Another Bells 2 Hearted Brew....
Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 11:52 pm
Hi everyone this is my first brewday thread on this forum, its a Bells 2 Hearted clone but with a few tweaks to make sure I could use up all of a half empty bag of centennial. Replaced bittering addition with some admiral to make sure I had enough for the aroma and dry hop. Ended up using Gervin instead of US-05 as well. Things went not entirely to plan unfortunately but I think its made it through relatively unscathed!
I'm using a mini 3 vessel set up at the mo with 1 peco for an HLT, a homemade coolbox mashtun and a customised peco boiler. Heres the recipe:
My water is quite hard so I use CRS to treat it along with a bit of campden tab to dechlorinate, this is done in the HLT prior to heating.
Doughing in:
Draining the mash:
Batch sparging:
This is the point where things went a little pear shaped, I noticed a little puddle of wort gathering around the base of the boiler while I began heating the wort, cue panic and many expletives. I quickly realised that wort was dripping out around the seal of one of the elements, cue more panic and rapid unplugging of said element. I took an executive decision to abandon the boiler and pour the wort back into the now empty HLT before I lost any more, lucky for me it was only a 10L batch and this was pretty easy. Apart from a bit of mess it wasnt too bad and somehow I hadnt shorted everything out/electrocuted myself. Somehow the locking nut on the element had worked itself loose and I hadnt noticed prior to loading the boiler
moral of the story check these thing before you start MUPPET! Hopefully it will be ok next time, think a little test with just water might be useful first....
Anyway things went a but more smoothly from there! The boil proceeded in the newly promoted HLT...
Draining to FV:
Safely in the Brew fridge:
Missed my target OG by a bit probably because I forgot to stir the mash as it went along and wort ended up on the floor, also this is a higher OG than I would normally brew so my usually efficiency may not be achievable perhaps? That said at 1.061 it will be plenty strong enough for me and I reckon it will get a lot lower than that est FG given by Beersmith so will probably even out in the end. Looking forward to this one seems to be very popular and a top rated brew on the Beersmith site, I am also drinking my first APA with centennial in it at the moment and its an absolute stunner so cant see how this can fail to be honest (touchwood barring any other mishaps!).
I'm using a mini 3 vessel set up at the mo with 1 peco for an HLT, a homemade coolbox mashtun and a customised peco boiler. Heres the recipe:
My water is quite hard so I use CRS to treat it along with a bit of campden tab to dechlorinate, this is done in the HLT prior to heating.
Draining the mash:
Batch sparging:
This is the point where things went a little pear shaped, I noticed a little puddle of wort gathering around the base of the boiler while I began heating the wort, cue panic and many expletives. I quickly realised that wort was dripping out around the seal of one of the elements, cue more panic and rapid unplugging of said element. I took an executive decision to abandon the boiler and pour the wort back into the now empty HLT before I lost any more, lucky for me it was only a 10L batch and this was pretty easy. Apart from a bit of mess it wasnt too bad and somehow I hadnt shorted everything out/electrocuted myself. Somehow the locking nut on the element had worked itself loose and I hadnt noticed prior to loading the boiler
moral of the story check these thing before you start MUPPET! Hopefully it will be ok next time, think a little test with just water might be useful first....Anyway things went a but more smoothly from there! The boil proceeded in the newly promoted HLT...
Draining to FV:
Safely in the Brew fridge:
Missed my target OG by a bit probably because I forgot to stir the mash as it went along and wort ended up on the floor, also this is a higher OG than I would normally brew so my usually efficiency may not be achievable perhaps? That said at 1.061 it will be plenty strong enough for me and I reckon it will get a lot lower than that est FG given by Beersmith so will probably even out in the end. Looking forward to this one seems to be very popular and a top rated brew on the Beersmith site, I am also drinking my first APA with centennial in it at the moment and its an absolute stunner so cant see how this can fail to be honest (touchwood barring any other mishaps!).