I live in a flat and don’t have a huge amount of room to store brew kit so I scaled up Daab’s MiniMash http://www.18000feet.com/minimash/page1.htm to 10 Liter which is about perfect for the space I have availible. I won’t go in to the details too much, I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t already to visit the link it’s an excellent method for those short on space.
Sorry if any of my terminology is wrong!
Making the Mini Mash Lauter Tun:
Equipment: Two 10L fermenter buckets with lids, Tap, Airlock.
Fitting the Tap to the lower bucket/fermentation chamber:
Drilled holes in the bottom of the top bucket with a 3mm drill bit:
And in the lid of the top bucket so when I sparge I can drip the liquid on to the barley without disturbing the grain bed:
And also fitted the airlock to the other lid ready for fermentation:
Ready to test:
Testing the Seal on the tap: I had to remove the tap and cover the threads in PTFE tape to stop a drip, it worked perfectly the second time! So it was filled with all the other equipment and disinfectant and left for an hour.
Break for refreshment:
The brew:
I came up with this on Beers-smith basically by tweaking Mysterio’s SNPA brew that I found on the forum. I want to make a single hop pale ale as I want to get a feel for the hop without mixing it with too many other flavours. I’ve gone with Perle for no good reason really:
Ingredients: I didn’t use the Northern Brewer in the end as apparently it quite similar to Perle and I want to get to know the Perle exclusively.
Maris Otter:
Otter, Crystal and the hops weighed and bagged-up ready for the additions:
I preheated the oven to about 60’C and prepared 6.18L of water @ 75.7’C
Mash in the grain:
Target temperature was 67.8’C mine settled down to 69’C, I think that’s pretty good. I’m really impressed with how well Beer Smith calculated that!
The mash was placed in the oven for 60 min,
Meanwhile; I set up the Lauter Tun and prepared the first 2.3L of Sparge water @ 75.6 degrees
I regularly took the mash in and out of the oven to check the temperature and adjust the ovens thermostat, I thought I had it about spot on after 40 min but in the last 15 min the temperature rose to 73’C I’m not sure howmuch damage that might have done (any comment?)
The Mash was transferred to the Lauter Tun:
First running’s; Recorded a SG of 1.060 Which seemed a little high, first runnings were returned to the tun through its perforated lid
Run-Off
At this point I realised that it was going to take hours! And I should have drilled about three times as many holes in the bottom of the bucket! So i got a beer a stool and a guitar and got comfortable.
Beer Smiths instructions were to sparge once with 2.72L and once with 6.53L. For convenience I sparged 4 times with 2.3L. I don’t know what difference this would make (Any Comment)
Very late at night some hours later all the wart had run through: Target SG was 1.049 I got 1.040, I was quite happy with that.
Starting the Boil:
Rolling Boil achieved, Timer started and 60min Hops added:
I realised at this point I’d forgotten to activate the yeast; I used a little of the wart at 30 degrees to get it going:
Added 30 min and 10 min Hops as time went on:
60min up and the wart was transferred to the sink for cooling, I sat it in ice cold water and ran the cold tap constantly so water ran off down the overflow (not particularly environmentally friendly is it!) As the temperature passed below 80’C I added the final Hops.
Once Cool I transferred it to the brewing container, dropping the liquid from height to Aerate. This again took hours, I’ll have to get a bigger bore tube for next time and think of someway of stopping the hops from blocking the end.
Target Final volume and SG was 10L and 1.056. I got almost 10L and 1.052 so again I was pretty happy with that:
The yeast was really going now so It was pitched and the fermenter was placed in a closet, this small room was the immersion heater on the wall and stay at an almost constant 21’C day and night. I fitted a blow of tube in the morning as I’d learnt the hard way previously that it can get very messy if the yeast goes Mad!
I got to bed at about 5am, some areas defiantly need speeding up!
i really hope it has not put you off but with hind sight im sure you can see a way to speed things up a little now and after all Ag tastes much better than kits 