AG#1 - Flowers Original + some lessons learned

Well, after a few months of beavering away, I was finally ready on Monday to do my first AG brew.

I chose to follow the recipe from the Wheeler book (BYOBRA) 3rd Edition – Flowers Original page 155, and it was a 19L brewlength (if that’s the term for the final post boil volume).

I’m not sure if I can post the recipe here due to copyright or not, so erring on the side of caution, then I won’t.
I won’t do a blow by blow account, as there are plenty of others on here, but here are some things that I learned for next time.
Firstly I stored my grain in the fridge and I’d weighed out the black malt, crystal, white sugar and hops beforehand and put them in suitable sized containers. I had however got two 5lb bags of Marris Otter, which I hadn’t weighed out.

I added the amount of mash water as directed at 80°C, and it dropped to a strike temperature of 72°C in a few minutes etc. I then realised I hadn’t weighed out the Marris Otter ! :rofl:


I did that quickly and added the grain, first thought! :wha: The grain has been in the fridge, the temp dropped to 59°C – so I had to add more liquor (about 1.5L) to the mash tun at 80°C and it came back up to 67°C. :grin:

So all went swimmingly well from this point on, or so I thought – I’d walked up and down the garden to the shed from the house a couple of times, and the silver reflective thing on the lawn caught my eye a couple of times :wha: . In a moment of “Hitch-hiker’s – big yellow bulldozer” :shock: I realised it was the additional mash tun insulating lid that I’d forgotten to add – this is 60mins into the mash! (mammaryhead is an apt description)

Turns out that I did a reasonable job of the mash tun, as the end temperature of the mash at 90mins was 64°C.

After sparging I got an OG of 1.040 mid flow at a temp of 30° C – not sure what this means as yet.

I made a lot of notes, including the final volume of pre-boil wort which was 23.6L, so I added 2.7L of water as directed by the book.

I made notes of boil start time, the additions time (i.e. white sugar, irish moss and hops) and the end time, and it went like clockwork.

My home made chiller made short work of crash cooling.

I ended up with exactly 19L of wort, with an OG of 1.042 (predicted was 1.040) :shock: :grin:

Overall a very enjoyable experience, and one which I will be repeating soon!

Heating the water:

Sparging:


Lots of lovely brown water:


Boiling (the hop filter is on its side as the boiling action was having a volcano effect)


Steam Sterilising the FV:


Crash Cooling:


Into the FV:


And here it is fermenting away, in a yellow tub (£3 ASDA) and an aquarium heater (Argos £9.99) - Brewlabs Thames Valley II yeast:

Sounds ok to me but wait for the tasting

Gr8 post and pics guyb
A brew day wouldn't be complete without the odd few 'tests' :grin: ....we then say we won't make the same mistake again.....doh :whistle:

As I am someone who is about to make my mash tun at the weekend and then doing my first AG this thread couldn't have come at a better time.

Well done on your brewday mate and hope it turns out ok.

I'm sure it will.

"All hail the mighty mash tun!"

©Gene Hunt :lol:

Green Ninja said:

As I am someone who is about to make my mash tun at the weekend and then doing my first AG this thread couldn't have come at a better time.

Well done on your brewday mate and hope it turns out ok.

I'm sure it will.

"All hail the mighty mash tun!"

©Gene Hunt :lol:

Click to expand...

Good luck with the MT build - I posted some close up pics of mine if you are interested, it's not a full how to, as there are plenty there already, but just gives you a few ideas to use what you have hanging around - it's surprising what you can re-use! viewtopic.php?f=30&t=19011

Good luck on the brew day, it's great fun

It should come out really nice, you have a nailed down a really good process the Wheeler book is well worth it's price for the process alone.

The equipment looks very fit for the purpose, even though home made.

What is that is pumping the sparge water and also the wort to the fermenter? a drill pump or syphon ?

if you were looking for any suggestions, I could not see much that I would do different - perhaps having a silicon tube from the mash tun to the bottom of the collection bucket after sparging, this would prevent that foaming as many brewers might advise against getting oxygen into the wort when it is hot (HSA).

adomant said:

It should come out really nice, you have a nailed down a really good process the Wheeler book is well worth it's price for the process alone.

The equipment looks very fit for the purpose, even though home made.

What is that is pumping the sparge water and also the wort to the fermenter? a drill pump or syphon ?

if you were looking for any suggestions, I could not see much that I would do different - perhaps having a silicon tube from the mash tun to the bottom of the collection bucket after sparging, this would prevent that foaming as many brewers might advise against getting oxygen into the wort when it is hot (HSA).

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback, I wasn't aware of the HSA bit, so thanks for that :grin:

As for pumping the sparge water it's the hop filter connected to a:

15/15 pushfit <> 15 pushfit tap <> 15 / 10 pushfit <> 10 copper <> silicon tube [all sizes mm]

The boiler doesn't have a tap, so I have to syphon the sparge (at 80 it's risky, so I have an extra long silion tube I use to start the flow and then whip it off as soon as the syphon effect starts)

might be safer to put a 1/2" tap in the bottom of the boiler - this is quite easy to do with the right tool (knock out punch) but they are a bit expensive so best if you can borrow one

adomant said:

might be safer to put a 1/2" tap in the bottom of the boiler - this is quite easy to do with the right tool (knock out punch) but they are a bit expensive so best if you can borrow one

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Aye, true enough, I'm quite handy (as you can see), but I didn't want to make a mess :wha: ............ as it happens it's my 40th next month, and a shiny shiny 70L boiler with tap fitted might be on my list from Rob the malt Miller Good luck wrapping that one kids :rofl:

I might have a go once I get the new one :thumb:

I brewed a Flowers a couple of months ago, tasted a bit meh for the first few weeks bit is lovely now, just what the wife ordered (although I've drank most of it!).

I'm modifying it next time with some sexy American hops!