Poochops GF brew no1 - Brewdog Zeitgeist

Well my GF arrived yesterday from Maltmiller and I was itching to get it fired up and going so today I popped my cherry on it. I bought a custom kit from them at the same time to do a Schwarzbier partly because the grain bill wasn't too big for my first try, and partly because I'm a bit of a brewdog whore on the side so why not?
I didn't actually check the recipe in the book (yes I printed the whole thing off in colour and got my missus to bind it!) nor did I pay any attention to the ingredients list when I ordered it, the grain bill was right but it came with 100g of cascade and 100g of hallerteur mittlefreuh or however you spell it. The recipe only actually requires about 60g of cascade so I'll be looking to put the HM to use on another day.

I put the recipe into the GF app and adjusted the hops to correct the IBU's, set the steps, filled her up with the specified mash volume and did the Bluetooth connect thing and set it going, I've got to say it's cracking the way it prompts you on the phone when it reaches the required temperature. Mashed in perfect, it felt quite thick but I've only done full volume Biab before so that's hardly surprising, and set her going. Meanwhile I fitted a tap to my 32l Ali Biab pan and added a short length of 12mm silicone hose for sparging and set that to heat up. The sparge drained really well and the boil went perfect, the chiller is an amazing bit of kit once I got used to handling it and positioned the hoses right, got it down to 80 degrees in no time at all for the flavour hops, then pumped it straight to the FV ready to aerate and add the yeast straight away.

Put exactly 20 litres in the FV so bang on the numbers! But one thing of note happened, I was supposed to get an OG of 1048 but got 1060 which working back to preboil volume I worked out as 91% efficiency. That was going to be too strong for me so I decided to liquor back to about 1050 by adding 4 litres of water, hopefully it'll be ok.
All in all it went incredibly well, I'm made up with the machine and I'm looking forward to brew 2 which will probably go on next weekend. Only thing I'll do differently is start in the morning instead of after lunch, cos my missus was sitting on my shoulder at the end wanting to get the tea on bless her. :)

Thanks for the write up.

How intrusive of your day was it? I ask because that's probably the biggest obstacle regarding AG for me. Yesterday I knocked out a kit in the usual short order, but when I did AG in a pan it took a few hours, and was pretty consuming of my time.

It sounds like you could just leave it for a bit, but what were the timings, roughly?

And if this isn't overly intrusive.....where do you use it?

Cheers

Sounds just perfect! Another reason why I need such a thing....I keep thinking about the Ace system....

ElvisIsBeer said:

Thanks for the write up.

How intrusive of your day was it? I ask because that's probably the biggest obstacle regarding AG for me. Yesterday I knocked out a kit in the usual short order, but when I did AG in a pan it took a few hours, and was pretty consuming of my time.

It sounds like you could just leave it for a bit, but what were the timings, roughly?

And if this isn't overly intrusive.....where do you use it?

Cheers

Click to expand...

Well I started about 1pm and it was in the fridge not long after 5pm, with everything clean and dried except the boiler itself, which I didn't think was too bad considering I was learning on my feet. It was certainly easier and less stressful than Biab and I hope that'll be reflected in the quality of beer I produce, however like Biab you need to set aside the time to brew.
Next one I'll start at about 7:30am and see if I can be done and dusted by twelve, that'll give me the afternoon free although I did manage to get a fair bit done while it was doing its thing.
I brew in the kitchen we've got a range cooker with a powerful extractor but I opened a few roof lights as well as the gf was on the floor in front of the cooker, the sparge water I was able to pour straight from the tap on my pan on the hob direct into the grain tube, I just raised it the pan up 200mm by placing it on top of another wide upturned pan if that makes sense.
15 mins to heat water from the tap it was already 50 degrees.
10 mins mash in
60 mins mash
15 mins mash out
About 20 mins sparge
60 mins boil
10 mins chill
30 mins hot steep,
20 mins chill pump to FV
Bit of buggering about here and there gave me about 4:15 :thumb:
Sounds about right :lol:

Clint said:

Sounds just perfect! Another reason why I need such a thing....I keep thinking about the Ace system....

Click to expand...

It's a hobby isn't it and we buy things for our hobbies, I've spent a great deal over the years on fishing gear, cameras, lenses, koi carp, the garden, hiking clobber and all sorts else! Go on, treat yourself!

This finished at 1.014 so 4.7% or thereabouts which is ideal, used crossmyloof real ale yeast which dropped lovely and clear after 2 weeks in the FV. Tastes delicious in the trial jar, light and not at all bitter, with lovely chocolatey and slightly roasted body. Looking forward to trying this next month.

Excellent. Enjoy.