This was my first AG brew day (I've done malt extract and wine before). I've spent about 2 months reading and obtaining kit here and there so I kind of thought I knew enough so that I wouldn't get stuck and mess up.... this was true on the whole but still a few unexpected things happened, hopefully I recovered (I'll know when I am drinking it). I'll post some of the questions relating to it in other sections where they're more appropriate.
From the fabulous book, "Brew Your Own British Real Ale" by Graham Wheeler I chose the Ruddles Best recipe for my first attempt. I won't put the recipe here as I don't want to infringe on copyright. The total brew amount I went for was 19 litres.
Kit:
My boiler from a nice man on Ebay.
My boiler wearing a handsome jacket. It was originally intended to double as a mash-tun, hence the insulation of 4 layers of camping mats. The tape has since been replaced with Duct Tape as the Gaffer tape started to come off at around 30 degrees on a test boil (as seen in the pic). I heated the water to boiling the night before the brew and the next day it was at 69 degrees so it saved a bit of time.
My mash-tun with it's 4 layered camping mat jacket (the lid has some as well) and mash/sparging bag fitted.
Milk Thermometer
Wort Cooler from another nice man on Ebay.
My home made sparger! I saw someone had done this on another website which I can't seem to find anymore. He made a better job than me, I'm kinda rubbish at DIY
I've had a fermenting bin and two pressure barrels in the loft for probably about 15 years. I had to add a photo of this, there was a small amount of an old brew in the bottom which stank of vinegar. For some reason it had "imploded" the barrel. The plastic on the barrel is very thick, this was never going back into shape so had to be binned.
OK, let the brew day commence!
The Alk' test went pink at 0.26, for the 26.1l of liquor I needed this equated to 22.707ml of CRS, 4.76g of DLS with the grain and 13.51g at the start of the boil. I hope I got my figures right!
Gristy goodness! It smelt lovely.
I found that the lid wouldn't go on tight to the mush-tun any longer, probably due to the camping mats and string from the mash bag. To make sure it was fitted snuggly I needed to put something heavy on top.... the boiler!
The grist after 90 minutes of mashing. I had some problems with the temperature dropping too low after adding the grist and panicking I decided to draw off some of the liquid through the tap and reheat it. I was careful not to go above the strike heat, re-adding it to the grist brought it up to 65 degrees. I figured it was close enough and my thermometer may not be so accurate anyway so I went ahead with the mash. Over 90 minutes it lost 1 degree of heat, I love my camping mats!
Sparge time. I was taking the water from the boiler (on the right) into a 2 litre jug and pouring it gently into the sparger.. it rained down quite nicely in the tun, fingers crossed that my cheaper than a quid sparger worked
I was then drawing off the liquid through the tap and collecting it in the fermenting bin the middle of the picture. I did regular tasting and it tasted GOOOOD! In fact, I used all the liquor and it was still running sweet, not sure if I should have added more at this point as you'll see below I lost quite a bit of liquid.
Just started to boil, hops in!
Here, albeit a bit steamy I've just added the last ten minute hops. The level has dropped quite significantly.
After the boil showing just how much has gone into the air.
I adapted my wort cooler with snap-on/off hose pipe attachments. Here I've run my garden hose through the back door.
Here you can see it entering the garage and connecting to the cooler. Another peice of hose is connected to the other end....
...and is being used to wash my boiler
After transferring the liquid from the boiler into the fermenter I noticed, when aerating it, that there were loads of bits of hops etc floating around and getting stuck to the paddle. Now maybe it's supposed to ferment with them in but TBH I really didn't know and decided I would be better off filtering it. Therefore I poured it into my (now nice and clean) mash tun fitted with mash bag, then after removing the bag back into the fermenting bin. This added a bit of air but I was still up for giving it a good paddling
The gravity when cool was 1040, the original gravity in the receipe is 1037. I figured that's not too far away and TBH, didn't know what to do to adjust it anyway!
Here's what was left in the bag after that filtering.
My reclaimed yeast, made a few days before and still bubbling away. For anyone interested I posted details of that here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27303&start=15
.. and here it is, pride of place in my spare room.
After about 15 hours, nice head forming.
After 24 hours.
At the end of what seemed like a very long day I think it went pretty well. If anything I've learned that I can prepare more the day before such as measuring out the grains/hops etc. and sterilising the equipment. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Kegman.
