Batch Size (L): 23.0
Total Grain (kg): 4.500
Total Hops (g): 65.0
Estimated Original Gravity (OG): 1.044
Estimated Final Gravity (FG): 1.011
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.40 %
Colour (EBC): 12.0
Bitterness (IBU): 33.0 (Tinseth)
Estimated Mash Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 60
Mash (Minutes): 90 @66C
Mash Liquor (L): 11.25
Grain Bill
4.000 kg Maris Otter Pale Malt 5.0 EBC (88.90%)
0.300 kg Caramalt 50 EBC (6.70%)
0.200 kg Torrefied Wheat 4.0 EBC (4.40%)
Hop Bill
20.0 g Challenger Whole 7.70%AA @ 60 Minutes
20.0 g East Kent Goldings Pellet 5.90%AA @ 60 Minutes
25.0 g Celeia (Styrian Goldings) Whole 4.20%AA @ 10 Minutes
Misc Bill
1 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 Minutes (Boil)
Yeast
Safale S-04 @20C
I have finally brewed my first 3 vessel AG brew, and I have to say that it felt as though it went quite well. All of my homemade pieces of equipment worked well with no leaks or drama's, ideally I could do with more space in the Brew-shed and it would be nice to be able to have my kit permenantly set up, but other than that I'm happy
I was planning to brew GW's Black Sheep Ale but decided that I wanted to brew something more pale for the Spring/Summer, so I have created my own recipe as above. Why Essex Pale Ale? Well it's brewed in Essex and it's a pale ale
After much discussion on JBK I only treated my water with a crushed Campden tablet the night before and will see how this first brew tastes. When I thought about it, that is all that I had done with my small-scale BIAB's.As my HLT can only hold 30L, I heated up about 15L of liquor for my strike water which only took about 25mins to heat to 80C. I preheated my MT with 1 kettle full of boiling water about 10 mins before I wanted to add the strike liquor. After tipping out the pre-heating water I drained just over 11L of strike liquor into my MT and let it settle at 74C before adding my grains. Thanks to the calculator on JBK, my mash measured between 66-67C depending on what part of the mash I checked, so I'm calling it 66.5C. On went the lid followed by a piece of Cellotex and a clean dust sheet that was to hand. I now filled my HLT up to 29L and switched it back on to heat up the sparge liquor while the mash was doing it's thing. After 90mins I had only lost 1C which I was quite happy with TBH, considering the ambient temp in my shed was only 10C.
I recirculated about 4L of wort before it got less murky. Now I put my sparge manifold in place and started the fly-sparge. My liqour was between 85C-87C during the sparge before it left the HLT. It took just over an hour to collect the 28L of wort that I estimated that I needed for my 23L brew. As I was sparging quite slowly, I waited until there was 10L of wort in my boiler before switching on the first element. After I had collected 28L of wort I took a gravity reading and had a pre-boil gravity of 1.036. I then switched on the second element and I had a vigourous boil and a good hot break within 10mins (4.8kw of power clearly kicks ass!). Once the foam had died down I added my 60min bittering hops and switched back to one element and had a nice rolling boil. After 30mins of boiling I notiched that I had lost 2L of wort already, and as I had only estimated losing 3L over 60mins, I added another 1L of wort that I had continued to collect while the boil was going on. I added my chiller with 15 mins to go and switched the second element back on to compensate for the cold copper cooling down the wort. Finally I added my 10min hops and Irish Moss. It took 1h10mins to cool my 25L of wort to 24C before I drained it off into my FV. I ended up with 22L of wort in my FV, so lost 3L of wort to hops, trub and boiler deadspace.
My FG was 1.046, so I must have done something right
Brewday Pic's -
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A big thanks to everyone on JBK who has helped me get to this point in my brewing
MB
<-- He keeps saying " go and lift the FV lid to have a look and a sniff" "check the gravity why don't you?"