brewed the first RIS for about 3 years last night and once again my efficiency was way higher than expected.( always a nice thing but it can be rather a pain:)) I messed up the maths a fair bit too ( not concentrating) and ended up with 15 litres as opposed to the planned 13... ho hum
I posted the recipe a while ago so wont bother to post it again. either way here is some info.
I mashed low at 64 in the hope to gain some efficiency... i mashed for the best part of 5 hours and batch sparged as usual.
It was already mighty dark when i had finished douging in. temperature was at 64.5.. good enough
The first runnings were like sirup, they were dark a, i mean really dark and the smell of the dark roasted malts was totally nose hair melting.. it took longer than normal to run off from the mash, not stuck as such but i blame the amount of flaked barley for that.
to be fair the final sparge was much faster running off... but almost as dark.
I used a smaller boiler than normal in order to try and not lose so much to evaporation, i have experiened that low volumes evaporate muc more resulting in a much stronger beer. I am glad i did this... especially based on the efficiency i got.
almost got a boil over too..... all but for a damn good stirring:)
I pitched 2 packs of nottingham into the 15 litres. i have always had issues getting the stouts to ferment out properly so this time hoped for the best.
15 litres in a 20 litre bucket was i thought going to be ok... but i thought based on the mad ferments that some really dark worts give it would be best for a blow off... glad i did. yeast pitched at 10 pm, this morning at 6 i stumbled over this...
yeast is climbing up the 1 metre blow off tube. i have never experienced anything like it.
I have a friend visiting from the uk, he showered then hollered at about 8 as i was on the way to work....
heard a funny noise he says, wondered if all was ok he said...
well... i guess it depends on what you mean by ok.... i say this is perfectly ok.... just needs a small little tiny bit of attention......
And so to the news.
The plan was a 68% efficiency and 13 litres at 1.101.
i ended up with 15 litres at 1.096 meaning an efficiency or around 78 % according to my calculation... well pleased if thats the case.
nottingham is a monster and if this finishes at 10.18 it will give me something around the 10% mark.... nottingham could well go a little lower though...
thanks for reading.
