Well that's my first stout out of the way, and very enjoyable it was too.
Had a couple of changes to the brewery today and both worked well
I decided today that instead of adding an additional quantity of liquor to the first batch sparge at the end of mashing, that I would add all the liquor from the off, and it worked o.k
I always take samples from my runnings. 1st batch sparge were at 15.5 brix, 2nd @ 6 brix and combined pre boil @ 10.6.
I also take readings throughout the boil, and they included, 11 brix @ 57.5ltr and 11.8 brix @ 53.75 ltr and finally 12 brix @ 53ltr which is pretty much spot on.
Problems, well, I heated the liquor to a pre strike temp of 45 deg c assuming it would come down to 40 deg c for the oat rest...wrong.
It stayed at 43 deg c throughout the rest, partly aided by me overheating the HE prior to recirc
Apart from that, the colour was just too light during the 40 deg c rest. I should have expected this as I was already concerned that I hadn't crushed the roast barley enough. So I fished out most of the floating barley kernals and crushed them 'ish' in a pestle and mortar prior to adding them back into the mash. The colour soon changed
The new changes to the V1 brewery
The new 12" Morebeer FB in the copper
Changes to my Hop and Grape false bottom. I have replaced the long legs with M3 x 12mm button head bolts, held in place by M3 spring washers and M3 nuts, all ss, naturally
This was also the first outing of my new Morebeer pump as the recirc pump in the HERMS and it behaved perfectly, even when I cranked the flow rate up deliberatley (to test it) using a mash that contained oats
These pumps are oh so quiet
Mr Bracken taking advantage of the heated wood, where the runnings collection vessel has just come from
Too vigorous a boil
