Brew Evening - Nelson Sauvin Ale

[Garth]

Having a bit of a late one for a change, the HLT is nearly at strike temperature,

Done this one several times before, each time changing things but the best one was this recipe. It's all pellets this time, so the 90min addition has been changed.

These hops are Craftbrewer 06 harvest but still smell amazing.

Yeast-wise I'll probably go with Nottingham as I have at least 400g to use up, and 2 whirlfloc in at 5/10mins

[DarloDave]

Should be a goodun Garth, ill be getting this one brewed very soon aswell.

[Garth]

here's some pictures from last night, and this morning,

I left the boiler to clean till today as it was midnight by the time I was finished, a strange funky hoppy smell greeted me when I opened the garage door this morning.


Filling the tun with strike water


Crystal and torrified weighed out


Nelson 60/15/0 additions and a couple of Whirlfloc


Mash temperature


Recirculating mash liquor 10 mins before end of mash


First runnings into the underback...err old fermenter


Sparging


Checking the gravity during sparging, the view down a refractometer, it must be a first for JBK....I make this about 1025


Whoops, turned my back for a second and over she goes.....


Wort out of chiller into fv


Green hop slop in the bottom of the boiler


The hopstopper does it's job well again. mmm tasty

[Jim]

Nice pics, Garth.

How did you take the one looking down the refractometer, then?

[Garth]

Nice pics, Garth.

How did you take the one looking down the refractometer, then?

It was very technical and used loads of specialist camera equipment Jim, I could explain it here but it might take up too much bandwidth.....


nah, not really, I just stuck the camera lens onto the rubber eyepiece and held it to a lightbulb, I could see when it was lined up correctly on the camera screen.

[adm]

Nice brew day Garth! Love the pics.

I like the recipe too....if that's the same as the one of yours I tried before, it'll be great.

[Garth]

Yep, it's the one I sent you, I did a later one with Perle for bittering and then the Nelson for 15/0mins and it changed it dramatically, it lost all of the Nelson flavour and aroma, as if it was masked out by the Perle, so it's back to the original.

[Horden Hillbilly]

Looking good there Garth, high time I got my finger out & did a brew myself I think.

[Garth]

I have loads of lager malt if you want some Dave

on another note I thought it might be high time the CFC got a good cleaning out, hmmm

I flushed it through with cold water after the brew as I usually do and the remaining beer came out then it ran clear,
I then filled the HLT halfway to cover both elements and heated it to around 60C then added a 1/4 tub of Wizz sodium percarbonate and dissolved it, I then pumped it through my CFC, oh my God, it came out brown with bits in it.

I then turned the pump off and left it for a good half hour to soak with the solution inside, came back and pumped the rest through, it was even browner and had even more hop bits in it. I rinsed it until it ran clear, how I haven't had an infected beer I'll never know, I checked the end of the inner tube and it was gleaming inside. Guess I've been lucky for those 60 + AGs, although I do run boiling hot wort through for a minute before turning on the cold water tap.

scary, CFC and plate chiller users beware!!

[Garth]

that's a canny idea Chris, cheers

I never thought of that but it does make sense

[adm]

scary, CFC and plate chiller users beware!!

That's the biggest worry i have with the plate chiller.

Although I went into it with open eyes and assumed that it WOULD get bits of crap left in it no matter how well I tried to clean it, so i did the SS discos thing and at least now it's really easy to flush through and bake in the oven. I figure that 1-2 hours at 200C will kill everything stone dead, so if there is crap left, at least it's dead crap.