AG#2 Pale No.1, 29th Jan 2011

[Lewy]

I've decided to try a series of control brews, perhaps every other brew, to try and understand the ingredients better. The obvious place to start would be with 100% Pale Malt and a single hop. Fuggles seems a good a place as any to start. I also want it to be at session strength, so around 4% tops.

Recipe I used;

Pale No.1
Date: 29th Jan 2011
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 8 lbs. 13.0 oz 4000 grams 100%

Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Fuggle Whole 4.9 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 1.8 oz 50 grams 48.5%
Fuggle Whole 4.9 % 15 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 29.1%
Fuggle Whole 4.9 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 0.8 oz 23 grams 22.3%

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.039
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 10 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 37.0803143597248 EBU
Colour: 7 EBC

Water treatment - Salifert test used, alkalinity measured at 173.5 CaCO3/l, 3.8ml lactic acid per 10 litre used. Not ideal but better than nowt (I hope).

Pictures are a bit samey from my last brew, but;

Grain & Hops weighed out;


Starting mash temp;


My water volumes were all over the place, tipped whole Lidl boiler strike water into the mashtun as I was getting impatient at the crap tap. This meant the deadspace allowance was also added. Then the temp was too high so ended up correcting with a litre or so of untreated tap water, bit of a debacle.

Decent temp at the end though. top of grains had some almost soap-like bubbles, anyone seen this before?


First runnings, a paler shade of gravy;


High tech addition to sparge. The collinder;


This time I added the first wort hops straight to the empty boiler, instead of last time waiting until the wort reach a boil before adding. Seem like the done thing.

An uneventful boil so no pictures. I did notice it was slightly less vigorous than last time, possibly because there was more wort in it. I ended up with 1.5lts less than I wanted in AG#1, so tried to get the very upper volume limit into the boiler this time. Because it was baltic outside again, no spill-overs.

Run off;


Collected about 24lts at 1040, so pretty much bang on target gravity, though with more beer, bonus! I think my efficiency is about 80% so will need to adjust this in future.

Some things learnt - The Lidl boiler is just too slow (and still stinks of melting plastic), need to shift my actual boiler to being the HLT, and to buy a more powerful boiler. I also need to be a bit better planned, volumes, water treatment, timing of water heating - still a shambolic air to my brewing. Finally, there is some king of animal living in my brewing shed. Could be rodent, but I suspect a toad. Potential brewers assistant.

Air-lock is being hammered today, and this sight greets me when I take the lid off;



Cheers

Lewy

[Eric]

I commend your intent, control seems to allude me most time I brew so you have me envious and give you my best wishes.
Those bubbles are not ones I've seen either but the previous picture was a classic so it is probably of no concern.
I'd be a little concerned using lactic acid at that alkalinity but who knows?
Well done, I'll follow this with interest and hope some day to do something similar.

[Naich]

Looking good, despite the chaos I find that writing everything down and making plans on spreadsheets helps me stay on track during a brew day. Doing the control brews is a good idea. I'm doing something similar with a run of single hop brews, to get an idea of what each tastes like.

[Lewy]

Thanks for the comments guys.
Yeah Naich I reckon s/sheets must be the way to go if I am to rein-in my errant technique. Not half having fun with it though. Like the first AG, I even managed to scold myself and also leave a tap open
And as for the lactic acid, there seem to be two schools of thought. Firstly, pretty much the entire weight of opinion on JBK holds that it will be detrimental to the taste of the beer. Secondly, the guy from my homebrew shop swears by it over CRS, hence why I ended up with it in the first place. I am not in any position to argue the merits or otherwise, I shall see what the beer tastes like in a few weeks, and will get some CRS for the next brew. Touch wood, will keep you posted!
Lewy

[monkeyboy]

regarding those bubbles in the mash, i get bubbles like those pretty much every time and i've never worried about it. Beer has turned out fine every time. Might depend on the water (mine is *very* soft).
I've always been torn between the idea of doing SMASH (single malt and single hop) brews and just making up things as i feel like. So far, the 'make it up' has always won