In a way, it was all thanks to the fact that Richard Burns who runs Cheers, my local homebrew in Cheam, happened to be on holiday a couple of weeks ago when I called in for my usual supplies with the need for another brew imminent. A lady was looking after the shop for him while he was away, but he hadn't ordered any 15kg tubs of pale malt extract before he went and the last one had been sold a few days earlier. Mild panic set in - what was I to do? I compromised with a Woodfordes Norfolk Nog kit as a stop-gap, but I then began to question my old habits of a lifetime.
My extract brews were OK, but they were all brewed to a standard recipe that I’d been using for years and I rather fancied a change. They were also prone to a noticeable protein haze. A 15kg tub of extract cost almost £70. I would use 2.5kg per brew, plus 500gm glucose, so I would get 6 brews from one tub. However there was limited scope to vary the outcome, and I wanted to try something different for a change. After researching this very informative forum I realised that the cost of grain vs extract was about half, plus there was an almost infinite variety of recipe possibilities .
My mind was made up - AG was now the way forward for me.
Another trip to Cheers, and Richard back from his hols in India set me up with lots of good advice and documentation, plus a new 60 litre boiler, a 25kg sack of Maris Otter pale malt and other ingredients. I’d already made a false bottom for my mash tun made from an old fermenting bin using DAAB’s template, and insulated it.
This was my recipe, which I’ve called: Catz Whisker:
23 litre batch
Malts: (90 min mash)
4150 gm Maris Otter pale malt
400 gm Crystal malt
75 gm Chocolate malt
150 gm Flaked maize
250 gm Demerara sugar (added to boil)
Hops: (90 min boil)
40 gm Fuggles (4.2%) - 90 min
30 gm Challenger (7.1%) - 90 min
10 gm Styrian Goldings - 15 min
Irish Moss - 15 min
Yeast - Safale 04
EBU = 33.1
On Richard’s advice I went for a less “porridge-like†water/grain ratio of 3:1. The mash tun insulation proved to be exceptionally effective, as the grist temperature remained at 67 deg C throughout the duration of the 90 min mash. The batch sparge calculator specified a 6.7 litre top-up at the end of the mash, but I had to be content with 6.5 litres as the limits of my old 5-gallon FV had been reached as it was by then brimming full right to the rim.
After the second 14.8 litre batch of liquor had sparged through I ended up with around 34 litres of wort in the boiler, which was about 5 over the estimate. By the end of the scheduled 90 minute boil, and with the lid having been left half open to try and maximise the evaporation rate it was still only down to about 30 litres, so I decided to let the boil continue for a further half hour to reduce the volume as much as possible before adding the late hops and Irish Moss.
After cooling I finished with 29 litres of wort, but running this off into the FV took over an hour. I assumed this was because the hop strainer had become blocked (it had never done so before), but eventually discovered that it had become detached from the tap when I had knocked it during stirring, and the tap had then become blocked.
Much, much, later I had a full 23 litre FV. Being the tight-arse that I am, I was loth to waste the remaining 4.5 litres of perfectly good wort that still remained, so drained that into a sterilised bucket and will ferment that separately. The OG came out at 1047, which I think is a pretty reasonable efficiency for a 27.5 litre yield. If I’d not over-done the sparge volume that would have worked out at an OG of 1056 for 23 litres.
Well, it’s been a long, but I have to say, more than usually satisfying day - and it will be the first of many more.
