Coniston Bluebird & every cloud has a silver lining

[Oggy' Bar]

The day started off badly. I was in the midst of doing a bit of plumbing in the loft when my portable lamp went FZZT and I had to shout for SWMBO to go to my workshop to find another one. ...I knew from there I was in the 5hit.

"What a *&^%$ mess that workshop is in...and why have you got 30 broken kettles on the floor in there.." . .

Plumbing successfully completed..SWMBO, trying out the new shower and methinks I'd better investigate the workshop....30 kettles .. I could only fine 7 of the buggers.



But I also found this....My long lost project..


and within the hour I had this..


Anyway..on with the brew. I started about 7.30pm...I know far too late and I'm 1 hour into a 90min mash for my Coniston Bluebird clone:

I used water treatment in the form of : Gypsum, Calc Chloride & Magnesium Sulphate again for this brew (using GWs calculator) I've yet to find out if this makes any difference to my brews.

recipe as follows:
All Grain. 30 litre brew length.
25 kg Maris Otter
0.40 kg Crystal Malt
0.24 kg Wheat, Torrified
0.03 kg Roasted Barley
60.00 gm boadacea [7.60 %] (60 min) Hops 38.5 IBU
10.00 gm Fuggles [4.50 %] (60 min) Hops 3.8 IBU
20.00 gm boadacea [7.60 %] (15 min) Hops 6.4 IBU
15.00 gm boadacea [7.60 %] (2 min) Hops 0.7 IBU
2 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
Yeast cultured from Coniston Bluebird bottle.
Est. OG 1046

The grain bill looked like this.


The mash looked like this.


and the CB yeast after 2 days looked like this..and it's fermenting vigorously as a starter.
Question is though....and I'd be grateful if someone could answer before I pitch it...Is the CB yeast in the bottles the same as the brewery yeast


and finally...Got a couple of these... chuffed to bits..


Alarm's just gone off...Sparge time.

edit

Start of the boil.


The 1st lot of hops about to go in.


It's 10 past midnight and the brew is put to bed...25C direct from the CFC to FV.


But I'm going to drain the trub in the morning and then pitch the yeast.

[Garth]

great pictures there Oggy,

I'm intrigued, what is the copper device?

great handpull print, where did you get them done, and did they cost much?

I did a Coniston clone a long time ago and it didn't taste very much like the real thing but was a good brew anyway.

[Oggy' Bar]

25kg MO... That should give me an OG of about 2000. I actually meant 6.5kg.

The copper device is a Dual chamber FV chiller which attaches to a beer cooler and ATC 800 and keeps the FV temp down. Essential because I'm using an NO Thermo box as an FV.

The hand pull came from a thread on this site a few months ago. They were quite expensive, I got 2 jugs as well. I'll post details when I find trem.

Coniston Bluebird was on tap at my local pub last week...very nice too. Hope mine turns out as good as yours.

Off to do the 2nd sparge.