this was only my 5th 5 gal full mash.
i am still following recipes at the moment since i am new to this. i really like wadworth 6X so i thought i would give that recipe a go from DL BBLTYB.
here is the recipe, i increased the malts by 10% as most of you guys seem to think DL uses optimistic conversion rates:
2970g Optic Pale malt
440g Flaked Maize
275g Crystal
30g brambling X
60g Goldings
so the brew began.
i put 15l of filtered water into the burco to get it upto 85oC. when up to temp i put it into the coolbox mash tun to preheat it along with one campdon tablet.
when it was cooled to 75oC i stirred in the grain, temperature was too high so i addeed some cold water to get the temp to 66.5.
left for 90mins wrapped in a sleeping bag and the end temp was 65oC
recirculated around 8 pints then started run off.
sparged via a watering can at 80-85oC. sparge time was 30mins
when up to boil all of the hops apart from 13g were added and boiled for 75mins. for the last 15mins the 13g of hops were added along with 5 g of irish moss.
the immersion chiller took 40mins to get the wort to cool
tapped into fermentor and pitched a started that had been going for 36hrs (youngs ale yeast).
fermenting like a bugger now
a couple of points.
on the other mashes i have done i have had great extraction and i took some of the wort during the boil and the gravity was looking good so i did not add the 300g of sugar the recipe called for.
my final volume was 25L with an og of 1.040. dont know what the effiency is on that but it seems good. (how would i work out effiency?)
brew time of 5hours.
so all in all i think it was a success. good extraction again. with the grain bill upped i did not need to add sugar. smells lovely. cant wait to see how it tastes.
brew time could be decreased with a counter flow cooler. has anyone got a simple design?
will be letting you know how it tastes.
any comments on the brew?
cheers
Des
