Home Brew Forum

Was planning a Sierra Nevada Porter, but thought I would save the black and choc malt for another day. I will therefore use up half a bag of lager malt and an open maris otter. Plus I didn't want to open the williamette and nugget when I can use up the open challenger and EKG I have.

My London Pride is getting better. Will take a while to condition though and concerned I didn't carbonate enough. There is reasonable carbonation there, but used 50g in 23l.

Anyway, pics will follow later. Was 90g short on the malts but hopefully will get better efficiency today. Still learning my technique. I ensured there were no dough balls this time when mashing-in and gave a thorough stir. Quite cold outside so temo was 2 degrees down. Warmed up the urn to 66c and now wrapped up. In 90 mins will mash out at 78c for about 15 mins.

Time to continue watching the cracking tennis match! Come on Muzza!

Will no chill as usual in a cube. I plan to step up dregs of a summer lightning to make a starter for this, and understand I should probably overpitch. Any comments on the Hop Back yeast are welcome

I have hard water and normally boil the night before. Couldn't be bothered and topped up with water from the boiler which has a water filter on anyway, but forgot to add gypsum to the grain so added a couple of teaspoons an hour in

Anyway, not very exciting but a few photos so far from my phone.

Grain temp shot


Clean boiler with hop strainer fitted


Mash temp spot on


All wrapped up for 90mins

Looks good so far!

Might take a while for a pale beer like SL to clear if you are not chilling...
Are you using copper finings?

Good luck and all the best for the brew day!

Guy

Cheers. Added whole protofloc at 10 mins - should have been half but thought I would experiment My Mysterio SNPA only took a couple of weeks but will see how it goes!

Mashed out to 78c for 20 mins

Then drained the bag...seen this somewhere else



6c outside so lagged the boiler and there she boils



Bittering hops added


Hit OG of 1.050 spot on and pre-boil OG 1.044 so efficiency 75% - getting better! Forgot to add campden tablet today but should be ok as I added from the boiler.

Some break. Left far too long in the boiler before draining (about an hour because of school run...)


Trub


Pretty pale wort


And in the cube


Got to get back to cooking now!!

So lessons learned from today.

1. Mash technique much better and hit efficiency, gravity etc spot on.
2. Used a full protofloc and lots of wort lost to the trub, so think I will only have about 21l instead of 23 in the FV. Difficult to tell.
3. Remember gypsum earlier. Ended adding after an hour into the mash.
4. Using the oven rack as the wort was brought up to the boil worked well. I squeezed a lot more out of the grain.
5. A lot of crud on the element and half way through the boil had to scrape with a metal spoon because the boil stopped. Boil got going again though. Hopefully won't affect the beer too much.
6. No chill makes life easier for me. No worries of timing the starter.

So I made beer again. BIAB works well for me, but when I look at the cool breweries on these threads makes me jealous!

You will get a nice crescent shaped build up on the element cover (inner concentric ring) that you need to clean thoroughly each time or it becomes a bugger to remove.

I spent a couple of hours with some Bar Keepers Friend and couldn't shift all of mine. I had done 4 boils without worrying about it (slack, I know). There's a lesson learnt.

I do clean each time, as can be seen by the shiny boiler photo

First time I had to scrape in the middle of. The boil tho!

The reason I mentioned it was because the first I really worried about it was when I had to scrape the pot to get a boil restarted. Like a numpty, I just assumed that it was a natural build-up.

I have done 24 brews since then (all 90 mins) and it hasn't ever happened again.

I use automotive finishing paper grade 1600 - it comes off easy peasy with that and you won't visible scratch the SS.

The rolling boil is not too aggressive with the buffalo so I always fill to 41 litres at start of boil. If you are outside even less excuse for denying yourself full capacity!

Good point Paddy. Need to tinker with my recipes. Could get another few litres even though I BIAB!

So drank 2 bottles of Summer Lightning and cultured the yeast using strongandco's video on YouTube.

Here's a picture 24 hours later


The yeast can be seen "clumping" on the surface nicely.

This is the dregs of 2 bottles in 200ml of wort. I will then step up into 1 litre and then 2 litres. Wish I had a stir plate, but a project for another day if this goes well

Well so far my yeast growing experiment has gone well. This next image is stepped up from 200ml to 1l and it is still fermenting.



I think there may be enough yeast to pitch now for my Summer Lightning which is in the cube. Though may use the rest of my DME (170g) and step up to 1.7l. Any thoughts or should 1l be enough?

I am going to buy stuff for a stir plate tonight I think as it looks easy to make, even for me!

Mr. malty has all the information you need

Probably 1l is enough (according to Mr Malty), although I have read that hop back yeast needs a lot of work and may be best to overpitch