Black Sheep Riggwelter-like brew - success!!!

[Kev888]

Well Saturdays brew day was a game of two halves. This was the recipe I used:

Brew length 45L

Maris Otter 9000g (73%)
Crystal Malt 800g (6.5%)
Chocolate Malt 500g (4%)
Torrefied Wheat 1200g (9.7%)
Sugar (last 15 mins) 840g (6.8%)

Challenger 50g 7% AA @ 90mins
Progress 20g 5% AA @ 90mins
Fuggles 45g 4.5% AA @ 90mins
East Kent Goldings 50g 4.5% AA @ 10mins
2x sachets of nottingam dried yeast (had intended WLP005 but failed to organise a starter)

Mash Liquor 30L
Sparge Liquor 40L

Expected OG: 1.062
Expected FG: 1.016
Expected ABV: 6%

Generally its based on BYOBRA and Norms real ale recipies, however theres apparently a mistake on the chocolate malt in the latter as it suggests far too much, and the former seemed a bit light for my taste too, so I compromised on 500g which gave me 4%. There's also supposed to be about 2g of roasted barley, which I didn't motivate myself to measure out.

Cheers
kev

[Kev888]

I've done about five brews in the latest setup and felt confident that I could now predict the temperature characteristics - I expected this to be the first flawless brew in it, so I therefore messed up big-time at the very first opportunity..

I put 30L of water in the MT at 90C to heat it thorough (its cold and heavy metal so sucks up a lot of heat), which would have given me a 74c strike temperature. Unfortunately I lost the plot and inexplicably added the grain there and then, getting a grain bed temperature of about 75c Naturally, for once I hadn't got my hose set up and running around waving arms didn't seem to be helping either for some reason; a combination of Jim's advice and running backwards and forwards to the garage with jugs of cold water helped but far too slowly. A bit of interweb surfing later suggested I'd had about 10-15mins tops to bring down the temperature before destroying most of the enzymes, mine was more like 30mins. After an hour the mash still wasn't very sweet and tasted a bit astringent - so the garden got 11.5kg of fertilizer.

Its quite astounding how even after all this time I'm still effortlessly finding new and interesting mistakes to make. Still, at least I hadn't wasted the hops and so on, and I'd topped up and reheated the HLT just in case, so a second mash was on by 2.30pm. I'm really glad I started again, this time I got the flawless run I'd been chasing - finally, the temperatures spot on, everything worked smoothly and it was in the FV by 7.30pm. OG two points higher (after temp correction) at 1.064 and about 4L more than needed

Cheers
kev

[Kev888]

Today it was escaping from the FV with a vengence (definately no issues with this batch of Notts!). I'd also tried protofloc tablets (rather than my usual irish moss) for the first time, which sadly resulted in more gunk stuck to the boiler and possibly slightly clearer wort - we'll see if it was worth it when it starts to clear down I guess. I also tried a new tack in cleaning the boiler - leaving it full of water overnight left all the baked on crudd very soft; not enough to rinse off but very easy to wipe off.

i also tried a much bigger vent pipe like barnsley brewers for the first time (my previous 40mm waste pipe had worked except with some recipies which tended to be more bubbly and would block it with hops). I found that initially the boiler bubbled up and started to fill the pipe with foam when I first put the vent on, even though the boiler was only half full, but after stirring the foam down and replacing the vent pipe it didn't rise again.

So, finally after the 6th (okay, 6.5th) brew I've finally got to grips with the new setup, and the beer smells about the best I've made for quite a while now, too.

Cheers
kev

[leedsbrew]

Thats gonna turn out a cracker Kev!

I did a couple of batches of Riggwelter last year. I gave one to my brother for his birthday. It went down a storm! It was very similar to your recipe!

Fermentables
Ingredient Amount % MCU When
UK Pale Ale Malt 4.289 kg 78.0 % 4.9 In Mash/Steeped
UK Wheat Malt 0.550 kg 10.0 % 0.4 In Mash/Steeped
UK Medium Crystal 0.385 kg 7.0 % 8.8 In Mash/Steeped
UK Chocolate Malt 0.275 kg 5.0 % 46.9 In Mash/Steeped
UK Roasted Barley 0.001 kg 0.0 % 0.2 In Mash/Steeped

Hops
Variety Alpha Amount IBU Form When
UK Progress 5.6 % 27 g 17.6 Loose Whole Hops 90 Min From End
UK Fuggle 3.9 % 26 g 11.8 Loose Whole Hops 90 Min From End
Northern Brewer 10.5 % 18 g 22.0 Loose Whole Hops 90 Min From End
UK Golding 4.6 % 10 g 2.5 Loose Whole Hops 15 Min From End

Yeast
White Labs WLP005-British Ale

I didnt have any challenger at the time!

Glad your getting to grips with the new system! I'm very close to being finished with mine, bloody work keeping me far too busy at the moment though!

I find protofloc gets me a much clearer wort at pitching, although I still get clear beers with good old irish moss, I guess it boils down to personal preference! Mine is whatever is to hand!

[Kev888]

Thats good to know - thanks! It certainly smells very nice and has been fermenting very enthusiastically! Just wish i'd managed to get a starter of wlp005 done in time but hopefully the notts will be a reasonable stand in.

Cheers
kev