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[Calum]

Seasons Greetings Chaps! I hope you all managed to get through it without too much grief.

My computer is in the spare bedroom which has finally been vacated by my parents so my absense has been due to being unable to gain access. So they have gone and I'm back.

I have just been informed that my wife is taking my daughter to a christmas party tomorrow and should be away for a few hours (I say just informed, apparently I was told yesterday somewhere between the aussie shiraz and the malt whisky ). This leaves me with the responsibility of looking after my son for the afternoon. Now my son is seven and has a playstation and Santa was good enough to bring him a scalextrics and I am assuming that I will have the opporchancity to get a brew on the go.

I will brew with what I have available. I happen to have 4kg of pale malt, a load of crystal, chocolate and black malts. An unoppened packet of Progress makes up the bulk of my hops and I have some from my garden (variety still to be determined) and some hallertau in the freezer. The only yeast I have is Safale-S-04. Looks like I have plenty of options but I will make up my mind on the final recipe tomorrow.

More details tomorrow and I am willing to take suggestions to point me in the right direction. I have looked through the Wheeler book and if I swap his fuggles for my progress I could make a Donnington SBA.

[Bigster]

good luck and good on you.

I am itching to brew but my brewery/garage (brewarage sounds better) is full to busting with all sorts of junk which has got to dangerous levels in the last week so must get shot of first

Have a great day

[Vossy1]

Enjoy your brew day Calum

[DRB]

Happy brewing

[Western Brewer]

Now my son is seven and has a playstation and Santa was good enough to bring him a scalextrics and I am assuming that I will have the opporchancity to get a brew on the go.

No chance! You'll be racing him in the British Xmas Grand Prix

[Calum]

It turns out that my sealed packet of Progress is infact Goldings (its an easy mistake to make when you don't check ). I'm using the Donnington SBA as a base and here is how it looks.

4kg of Pale (Maris Otter)
200g of Crystal
454g of Golden Syrup

Hops
85g Goldings at start of boil
15g Goldings last 15 mins

1 Whirlfloc tablet last 15 minutes (I got free sample from H&G)

Yeast will be the Safale-S-04

I have the mash water heating up at the moment and the idea is that I get the mash going by about 1pm. I'll then fill the boiler again with sparge water and take my son swimming for an hour.

[bitter_dave]

That looks like a damn fine beer

Hoping it's going well

[Calum]

So far so good. I've managed to collect about 27litres of wort in three batches. Just the boil to go today and then I'll leave it overnight to cool down.

[SteveD]

Have a good boil Incidentally, why do you want to let it cool overnight? Don't we want to crash cool, force a cold break, aerate, and pitch the yeast all as quick as possible to minimise to exposure time to all the unpleasant nasties that are just itching to corrupt and violate our fresh and innocent wort when it's at its most vulnerable?

(I found an earwig floating in a bucket of cooling wort once....'orrible little b@stard!)

[Calum]

I've not got the equipment to force cool the wort. The closest I ever came to that malarky was putting it in the bath with some cold water which speeded the process up a tad.

I've got the lid snapped on tight so I'm fairly confident it should be okay if I let it cool down overnight and then add the yeast in the morning.

[Calum]

I meant to add that I took a leaf out of B_Ds book and added 10g more goldings at the end of the boil to soak for 20 minutes (there weren't enough left to keep for another brew and I fancied giving this a go).

[iowalad]

Sounds like a nice recipe. Tried Donnington SBA (and BB) for the first time in October.

Since we returned to the States I have found a number of recipes calling for golden syrup. That is hard to come by here. Was pleasantly surprised that my wife has evidently stockpiled a good share of the free worlds golden syrup supply for her sponge and treacle!

I look forward to hearing how this beer turns out.

[SteveD]

Sounds like a nice recipe. Tried Donnington SBA (and BB) for the first time in October.

Since we returned to the States I have found a number of recipes calling for golden syrup. That is hard to come by here. Was pleasantly surprised that my wife has evidently stockpiled a good share of the free worlds golden syrup supply for her sponge and treacle!

I look forward to hearing how this beer turns out.

In addition to having a far-sighted wife, golden syrup is 'invert sugar' which may be available through US homebrew outlets as they seem very comprehensive in what they have available.

[SteveD]

I've not got the equipment to force cool the wort. The closest I ever came to that malarky was putting it in the bath with some cold water which speeded the process up a tad.

I've got the lid snapped on tight so I'm fairly confident it should be okay if I let it cool down overnight and then add the yeast in the morning.

fair enough. The bath cooling works fairly well, particularly in winter, if you stir the wort gently to maximise heat transfer. Once it's fairly cool, vigorous stirring and sloshing would aerate it to boot.

[Calum]

After the boil I ended up with just under 20l at 1054. I diluted down with 4litres of water to around my target OG of 1044.

I'll leave in primary at the back of the utility room for a couple of weeks and then go straight to bottle.