) thought it might be useful for some other brewers. This is a brew that I had planned to brew with a couple of other brewers, but as I did it on my own, the name reflects the number of brewers 
Effin Half Wit - Belgian Wit Bier - Aiming for 60L at 1.051 and 21 IBU
6250g Lager Malt
6250g Wheat Malt
500g Flaked Oats
250g Oat hulls
100g Hallertau Hersbrucker (4.6%)
50g Curacao Orange Peel Last 15 Minutes Boil
10g Ground Coriander Last 15 Minutes
Should have used some raw wheat which is traditional in Belgian Wheats . . . but I had lots of wheat malt and no raw wheat.
Will ferment with WLP300 Hefeweizen I rather than a Belgian wheat yeast as well
Used a modified Hochkurz Mash schedule with a Glucan/Ferrulic acid rest
45C Strike 20 minutes
62C Saccharification Mash - 20 Minutes
68C Dextrinisation Mash - 60 Minutes
72C Mash out
Piccies . . . Not quite the piccy fest it normally is, but you've seen most of them before.
13Kg of grist, Lager malt as a base above the FB, then wheat malt mixed with oat hulls, and the light stuff on the side are the flaked oats.With 40L of mash liquor added via underletting a nice floating mash.
After 10 minutes the HERMS was fired up . . . New brewery Pic, 50L thermobox Mash Tun, 150L Boiler with Shroud, and the New HERMS unit, all with Camlock Disconnects.
Running off is not difficult either, feed to the base of the Boiler to avoid excessive aeration . . . Hop Stopper in place as well . . . Although I did forget to swap out the standard arm I have in there for liquor transfers
, but as the tap is positioned at above the 20L mark it's an easy one to change. Nice rolling boil too
Hops ready to go in after the initial foam from the coppering up has subsided.
After a strong boil with Curacao Orange peel (50g) being added at the 15 minute to go mark and Coriander (10g) It was time to cool with the Plate Chiller, and transfer to Connor the conical
And the final Filth shot . . . best thing about this copper is that there is a three inch plug in the bottom which pushes out allowing the debris to flush out to drain. . . . Around 2L of wort left in the boiler, but I reckon I can reduce that by slowing the transfer down as the boiler gets to empty.
Brew was pretty straightforward . . . Nice and simple in many ways. . . I need to work out a more efficient way to get the wort into the FV. . . . I only just had a long enough piece of Hose to reach . . . And that was after moving the kettle and the chiller to the shed doorway. . . . It'll be much easier when Conner sits on the floor rather than a bench . . . Must have been pumping wort up to 9 feet or more to fill via the overflow.
My new spiny sparger worked well too, talk about make life easy. . . Considering I was trying a lot of new kit, and some new methods I was very pleased. The new 50L mash tun with the bottom drain worked really well. For the first time in a very long while I pumped directly from the Mash tun through the HERMS and although I was expecting the mash bed to compact down and stick there were no issues . . . and that was with a 50% wheat grist . . . the Oat Hulls did work though.
HERMS unit worked really well keeping the Wort within a degree of the set temperature, and temperature increases were performed speedily.
