Second All Grain -a golden ale using organic first gold hops

[BrewerBen]

So here is my Second All Grain, its largely based on my first one but scaled.Also i dropped the bitterness a little and adjusted the aroma hop quantities to use up what i had.

4.50 kgPale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC)
Grain 0.20 kgCaramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (118.2 EBC)
Grain 0.20 kgWheat, Torrified (3.3 EBC)Grain --

25.00 gmFirst Gold [9.30 %] (60 min)
20.00 gmFirst Gold [9.30 %] (15 min)Hops 10 min0.50 tsp
Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)

15.00 gm First Gold [9.30 %] (2 min)
23.00 gmFuggles [4.50 %] (2 min)

The brew length was 23ltrs
IBU - 35.1
OG estimate 0.048

Grain Bill:


Hops:


Boiler:


Mashing. The mash tun was just a cool box out of the garage, no tap or straining manifold - its still a cool box. The mash temp started at 69c and ended at 64c after the 90 minutes:


Batch Sparge:


Boil:


I skimmed this off just before i added the first hop additions:


My high tech straining solution after realising i didnt have a hop strainer in the boiler. It was a bit slow towards the end but good for airation i guess.


I had a go at making a yeast starter following the guide on this site:


And the mext morning:


The day went relative smoothly with only a few rookie errors. Towards the end of the boil i thought the OG was going to be less than 0.040 so i panicked and added some DME. It turns out this was completely unnecessary as i had taken the reading hot. Also it was lower as i had over done the sparging and had less evapouration than expected and ended with a brew length a shade over 25 ltrs. Even if i didnt add the DME the OG would have been fine. Also the straining solution failed when the strainer fell into the wort.
I ended up with 25 litres at 0.048 and it smell pretty good this morning.

[Horden Hillbilly]

Looking good there Ben, nice one!

[lastordersplease]

2nd AG already Ben, I can see there will be no stopping you at this lark. Nice yeasty head on you FV pic. Well done.

[HG]

Looking good Ben. What yeast did you use?

[fivetide]

Considering you didn't have a grain manifold or a hop strainer (or a chiller?) and the amount of effort most people go to to create these bits and pieces, I think that looks absolutely bloody marvellous! Fantastic stuff.

EDIT

Sorry your strainer fell in. Prop it up with paddle lying horizontally across the bin. This arrangment works like a magic wand or layline or something and guarantees good beer karma. I think.

[BrewerBen]

Looking good Ben. What yeast did you use?

I used 1 1/2 packets of S-04. I only added the extra half as it was left over from a small extract brew i did a while ago.

Thanks all for the kind words, i'm slowly learning the ins and outs of this all grain brewing. One key thing ive found is even if the odd thing goes wrong dont panic, keep going and at the end of it the chances are you'll still get a pretty good beer.

[BrewerBen]

All done, the Final gravity was 1.010 2 days in the row so i broke out the botteling stick.
As an extra treat for christmas i used a 1.5ltr Grolsch bottle i used to use to keep penny's and 5p's in, after counting there was enough to pay for the next brew.
I'm slowly moving back to bottles after not really liking the mini keg system, i also did 11 33cl bottles for those who are nervous about home brew and just want a small one.

[mysterio]

Looks good, be careful to keep those bottles out of the light though.

[fraserjaxx]

Well done Ben there's no stopping you now mate!!!

[arturobandini]

The mash tun was just a cool box out of the garage, no tap or straining manifold - its still a cool box. The mash temp started at 69c and ended at 64c after the 90 minutes:

It doesn't look like you've got those grains in a sparge/mashing bag either so how did you extract your liquor from the cool box full of grains? I see in another pick that you're sparging using a separate vessel which looks like one of DaaB's false bottom mash tun. Have I missed something in your sneaky brewing process?

[BrewerBen]

The mashed grains were poured into a fermentor with a richies sparge bag in it, it isnt clear in the pic as it does end up pretty tight to the fermentor. It was then drained into another fermentor as i was still using the boiler for the sparge water and then finally transfered into the boiler.

[arturobandini]

Gotcha. Was just wondering as I'm getting geared up for all grain and trying to drink in as much knowledge as I can.

Cheers, looks good by the way!