Home Brew Forum

Heh, I have lots of reasons to want to brew again so soon. Testing my tweaks to the boiler, getting more in before Severn Trent drop the hose pipe ban hammer, trying to get through the hop stocks in the freezer, getting through all the brews that need warm fermentation whilst the weather is so glorious..... So thought I'd revisit an old friend, the Greg Hughes Patersbier.

Targets:-

Target Batch Size: 23 Litres into FV. Estimated OG: 1.043. Estimated BH Efficiency 70%. Estimated FG: 1.004 (? Ok...). Colour: 5.1 EBC. Bitterness (IBUs): 17 Tinseth.

Recipe etc:-

Mash: BIAB Full volume (almost, 24.04 litres) @ 65 degrees C for 90 minutes. Mash out @ 75.6 degrees C over 15 minutes (rising over 15 minutes).

4500g Dingemans Pilsen malt 3.2 EBC.

Boil: + 4 litres kettle top up (estimated), boil for 70 minutes.
All hops whole hops:-

@ 60 minutes 48g Saaz 3.5% AA

@15 1/2 Protafloc tablet

@10 minutes 22g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh 3% AA

Re-hydrate 1 packet Mangrove Jack's M41 Belgian Ale yeast.

Into FV, top up/dilute to 23 litres, and/or OG of 1.043.

Oh and the water, yeah, RO water treated to the good old yellow balance profile, with about 3mls of 80% lactic acid to drop the mash pH with it been such pale malt.

My first foray into outdoor brewing too!
All doughed in, and happily re-circulating now.
Smells gorgeous at this point, really malty.

Ok, soo...

ALWAYS make sure you brew close to a drain so you have some where for the water from the immersion chiller to go to...

Start your brew day earlier when you don't have an outside light. I'm working with a head lamp strapped onto my head here...

Oh and yeah, think I am going to give in and get a hop spider. Going to need to if I want to make a go of this whirl pool idea really.

Oh yeah, and need a stronger table.... lol

Right, time to wrap this brew day report up.

So, brewing in the dark, maybe not one to repeat, but amusing for a one off
I ended up tweaking my volumes a bit, my kettle top up I upped to 6 litres rather than 4, purely because I had the room.

Whirl-pooling may have been a PITA, but transferring went really well. Started things off nice and slowly until the wort ran clear, then opened the tap up a bit more. I still got a bit of trub in the FV, but not nearly as much as I used to get before I started doing this. I once tried putting the trubby wort back into the kettle once the wort ran clear, but found that no matter how carefully I did this it would mess up the filter over the bazooka and just transfer again.
Anyway, once finished transferring, I had 20 litres of wort in the FV, with an SG of 1.050. Opened up Beersmith 3 tools dilution calc, and this told me that 3 litres of water would put me on and SG of 1.043. So in other words, bang on target, with 23 litres into the FV with an OG of 1.043. Tidy.
Would I brew outside again? Maybe, but only if either a) the neighbours aren't outside or b) I am wearing noise cancelling headphones.... Noisy yawping (insert rude expletives here) neighbours ruined it really, hurling verbal abuse and foul language at their kids nearly the entire time.

Loving the commitment. I start all my brews as early as possible in the morning. Earliest has been circa 4am. All done and dusted by 9!

Yeah, I usually start much earlier too, putting the RO on about 6am. This one was a bit of a impulse brew though. Lol