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Brew Day - 26/03/06

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:23 am
by deadlydes
Well since i had an empty keg it was time to have another brew day.
this was only my 5th 5 gal full mash.

i am still following recipes at the moment since i am new to this. i really like wadworth 6X so i thought i would give that recipe a go from DL BBLTYB.

here is the recipe, i increased the malts by 10% as most of you guys seem to think DL uses optimistic conversion rates:
2970g Optic Pale malt
440g Flaked Maize
275g Crystal

30g brambling X
60g Goldings

so the brew began.
i put 15l of filtered water into the burco to get it upto 85oC. when up to temp i put it into the coolbox mash tun to preheat it along with one campdon tablet.
when it was cooled to 75oC i stirred in the grain, temperature was too high so i addeed some cold water to get the temp to 66.5.
left for 90mins wrapped in a sleeping bag and the end temp was 65oC
recirculated around 8 pints then started run off.
sparged via a watering can at 80-85oC. sparge time was 30mins

when up to boil all of the hops apart from 13g were added and boiled for 75mins. for the last 15mins the 13g of hops were added along with 5 g of irish moss.

the immersion chiller took 40mins to get the wort to cool :-(

tapped into fermentor and pitched a started that had been going for 36hrs (youngs ale yeast).

fermenting like a bugger now :-)

a couple of points.
on the other mashes i have done i have had great extraction and i took some of the wort during the boil and the gravity was looking good so i did not add the 300g of sugar the recipe called for.

my final volume was 25L with an og of 1.040. dont know what the effiency is on that but it seems good. (how would i work out effiency?)

brew time of 5hours.

so all in all i think it was a success. good extraction again. with the grain bill upped i did not need to add sugar. smells lovely. cant wait to see how it tastes.

brew time could be decreased with a counter flow cooler. has anyone got a simple design?

will be letting you know how it tastes.

any comments on the brew?

cheers
Des

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:59 am
by Andy
Nice one Des!

Promash has quite a good calculator which lets you enter the grain amount and the desired mash temp and it calculates the strike temp for you.

Just put your grain bill and volume in and it came out with 70.5 degC strike.

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:29 pm
by deadlydes
Had a few pints of this over the weekend and i think its my best beer yet!
its a bit lighter (as in colour) than 6X but the flavour is pretty much bang on.
perhaps next time a bit more crystal malt which would darken it and add a little more body and caramelly taste.

another success! :pink

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:34 pm
by Andy
25L at 1040 is 85% efficiency with that grain bill - which is pretty darn good B)

Does it have this colour ?

Image

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:49 am
by deadlydes
Getting good effiency then! :D

i would say its even slightly lighter than that. i havent got the EBC value of the grains i am using.

but anyhow as i said the taste is pretty much bang on, just a bit more crystal/caramel next time.

is that promash andy?

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:58 am
by Andy
Des - yup. (the free version does all this, I haven't coughed up for the full version yet)