It's not really my first AG brew day but a first with my own recipe. I'm in a need for a session beer. Oakham's Citra is one of my favourites so I decided to make up a recipe inspired by it.
Batch Size: 25.00l
Mash Temperature: 64 C
Sparge Temperature: 75 C
Total Grain Weight: 5.50kg
Total Hop Weight: 115g
Est OG: 1.051 SG
Est FG: 1.012 SG
Est ABV: 5.2 %
Bitterness: ~40.0 IBUs
Est Color: 8.2 SRM (~16EBC)
Water:
- Tesco Ashbeck 18l mash, 18l sparge
- 5g Gypsium and 4g Calcium Chloride added to mash water
Grain bill:
- 3.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter
- 1.00 kg Munich Malt - 10L
- 0.50 kg Vienna Malt
- 0.50 kg Wheat Malt
- 0.25 kg Cara-Pils
- 0.25 kg Crystal Malt - 60L
Hop bill:
- 15.00g Magnum [12.8%] @ 60.0 min
- 10.00g Citra [13.5%] @ 30.0 min
- 10.00g Citra [13.5%] @15.0 min
- 15.00g Citra [13.5%] @ 5.0 min
- 15.00g Citra [13.5%] @ 0.0 min
- 50.00g Citra [13.5%] Dry Hop 3.0 Days
Wyeast WLP-005 harvested from Jim's wee bastard.
Misc:
- Irish moss 1 tsp @ 15min
- Yeast nutrient 0.5 tsp @ 15min
It was the first time I was crushing the grains myself. I conditioned the grain with about 200ml of water and left it in a closed bucket. I went about getting the mill ready. I attached the drill and run a bag of rice through it few times. I blew of the rice flour and adjusted the mill to about 1 mil. Crushing the grain was a breeze and I haven't had grain that fluffy before even though there was a fair amount of flour.
With grain ready I got the Grainfather ready and started heating up mash water. I got my salts ready and added them @ 64C. I put the grain basket in and mashed in. As it started recirculating, the temperature dropped to 59C but came back up quickly. I took PH reading after few minutes and I was at 5.36, happy days. The mash was lautering through really well so I might try crushing at 0.9 mil next time. After about 40 minutes the wort was clear and I checked for starches, none detectable. I left it for the rest of 60 mash.
I went a tad crazy sparging and ended up with 32l @ 1.044 pre-boil. The boil was uneventful. I guess it was going too good. I plugged in the CF chiller and recirculated to sanitize it, as the last addition steeped for few minutes. Then I started pumping straight into the fermenter. After around a half of the wort made it into the fermenter GF started beeping. I forgot to switch of the heating and it was coming up to the boil again. DOH! As a result I had no proper cold break and loads of thrub ended up in the fermenter.
The end result was 27.5l @ 1.0478. I oxygenated it and pithed the yeast. Once it was safe in the fridge I opened a well deserved beer. I hope this will be a refreshing beer with a dry finish. As well as a nice base recipe to experiment with.
I checked up on it in the morning and it was going strong. I should be raking it off to secondary Thursday or Friday and bottling it the weekend after next.
