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Update : Last friday the primary was now available when I bottled the batch of Ringwood Old T . Incidentally, I didn't prime this batch. I'm finding from previous brews, that the combination of 300g of Torrified and priming with just a mere 1g per bottle, has been producing too manny gushers. I'll do the same with the 'Proper Job' which I started on Tuesday.
I followed Johnyboy's recipe posted on 21st Nov 18, using 6kg of Otter, 300g of Torrified, 120g of Crystal plus the 3 American hops, plus water adjuncts. I wasn't sure how much liquor to use (I haven't downloaded the Beer engine yet) so I looked at a G.Walker recipe for 23L at 5.7%, with a similar grain bill. My Brewer instructions recommend a wetter mash ratio than usual, so I opted for mashing with 20L at 64C and sparging with 15L at 80C. I'd run out of light crystal so was forced to use dark. It does look a bit dark in the mashing photo attached but we'll wait till the first bottled is opened in 10 weeks time. The slotted plate supplied with the Brewer is ok for mashing but is a bit too quick for sparging, so I bought a sparging bar to slow things down a bit. It slowed the sparge down from 5 mins to 15 minutes.
Earlier posts suggest that St.Austel use a blend of yeasts at Primary stage. I'll save my last bottle of Proper Job for harvesting porpoises (!) next year
Meanwhile I've opted for a blend of half pkt of Mangrove Jacks M42 and half pkt of Safale SO4, which I started on Monday in a demijon with one litre of water and 80g spraymalt. This was added yesterday and is bubbling away nicely in the Primary, this morning. Prior to adding the starter my hydrometer showed 1052 gravity. My only concern is the high loss of 27L preboil, down to 23.5 litre postboil. Seems a bit excessive?