I though it was about time the FutureBrewer actually STARTED brewing, so Tuesday became my first brewday.
Without doubt, I've made a few rookie mistakes - feel free to point them out for future reference - but all in all, I really enjoyed the process.
So, with Fullers ESB being my favourite brew, I thought I'd have a crack at the ESB recipe in Graham Wheeler's book, BYOBRA, and for authenticity, I bought the WPL002 Fullers yeast strain.
Yeast Starter
I made up my yeast starter on Saturday afternoon and put it in my fermenting cupboard.
I thought there'd be more activity in the bottle, but there was a steady release of (nice smelling) CO2 through the airlock. I gave it a shake every now and then to keep it active...
On Monday night I assembled my kit in the kitchen and brought around 24 litres to the boil in my adapted Buffalo boiler popped a campden tablet in and left it to stand overnight with the lid on.
Brewday revealed a leak between tap and connector...
Drippin' heck!
Not much of a leak, but enough to make me drain the boiler into a FV and fix it.
Raising the temperature on the fixed boiler
I saved two litres of liquor in a plastic bottle in case I needed to top up the boiler (I'll ask you all a question about this later...
)I bought the boiler up to around 66C and weighed out my crystal malt.
Crystal malt
I went with 66C because, although it's not a 'mashable' thing, the grains ARE in the mash tun for an all-grain brew, at 66C. Am I right? Also, I've read you can either keep them in for the duration of the boil - or conversely, NOT to leave them in longer than 30 mins or so because you'll start to extract 'astringent' flavours...
Feel free to voice opinions on this!
Steeping
I kept the boiler at this temp for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, I measured out the dry malt extract - quite a lot of it! Note the two full bags behind the scales.
At the end of steeping, the liquor had taken on a nice dark brown - not really done justice by the photo:
Steeping (after about 30 mins)
I turned off the boiler, removed the grainbag...
...and added the DME. It doesn't half clump up at the merest hint of moisture!
I made sure it had dissolved completely - and not fallen to the bottom of the boiler around the element - and switched it back on.FULL POWER
Foaming wort
As the boiler heated up, I weighed out the bittering hops as per Graham's recipe...
Hops
...and stirred them in when the rolling boil started.
Rolling boil
The kitchen smelt fantastic! I know it's a subjective thing, but what a great aroma!
Thankfully, SWMBO loves the smell too
To stop it getting too steamy in the flat, I opened the kitchen widow (next to the boiler) and used a fan to gently blow the steam outside.
I prepped the late hops and protofloc...
Hops & 'floc
...chucked them in, and connected up the immersion chiller to sterilise in the boiling wort for the final 10 mins.
Wort chiller
Boiler off - IC on!
When the wort temp dropped to around 25C-ish, I started to drain into a cleaned fermenting vessel, keeping my fingers crossed that my stainless braid hop strainer wouldn't clog up...
Draining
Run off
Right.
Rookie mistake
When I'd drained the wort I realised that I'd lost A LOT through evaporation (and into the grains & hops...)For a 19L brewlength and starting out with about 22 litres in the boiler, I ended up with around 12 litres of wort
I topped up with the 2 litres I had kept aside (is this the correct thing to do?
) and boiled up some tap water with a kettle and - probably foolishly - poured in the boiler to cool with the chiller This probably messed up the hop bed and stirred up the gunk that should be left behind.
I'd really like advice here on what I should do next time. Should I calculate how much I lost this time, and compensate at the start of the boil with much more liquor?
Anyway, I drained the cooled water up to the 19 litres, used a sterilised paint stirrer (.89p from Wickes) and drill to aerate and pitched the yeast starter.
The stirrer worked a treat, when I got the hang of NOT splashing the walls and myself in wort. I think I need a drill with a slower speed setting 
I put the future beer into the fermenting cupboard...
Temperature controlled cupboard
...and started tidying up the brewery/kitchen.
I've got to say, when I'd finished and sat down with a beer, I felt pretty downbeat...
I think the excitement of the day, coupled with the cock-ups left me a bit blue
And, it seemed that nothing was happening in the FV...
But, Wednesday morning, I was greeted by this:
Crikey!
And this morning, the krausen's even higher... and it smells GREAT!
Comments welcomed!
Cheers all (and a Merry Christmas too!)
FB.
