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I got up early this morning to brew the first batch of 2011. Foolishly I was confident that I had planned the brew day meticulously and that nothing would go wrong. It was to be my first trouble free all grain brew day.

Alas, I had forgotten Murphy's Law. What can go wrong, will go wrong.

This was my first attempt at brewing with water treatment - I used 38ml of CRS which reduced my 228ppm of CaCo3, down to around 40ppm. I then retested and added another 4ml to reduce it to 25ppm. I then added 10g (2tsp) of gypsum to the milled grains.

I went to use my pump to mash in, and nothing. It turns out to not be weatherproof (it was one of norm's totton pumps). The whole thing is full of water - all the electrics inside are soaked and the coil inside is oxidised and mank.

But at this point I'd already smaked the yeast packet and had all the grains and water ready, so I figured I'd try and mash as normal without the HERMs or pump. Fingers crossed eh! I mashed in easily and went for a mash temp of 68*c as I'm anticipating a pretty big drop in temp over an hour. I might even leave the mash for an extra half hour to be sure of conversion, depending on what the temp is after an hour.

Here's the recipe:
Chichester Bitter
Style: Standard/Ordinary Bitter
Type: All Grain
Efficiency: 75 %
IBU's: 28.92
Boil Size: 24.98 L
Color: 11.1 SRM
Batch Size: 23.02 L
Boil Time: 60 minutes

Brew Date: - 01/22/2011
OG: 1.038 -
FG: 1.012 -
ABV: 3.41 % - %

Fermentation Steps
Name Days / Temp
Primary 7 days @ 18.0°C
Bottle/Keg 14 days @ 20.0°C

Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name
3.25 kg 88.56 % Pale Malt, Maris Otter
200.00 g 5.45 % Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L
70.00 g 1.91 % Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L
50.00 g 1.36 % Chocolate Malt
100.00 g 2.72 % Sugar

Hops
Amount IBU's Name Time AA %
25.00 g 14.51 Goldings, East Kent 60 mins 5.20
50.00 g 14.41 Goldings, East Kent 15 mins 5.20

Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.0 pkg London ESB Ale Wyeast Labs 1968

Additions
Amount Name Time Stage
1.00 oz Whirlfloc Tablet 15 mins Boil
10.00 g Gypsum 0 mins Mash

Mash Profile
Add 15.00 L water @ 74.0°C for 60 minutes
Sparge 15.00 L of 75.0°C water

Mash is finished, 66.5*c so it's all good! Now for the hoping and praying that I'll be able to lauter without a pump.. I've never tried it before!

Plan is to run the wort from the mash tun through a silicone hose to get a syphon effect, into a 5gal bucket. Then I'll sparge by hand and hope that it works. Fingers crossed!

Did you test for your mash ph? Hope the rest of the day goes to plan

mash out went fine and I collected exactly 26l of wort which was my target - and it stopped at exactly 1.010 which was nice to know (measured the runnings with a refractometer).

Boil is now on, and ferociously bubbling away; smells great!

I cleaned out the mash tun and noticed something different to usual - the acidity of the mash seems to have cleaned up the copper tube which goes to the false bottom. Is this a problem? is it usual for that to happen? This is the first time I've used CRS to reduce hardness of my water, and so my mash will be much more acidic than usual. Only problem is I've got no way of testing pH. Should I be worried that it's too acidic? my residual alkalinity was 25ppm/CaCO3.

sllimeel wrote:Did you test for your mash ph? Hope the rest of the day goes to plan

Thanks I couldn't test my mash pH as I couldnt get pH test strips in time. I'll certainly do so next time

Just sanitised everything using star san. It's my first time using it, and it seems to be great! easy to use and the no-rinse nature of it is great, I'm looking forward to getting the beer in the fermenter and finishing the brew day though as it's really cold today

Ok all done! Ended up with 23l @ 1.042 SG
Also forgot to put the sugar in so that makes it 86% efficiency I think

I pitched the yeast at 24c by accident, so hopefully didn't kill it. The wort got aerated really well as I stuck the fermenter in my car and drove it home (the car's a lowered mk2 vw polo with a pretty quick engine and rock hard suspension so it was certainly shaken up a bit!

Finally relaxed after a manic day of brewing - headed to my local for some awesome real ale - dark star espresso stout, dark star hop head, hepworth brewery's Pullman ale, and irving & co's Invincible ale.

The beer's one down to 20c - I expect it to ferment around 18c to 19c.

I'll post photos tomorrow

Sounds like you pulled that one out of the fire!

Hope it turns out OK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7VnkBqLgfA

Started bubbling away last night and is going for it now!

Here are the pics : )
First job was to go to the fish shop and get some reverse osmosis water for the star san.... of course, had to get the polo cleaned on the way home


Next job was to attempt my first bit of water treatment. CRS and campden.



Then I got the grains ready and added gypsum (2 tsp)



Smacked the yeast packet, this is it half an hour in. By the end it was fit to burst!


Annoyingly I forgot to take any photos of the mash! But here's the first runnings
I waited until it was clear, and then started to collect the runnings.





I used a bit of foil covered in holes to protect the grain bed while returning the first runnings and while sparging


Spent Grain:


Here's the boil. I left both elements on and ended up with much more boil off than I'd expected. This resulted in only getting 20l @ 1.042, which is 75% efficiency.


Sanitising with Star San for the first time, loved it!



Here's the beer in the fermenter, looking very dark, but 2 days into fermentation and it's much lighter strangely!


Pitching the yeast @ 24c


Fermenting at 20c


This was my first time using a better bottle style fermenter - it's amazing watching the wort churn away with clumps of yeast flying about in it - very hypnotising to watch

Nice one matey!

I like your glass fermenter - where did you get it?
Looks like a nice thing to spend some money on....

Jez wrote:I like your glass fermenter - where did you get it?
Looks like a nice thing to spend some money on....

Thanks, but it's not made of glass : ) I strongly dissuade anyone from using glass carboys. Regardless of what many people will tell you, glass carboys can be extremely dangerous. If they break, they don't just crack and leak like plastic fermenters, they become shards of razor sharp glass which slice through tendons with ease.
I bought the fermenter from an ebay seller. Here's the link: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0497687856
I can strongly recommend the seller as my items arrived the next day, well packed and in perfect condition.

Cheers,
H

Thanks for the info and the link!
Might stop looking at glass now.
I recently had to throw a couple of bins away as they were scratched and were the reason I had a couple of brews go off.
Thought glass could be the way to go with regard to removing possibility of scratches - mind you, pretty hard to scratch inside one of those shaped FVs!

May be worth the investment..........

Really happy with how this has turned out! It got to 1.016, probably didn't go lower due to the high mash temp.
Here's some pics:








Here's a pic from my window, showing Chichester Cathedral in the background.

The beer tastes fantastic - very easy going, and balanced. I'm glad it didn't get any drier, as I think it would lose too much body (it has very light body at the mo although it is uncarbonated so that might be why.