Brambling Cross Pale Ale w/pics

[ryanmanchester]

I brewed up a pale ale with Brambling Cross last weekend.

I made a photobucket account for the pics, shame I couldn't put them in order on there though. (Anyone know how?)

http://s280.photobucket.com/albums/kk19 ... mview=grid

Recipe:
*Aroma hops went in at 80C



+ 1 tsp Irish Moss @ 15m

Yeast: Fermentis S-04 yeast slurry from the last brew.


Things started pretty badly really.. I pumped hot water up from the kettle to the mash tun aiming to warm up the tun while weighing out the grain in the garage. I came back and added the grain.. everything seemed fine till I noticed I hadn't even checked the temp of the mash water!! The mash was something like 52C and I had to use the kitchen kettle to get the temp up.. I reached 66.5C when the mash tun was just about full... Lucky.

Apart from that, things went pretty smoothly apart from not taking the OG till after I had pitched the yeast in the fermenter. My efficiency had shot right up to around 90% from around 68%, I had 25L of 1.070 wort.. way way higher than I wanted/expected but I guess that'll teach me for not testing the gravity in the kettle! All in all a good day though, even when there's problems, when it's in the fermenter it always puts a big daft grin on my face

I was finished by about 5pm after mostly cleaning up, the brew day taking about 7 hours. I still need to get some elements in my HLT to be able to speed things up but 7 hours is good enough for me, specially when I can weigh the hops and the grain the night before next time. Hopefully by the time I brew I'll have 2 x 2.75KW elements in my 33L HLT, and 2 x 2.75KW elements in the 53L kettle! No messing about carrying the kitchen kettle back and forth then I hope.

[ryanmanchester]

That's a nice jump from 68 to 90%, I guess it could well be down to your informal temperature stepped mash process

Well with the last brew I did, I had to move the mash to the kettle to use as a lauter tun because the little small gauze filter I fitted under the false bottom in the mash tun just gave me a stuck mash instantly.



So I think that because the false bottom in the kettle is only 12" .. a lot smaller than the width of the kettle, it didn't make the best of lauter tuns. Also, it cooled down a lot because of the transfer over.

No idea how rearrange photobucket pictures but they look great

Thanks

[Vossy1]

Like the new avatar RM

[ryanmanchester]

Like the new avatar RM