Brewlength = 19l
Recipe - adapted from BYOBRA
2Kg Maris Otter
1Kg Mild Malt (left over from last time)
290g Crystal Malt
145g Chocolate Malt
60 Minute boil - Aiming for 21 EBU
37g Fuggles (3.8% a/a)
Post boil hops
6g Fuggles (3.8% a/a)
Three thermometers in the mash liquor just to be sure.
A few layers of camping mat around the boiler for insulation.
Mash in at a strike temp of 72, aiming for a mash temp 67C. It all went t1ts up at this point. I hit strike at 72, mashed in then re-checked the thermometers. The electronic/ digital thermometer started having a hissy fit with the display flickering on and off reading 62C! The other liquid thermometer I had calibrated to the digital one also said 62C
. I don't think I took too long to mash in, and I mashed in 10l of water which gives 3.3l/kg so heat loss should have been minimal......
No worries I thought, I lifted the bag clear and gave it a couple of blasts with the element (two 30 to 40 second blasts) got the mash liquor up to 67C. Put the lid on and left it to do it's thing. 4o minutes later I return to check temp (expecting a fair amount of heat loss because of the poor insulation). Thermometer read 72C. WTF?
. Who knows what the hell happened there...? I left the lid off to let things cool off, then let it do it's thing for the remainder of the time. Meanwhile I posted on here and GARYSMIFF came to the rescue with a diagram I'd seen before on palmers website - Thanks for the timely reminder GARYSMIFF! 
So I ploughed on...
So, I batch sparged with water from the HLT/ Stock pot... Lifting the bag clear of the outlet during draining...
...then brought it up to the boil with the hops - 37g of 3.8% fuggles... (2g more than in the photo because I cut the boil short from 90 to 60)
My not so unique method of getting the steam out of the windows. Sorry about the dark photo's, the downlighters were switched off because of the initial steam...
In with the chiller... I do this by attaching some syphon tubing to each end of the chiller, one end goes in the sink full of ice cold water, the other end goes in to the jugs to be re-used for cleaning up... Syphon Chiller.
Post boil hops were supposed to go in at 80C but before I knew it I was down to 75C so hopefully this will do! Theakstons old peculier and Guinness accompanied this brew (I got fed up with myself when I cocked up the mash temps) and in the background is the yeast starter...
The now cool boiler is lifted up the the work surface to allow it to settle (lid on) and I get on with washing up in the hot water collected from the chiller...!
Draining the now settled boiler down into the FV. I put the syphon on top of the sieve but kept the seive at the surface of the boiler. Good hop filter, but I did get quite a lot of break material in the FV. No worries. It is bubbling away nicely now and smells cracking... Taste will determine what effect the mash temp had.
Thanks for reading.