26/09/08 Gail Porter's sister

[adm]

Today I'm doing a Porter.....it's basically Spearmint Wino's Gail Porter recipe, but with the addition of 150g of roasted barley to use it up, and a switch to all Goldings hops as I've got bloody loads of them and am saving my Northdowns for another Northdown Wonder later.....Also changing the yeast to US05

Here's the recipe:

23L
Target OG: 1052
Target FG: 1013
ABV: 5.2%

Ingredients
UK Pale Ale Malt 5 Kg
UK Chocolate Malt 500 g
UK Black Malt 250 g
UK Roasted Barley 100 g


Hops
UK Golding 70g 90 min
UK Golding 10g 15 min
UK Golding 10g Flame Out

Yeast will be 2 packs of US-05.

Any thoughts on the hops or yeast ? At this point, it's just gone into the mash tun so I have some time if I need to change anything.....

Here's the first hardcore brew porn pics:


Grain bill - a nice bit of black on blonde action


Today they're doing it in the kitchen....shameless hussies


Mashed in. it's all getting a bit steamy, missus.....fnarr, fnarr


As the song says..."It's getting hot in here....let's take off all our clothes......"

OK. I'm off to take a cold shower while the mash progresses.

[adm]

Onwards and upwards...here's the progress so far....


Here's the mash after 90 mins


And the thermo reading. The mash tun has lost only 0.7C over the 90 minute period. What I did differently today was to heat my strike water up to 84C in the boiler, then transfer it to the non preheated tun. It stabilised at about 74C and I then mashed in. Seems to have worked a treat. the lesson learned is that there is more thermal mass in this tun than in the Thermos Coolbox, and a kettle full of boiling water isn't enough to preheat it. It really needs the entire batch of strike liquor.


Hops ready to go. All Goldings, 70G, 10, 10....


First runnings. Looks good, smells good, tastes good. It's ALL good.....


Pre-boil wort. Don't you just want to swim in it?


Smack on my target gravity of 1044 preboil. Collected 31L as planned.


Coming to the boil


Here we go.....a nice rolling boil


Aaaaaaaannd.....in with the first hops.

Bollocks.....just hit a minor annoyance. One of my boiler elements has cut out (and I only had the one turned off after i reached the boil), so my wort had come of the boil by the time I realised. Now the other one is turned on an bringing it back up to temp....so I guess that will proplong my boil time by 20 mins or so. Bugger.

[booldawg]

Great pics! Wouldnt worry too much about the element busting mid boil. As long as it got you through a decent hot break and you were able to maintain the boil for the desired period then all should be OK.

[adm]

So the minor annoyance turned into a major f**king pain the ass when the second element popped 5 minutes later.....

Fifteen minutes into the boil and suddenly not heat. Balls.

It's not good for your sanity to transfer 5 gallons of boiling wort into a king keg, then remove both elements from your boiler and scrub the crap off them, then syphon the hot wort back into the boiler again!!!!

I did not take pictures of this arsing around!

Anyway......back to the boil again now. With an hour's detour.

Live and learn. Today i learned not to forget to clean your boiler elements well after every brew.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.....

[spearmint-wino]

I would think it would benefit from a yeast that produces more esters and is less attenuative - windsor ideally, S-04 or Nottingham if you have it.
Nice to see Gail's still getting out and about

[adm]

Right. S04 it is then!

Good timing as I was just about to open the US05 to rehydrate it.....

[adm]

Well....disaster follows disaster today....

After a speedy recovery from the element debacle, I got the boil back on with no problems, then dumped the chiller in and turned it on at the end of the boil...all fine so far.

I noticed a small leak where the water inlet hose met the copper of the chiler, so I went to get a screwdriver to tighten the hose clamp and managed to hit the chiller outlet hose that was running out of the open window. This hit my 1l erlenmeyer flask which had the yeast rehydrating in it, this in turn hit my hydrometer and trial jar. All three fell off the windowsill into the sink and the flask and trial jar shattered. Balls.

Anyway, cleared up, got some more yeast ready, drained off from boiler to FV, pitched, aerated and it's all done. Measured the OG in the FV - 1052, which is exactly on target.

If I hadn't had the two disasters, this would probably have been quickest and easiest AG brew so far. Still - shit happens!


Running off into new stubby FV


Aerated


Put to bed in the FV. I was worried about the headspace in this FV originally - but this should be about 21-23L in it, and you can see that there's plenty of space for the krausen. Should be fine. This is the "30L" version, so it must be quite a bit bigger in real terms.

[spearmint-wino]

Now sit back and be shocked at how much krausen a dark porter wort gives you! It normally crawls over the edge of the fermenter and onto the floor when I brew it...

Well recovered, hope it turns out well for you

[adm]

I hope it goes off like a train.....I want to hear that big bubbler bubbling away...

(takes a shocking amount of vodka to fill one of those BTW...)

[Bongo]

Yes those days do happen don't they,still i'm glad you carried on despite the probs that's the brewing spirit fella,it looks great i love the aerated pic.

[Garth]

great pics adm, and a good brewday by the looks of it

[Grahame]

adm, that FV looks funky, where did you get it?!

G.

[adm]

The FV came from my not-so local HBS....(The HomeBrew Shop in Farnborough). They do them in 30L and 60L sizes (walk in sales and online)

I've seen them in other sizes too from online retailers.

Good things: sturdy food grade plastic, tight sealing 2 part lid, big bubbler and tap included. Full width opening makes it easy to clean

Not so good things: 2 part lid is more of a faff to get on and off as you remove the collar, then remove the lid itself. Not cheap at £32.

All in all, a pretty decent fermenter. I may get another.

[booldawg]

Are you using 13 amp fuses all the way to the wall socket? If you are using extension leads they should also be kitted out with 13a fuses (including the kettle leads) I popped my supply using 5a fuses on the elements when I first used them.

[adm]

Are you using 13 amp fuses all the way to the wall socket? If you are using extension leads they should also be kitted out with 13a fuses (including the kettle leads) I popped my supply using 5a fuses on the elements when I first used them.

Yeah....each element has a 13A fuse in the plug and goes into a separate wall socket. No extension leads.

But it wasn't the fuses blowing, it was the thermal cut outs on the actual elements themselves tripping due to the build up of burnt on sugar and other crud!

The only fix was to take them out and clean them. I couldn't do it in situ as I'd have got cleaning stuff in the hops in the bottom!