HBC Apollo Mashkit - BIAB with Peco boiler

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Spapro

Senior Member
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
1,318
Reaction score
499
Location
Wetherby
Eyup,

Used my Peco boiler today, for the second time - brewed the 'Apollo' whole grain mashkit from the Home Brew Company.

Made some big steps forward with my equipment from my first brew with the Peco boiler a couple of weeks ago.

Firstly, the Apollo kit comes with a wacking 5.9kg of MO/Crystal grain - too much for me with a published SG of 1061 and ABV of 6.3%

I put 1 kg of grain to one side and used circa 4.9kg.

The hops (Apollo, Columbus) are provided in 3 bags. Forgot to weigh each hop bag :-| but there were plenty and the last bag for flame out had 25g in it and was the smallest of the bags. Each bag added as per instructions at:
60 minutes (start of rolling boil)
15 minutes
0 minutes (flame out).

Mashed in 26litres of water for 60 minutes at 67°C (water heated to 71°C before popping the grains in)
Dunk sparged in 3 kettlefuls of boiled water in a seperate FV.
Ended up with 25litres at the start of the boil. Topped up to 26l with kettle water, topped up again part way through the boil to 26l

All went smoothly, big steps forward included:
1. My Brupaks universal hop strainer worked brilliantly, I marked on the boiler where to position the wort chiller so id didn't rest on and potentially dislodge the push in the back of the tap strainer.
2. Got the boiler off the concrete floor and onto a pallet with some chipboard screwed on top - made a massive difference to heat loss during the mash. Only lost one degree over 60 minute mash.
3. Got the cool time down to 45 minutes from 75 minutes. Connected the cold inlet to the upper tube of the chiller ad stirred the wort lots. Got down to 50° in 15 minutes, then used an iced water bath in a builders trub and a small pump to get it the rest of the way to 23°C before transferring to FV.

Ended up with 21 litres in the FV - 1052 Starting Gravity

Added 1 litre of tap water so 22 litres - 1048 Startinng Gravity.

Pitched US05 yeast supplied at 22°C. Will ferment out at around 18°C.

Very happy with how it went :party:, now the waiting game.

Here are some piccies:

WP_20150825_004.jpg


WP_20150905_002.jpg


WP_20150905_003.jpg


WP_20150905_004.jpg


WP_20150905_005.jpg


WP_20150905_006.jpg


WP_20150905_007.jpg
 
Great post, nice to see some pics hope it turns out well for you:-D

Thanks Steve, pleased with how it went, one thought for future brews worth posting for others with the Peco boiler:

After the initial foam has subsided I will keep topping up to 27 litres for the boil next time. This should help with hop utilisation a little and think it will give me 22 litres in the FV.
 
Brilliant post. Has discussed in another thread I am really interested to find out how thus turns out as I plan to brew something similar. Will you be dry hopping?
 
Nice one Spapro, an inspirational post, and always good to see pics. I think they help enormously with those who are a little 'unfamiliar' with the whole process. I managed to post a pic with my iPad the other day, but I'm still not sure how I did it :hmm:

I am inspired.... I may well take the plunge tomorrow and mucky all my virgin shiny new stuff :hat:
 
Don't mind me asking but why did you get the kit if it was too strong? Did you just fancy the style but not the strength?

Edit: this is not intended to carry any implications of lightweight-ness! I'm mainly being nosy, and personally never do anything over 5%
 
Nice one Spapro, an inspirational post, and always good to see pics. I think they help enormously with those who are a little 'unfamiliar' with the whole process. I managed to post a pic with my iPad the other day, but I'm still not sure how I did it :hmm:

I am inspired.... I may well take the plunge tomorrow and mucky all my virgin shiny new stuff :hat:

I tried once gave up Mr Chippy-Tea had to turn it the right way for me :whistle:
 
Ha ha , yes, I posted a pic last year sometime and it came out upside down ?
Made me feel a bit queezy looking at it stood on my head, not helped by a couple of bevvies mind.....
 
Brilliant post. Has discussed in another thread I am really interested to find out how thus turns out as I plan to brew something similar. Will you be dry hopping?

