Home Brew Forum

Brewing my first SMASH beer today, Maris Otter and Apollo hops (multiple additions) with S-05. Planned to be my second brew with full sparge but ended up as BIAB...
Water started heating up @ 9:30 am, picked up mash tun, eeek:

SWMBO had decided to turn the high level grill on with the cool box on top, some might say that was not the best place to put it while it was drying from the last brew, others might say she had been specifically told to move it if needing the grill. Still, inner skin was ok so plough on. Eeek:

Lovingly forged false bottom had also been melted. Doh. Quick change to BIAB:

Crack out the tried and tested hop weigher:

Looking good:

Mash nearing the end, snugled in random fleece blankets:

Well underway:

Some way off planned gravity, but hey (I found the remaining gravity points hiding in the 'spent' grain):

Safe and sound, see you in 10 days...

Bad luck (or sabotage?) on your melted MT. I do love the lego scales though!

Priceless!

lovin' the scales.

Ditto on the scales, by a huge distance my favourite image of the week. As for the MT fiasco have you engaged a divorce lawyer yet . The hole in the MT alone is bad enough but the FB, that must have taken forever to drill .

Happily SWMBO was out when I discovered what she had done so I had largely calmed down by the time she had returned, although the knowledge she could have burnt the house down is still nagging. Yes drilling the holes was an absolute PITA and the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge I wouldn't have to do one again Still I have already mentioned getting a metal one and I think it should be quite easy to get past the committe now.

I have to say I love the lego scales too. These were built when I started doing gallon batches as we had no scales sentitive enough for the small hop additions. I discussed scales with my eight year old. I came up with a suspended design (like a mobile) that would clearly have tangled every time it was used and he came up with this. My only input was passing the 'axle' through one onf the blocks used for attaching wheels to, rather than glueing a cocktail stick to a lollypop stick (which is now clearly the crucial element of this design ). Although we have digital scales now, I prefer using this as it is far more accurate and fun. Coins make the ideal counter weights with 20p being 5g Initial tests suggested it was accurate to at least 125mg, although doing hop additions on this scale would surely lead to madness.

So, how's it drinking?

Absolutely delicious, so SWMBO was let off the hook slightly!. I will add some tasting notes to my original SMASH post:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=60301
I have finally had time to repair the mash tun so I will be brewing tomorrow, huzzah (I am starting to get withdrawal symptoms as it's been a while).