngs narrow neck fermenter with a demijohn of light spraymalt / old packet of S04 : all my ingredients are pretty old so wanted to make sure the yeast had a fighting chance.
Let the yeast have a ball before moving to the conservatory for a cold fermentation.
checked gravity after 3 days - down to 1015 - brought it into my room as i tasted butter popcorn in my sample, left it there till the taste went away.
Bottled the lot 3 days ago with a tsp per pint of sugar for conditioning (well- its a lager it should be a bit fizzy !)
Just draunk the first small bottle taster. Clear as a bell- with some condition - needs a bit longer
OK so heres the challenge...
Improvements for AG3
undershot OG a fair bit. should of been 1040 ish but was more like 1030 ish. The grains have all been stored a log time and in less than ideal conditions- this may account for the discrepancy. I have Gypsum and CRS but didnt use them. I Live in Hertfordshire (Hitchin) and the water is pretty hard would chucking a tsp of gypsum in the grist and doing water treatment get me closer to the predicted OG ?
Hops have not been stored well either. There was nowhere neer the bitterness or aroma I'd like -I'm thinking of doubling the hop rate for the next attempt.
any other comments ? no pictures with this one, maybe the next..
Cheers guys, AG4 will be a biggie as i will have my gas boiling ring setup by then..
AG 2 - A little drop of Lager
Re: AG 2 - A little drop of Lager
Therapeutic brewing? Sounds like a good idea to me.
Old grain and hard water won't have helped the OG. The gypsum is added to help the yeasties get the nutrients they need, so it won't affect the OG. CRS is definitely worth doing to hard water and is fairly easy to get right using a Salifert kit - see the Brewniversity for more details. Like you, I've found that fresh hops make all the difference to a beer. The best beers I've done have been with really fresh, pungent hops. Look forward to seeing the piccies of your next brew!
Old grain and hard water won't have helped the OG. The gypsum is added to help the yeasties get the nutrients they need, so it won't affect the OG. CRS is definitely worth doing to hard water and is fairly easy to get right using a Salifert kit - see the Brewniversity for more details. Like you, I've found that fresh hops make all the difference to a beer. The best beers I've done have been with really fresh, pungent hops. Look forward to seeing the piccies of your next brew!