First Brewday! Step by step, as it happens.

[sllimeel]

stevetk189

Welcome to the dark side as they say. One thing for brewing a small batch is that any mistakes are probably better found out this way before stepping up the volumes.

Where in France are you as we have a holiday home near Limoges?

[stevetk189]

stevetk189

Welcome to the dark side as they say. One thing for brewing a small batch is that any mistakes are probably better found out this way before stepping up the volumes.

Where in France are you as we have a holiday home near Limoges?

Small world, we're north east of Limoges, about 20 mins on the far side of Ambazac. I won't say where exactly as you might send someone round to nick my telly

Cheers for the welcome, pretty sure the first brew has turned out crap. Popped a bottle the other night and aside from a few small bubbles it's flat as a fart, a wee bit cloudy and pretty much tasteless.

Some important lessons learned from brewday1 that I hope not to repeat.

Just waiting on getting a 9.2kw three ring gas burner for my new, larger boiler. I am now sure I didn't manage a good rolling boil for the full hour just using regular kitchen gas hobs (bottled gas here, no mains). Mash strike temp needs to be higher too. Topping up the boiled wort after evaporation losses with fresh water also stuffed me I think.

Next brew will be a 5 gallon one as I also think the larger volume of grains in the mash tun and then hops in the boiler will act as a better filter bed when sparging and then running off after the boil.

[stevetk189]

Something of a brighter update.

I decided to prime one of the bottles of my first brew on the 19th Aug and cracked it open tonight.

What a difference!!!!

Lively, hoppy, malty and a lovely smooth mouth feel.

A nice head on pouring that although didn't last very long hung around enough to coat the sides of glass on the way down.

One bug bear is it was cloudy. Sort of a Hoeffgarden cloudiness, no off tastes just IMO too cloudy for the beer type.

Overall, delighted after a not so happy start.

Tomorrow I'll prime the other bottles and give them a few days in the warm before putting them in the cellar.

I have a friend from the UK arriving on Monday who is kindly bringing a load of grains with him and so, should be getting brew two on the go on Tues, maybe Wednesday - I'm thinking either ESB or Everards Tiger from GWs booook!

Also, I have built an enclosure for my mash tun out of some 40mm PU foam that was kicking about in need of a job. Just need to sort out a lid and hopefully the extra insulation will keep my mash temp higher and more stable for the duration of the mash.

In other news, I got out local chemist to order a 0 to 10pH test kit, turns out our supply is 6.5 (ish) so I'll be popping some gypsum in the next batch to try and get some calcium into our uber granite area water. I think at 6.5 there should be enough play to get some gypsum in and taking the mash effect into account keep the pH from going too low... I'll have to wait until I test the mash to be sure... watch this space.

If anyone does actually still read this thread LOL if i dough in and test the pH and find out there is room for some gypsum to go in, is there a way of doing this? I've read about the gypsum being best added to the grist. I've also read it doesn't dissolve too easily in water alone so I imagine this would make it difficult to add once the mash was started.