The HBC webpage for this kit does say it includes a dry hop but there is no dry hop included with the kit, don't think that will be an issue as there were lots and lots of hops with 25g at flameout.

You could use the 0 mins hops as a dry hop if preferred.

I did weigh the flame out bag of hops at 25g, forgot to weight the 15 mins or 60 mins bags but I would estimate from the size of the bags that it was:
60 mins bag - 75g-100g (estimated)
15 mins bag - 50g (estimated)
0 mins bag - 25g (weighed so accurate)
 
Don't mind me asking but why did you get the kit if it was too strong? Did you just fancy the style but not the strength?

Edit: this is not intended to carry any implications of lightweight-ness! I'm mainly being nosy, and personally never do anything over 5%

I fancied this kit as like a nice hoppy US pale ale, and hadn't tried Apollo or Columbus hops before, but llike you I try to keep things under 5% usually.

HBC don't publish the ABV% for each of their kits, which would be useful:
http://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/hbc-apollo-mashkit-23lt-p-1849.html

No big shakes though, their kits are good value and I now have 1kg of pale malt to use for another brew in the future ;-)
 
I fancied this kit as like a nice hoppy US pale ale, and hadn't tried Apollo or Columbus hops before, but llike you I try to keep things under 5% usually.

HBC don't publish the ABV% for each of their kits, which would be useful:
http://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/hbc-apollo-mashkit-23lt-p-1849.html

Fair enough! Odd that they don't state the abv. I'd have thought that was a relatively important factor in many people's decisions, it would be in mine. I guess if it's an imperial IPA or whatever you'll have a fair idea but the Apollo one would be impossible to guess.

And yes your leftovers will make a nice small batch with a few g of hops.
 
Thanks for the update. I have about 90g of Apollo and 80g of Columbus so mine won't be so hoppy. Could add something else to the mix
 
Fair enough! Odd that they don't state the abv. I'd have thought that was a relatively important factor in many people's decisions, it would be in mine. I guess if it's an imperial IPA or whatever you'll have a fair idea but the Apollo one would be impossible to guess.

And yes your leftovers will make a nice small batch with a few g of hops.

I got in touch by email with Shane at HBC about adding the ABV% to the descriptions for their mashkits as it should be there really.

He has email back this morning to say he as added some ABV's and is checking/working through so all will have the ABV% shown.

Just wanted to say thanks to Shane for responding and this should be useful info for everyone when selecting the HBC mashkits.
 
A lot of the kits still don't have the ABV, including the Apollo kit. :whistle:
 
A lot of the kits still don't have the ABV, including the Apollo kit. :whistle:

I hope he was busy grinding and packing the Maris Otter malt and the Exceedingly Good IPA (Willamette) mashkit I ordered yeterday !
 
I've got the same setup and have done a few brews with it some far, 2 from geterbrewed, 2 from Shane and one of my own. I have 3 kits from Shane that I will do as soon as I've recovered from a broken foot.

I've tried the dunk sparge like you did and tried resting bag on a sieve and pouring water through it. I think I'll go back to the dunk sparge as I always ended up with less than the desired volume into fermenter.

I also plan to try some 10L batches so I don't need to worry about sparging, this will give me better variety of a beer stock too. Have you tried any small batches?
 
I think some on here do smaller batches and like to experiment with different hops. Some brew 20 litres but split and dry hop differently in each 10l batch.

I tend to take the view it takes as long to brew a 20l batch as a 10l batch so I just do 20l currently. As I now have the kit to do 20-23 litre BIAB all grain batches I may as well !
 
I tend to take the view it takes as long to brew a 20l batch as a 10l batch so I just do 20l currently. As I now have the kit to do 20-23 litre BIAB all grain batches I may as well !

Hi I know it looks like I am being pedantic here but I found thats not actually true.. Whilst I probably share a similar view that the time invested and I have to pick a window of time to do a brew I might aswell make it a large 23l batch

However when doing smaller batches heating up water for a 10 liter to mash, then to boil and cool down is considerably less
 
Back
Top