Second brew - Imperial Pale Ale

[agc]

For second attempt at all-grain brewing, I decided to go for something with slightly more complicated recipe; this is also from the CAMRA book.

It all went fairly well, but first of all I overfilled the mash tun with liquor, then drained too much, by which time the temperature had dropped alarmingly low and I had to top up with boiled purified water from the kettle.
This first comedy of errors having been sorted out, I again failed to take into account the dead space in my mash tun below the false bottom (3 litres), so when I doughed-in the mash was all very gloopy until I realised what I'd done, and with all the subsequent arsing about with topping up *yet again* I was panicking that the temperature had dropped too far, but thankfully it maintained about 65C until the end of the mash.
This time the false bottom actually worked (last time the dead space was full of grain because it didn't seal properly), and after taking a couple of jugs-full of rather turbid runnings which I put back in the mash, the wort ran clear so I started the sparge.
Once I had pumped the bulk of the wort out slowly I was able to more or less maintain the level by adjusting the sparge pump and extraction pump speeds using my home-made (from Maplin bits) 2-channel PWM pump controller.
Just when I thought I was home and dry, I almost had a pair of disasters when first the boiler boiled-over and sent hot sticky wort over everything (me excluded). At the end of the boil, as I was crash-cooling, I discovered that the boiler tap was actually rotating because the seal had given up during the boil - how on earth it didn't send boiling wort over me I have no idea! My stainless-steel mesh hop strainer worked a treat, and this time I not only remembered to aerate the wort before pitching the yeast, I also allowed it to come up to room temperature before pitching.

According to the recipe I should have had OG 1050, but my efficiency must have been better because I got 1056 or slightly higher. I had a quick taste of the wort before pitching, and I think it's going to be a cracker - even though it was obviously very sweet, there was a lovely bitterness and aroma to it which bodes well for when it's ready to drink in 4-6 weeks' time.

I used a 2 litre Wyeast 1028 "London Ale" starter, and 18 hours later it's got a nice healthy thick fluffy head on it.

[pantsmachine]

Good effort, Sounds like an enjoyable if slightly stressful brewday. We'll ask for pictures later......

[micmacmoc]

That all sounds very familiar! I've currently got a stuck mash in my tun....theres a slow dribble so I'm not stressing but its so full when I tried to blow through the tap to free it spluttered hot wort out of the top so I'm sticky now. Tasted good though!

Which IPA did you do?
G'luck!

[agc]

It was Imperial Pale Ale from the Graham Wheeler/CAMRA book - recipe as follows (from memory, so I may have got the quantities wrong):
4.8Kg pale malt
300g crystal malt
300g rolled wheat
300g rolled maize
85g Goldings (90m)
25g Goldings (15m)

It's a nice dark coppery colour and has a mouth-watering bitter aroma to it.