Murray's Black Pepper Porter!

Finally got round to my first ever brew day on Thursday. I've been so busy lately with work and trips that I'd not managed to get on the forums here at all, but now I've started my first brew I thought I'd let you lot know!

As I stated on my welcome thread, I've dove right into BIAB methods with full grain as I wanted as much control of my beer as possible.

I've made approx 8 litres of the stuff, split into two 4l fermenting buckets for a reason I'll explain below. Hopefully this'll all turn out alright or maybe I'll just end up with 8 litres of gravy mix!

12 litres boil volume

2.5kg Maris Otter
150g Roasted Barley
25g Black Patent
1kg Dark DME

Mash temp 70c - 60 minutes

Boil time - 60 minutes

25g Fuggles - 60 minutes
25g Northdown - 30 minutes
15g Ground Black Pepper - 60 minutes

After pissing off the missus by commandeering the bathtub to chill the wort, I split the wort into two batches of approx 4 litres, using Safbrew S04 yeast in one and Safbrew T58 in the other.

OG reading was 1.052 which I presume was low for the amount of DME I used? I put it down to poor efficiency in the mash (using an electric top stove in this small apartment of mine is hardly prime brewing ability!) but hopefully it'll turn out alright.

Anyway they both had fairly active fermentation in the first day or two and have settled down a lot now.

Heres come pics.

"After pissing off the missus by commandeering the bathtub to chill the wort"

?????? I know mine got a bit narked when she caught me washing a sheep with white spirits in the bath after shaving off it's maggoty fleece (to kill off any remaining maggots!). Problem then was after showering off the white spirits I then had a soaking wet sheep in the bathroom and had to take it halfway round the house to get it outside...

Cwrw666-That sounds like every Welshman's go-to defence: "I was just washing it, dear!"

Murray-Pepper porter? Mmmm. Bottle swap?

Murray said:

OG reading was 1.052 which I presume was low for the amount of DME I used? I put it down to poor efficiency in the mash (using an electric top stove in this small apartment of mine is hardly prime brewing ability!) but hopefully it'll turn out alright.

Click to expand...

I regularly do 5L BIAB and always found that with a simple lautering of the bag I never hit my OG. To hit you target OG you can do two things

1. Squeeze the bag like it owes you money. I don't like to do this as I find it messy with wort running down my hands and arms and onto the kitchen floor so I plump for option two.

2. Some sort of sparge. I dunk sparge. I keep about 1.7L back from my mash to use as sparge water. Then heat this to 168F in a seperate pot. After lautering I dunk the bag in the second pot lift it out so the sparge water drains back into the pot from the bag repeat this a few times then open the bag and stir the grains about then do some more dunking. I do the whole thing (dunking and stirring) a few times till I reckon I've washed the sugars out of the grain then lauter the bag again. Then tip the sparge runnings into my big pot. Since I've started doing this I've never missed my OG in fact I often better it by a couple of points.

Notice you mash temp is 70C. Nice sweet porter -Luuurvley!

Cwrw666 said:

"After pissing off the missus by commandeering the bathtub to chill the wort"

?????? I know mine got a bit narked when she caught me washing a sheep with white spirits in the bath after shaving off it's maggoty fleece (to kill off any remaining maggots!). Problem then was after showering off the white spirits I then had a soaking wet sheep in the bathroom and had to take it halfway round the house to get it outside...

Click to expand...

I think that'd be the end of me if I started shaving sheep in my flat!

Joeyriles said:

Cwrw666-That sounds like every Welshman's go-to defence: "I was just washing it, dear!"

Murray-Pepper porter? Mmmm. Bottle swap?

Click to expand...

Sure. Although this is my first ever beer brewed so it could turn out terrible! I'll keep you updated in a few weeks.

MyQul said:

I regularly do 5L BIAB and always found that with a simple lautering of the bag I never hit my OG. To hit you target OG you can do two things

1. Squeeze the bag like it owes you money. I don't like to do this as I find it messy with wort running down my hands and arms and onto the kitchen floor so I plump for option two.

2. Some sort of sparge. I dunk sparge. I keep about 1.7L back from my mash to use as sparge water. Then heat this to 168F in a seperate pot. After lautering I dunk the bag in the second pot lift it out so the sparge water drains back into the pot from the bag repeat this a few times then open the bag and stir the grains about then do some more dunking. I do the whole thing (dunking and stirring) a few times till I reckon I've washed the sugars out of the grain then lauter the bag again. Then tip the sparge runnings into my big pot. Since I've started doing this I've never missed my OG in fact I often better it by a couple of points.

Notice you mash temp is 70C. Nice sweet porter -Luuurvley!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice mate! I did put the bag in my FV to drip for about half an hour, giving it a good ol' squeeze to try and extract as much wort as possible.

"I think that'd be the end of me if I started shaving sheep in my flat!"

Bin married 30+ years so I guess she's used to me by now! Hope the brew goes well for you - sounds very nice. I've only ever done kits (except one attempt at an all grain that was frankly awful) but am thinking seriously of getting into BIAB. Going to get a 30L boiler for Christmas and see how it goes...

Bottled the two batches last week. Didn't use a secondary nor did I batch prime. Just spooned sugar into each bottle.
S-04 surprisingly came up at 5.25% ABV whilst the T-38 only registered at 5%. I prematurely opened a bottle of the S-04 today, for my first brew I'm fairly proud, it's got a sweet smell but a bittersweet taste, the pepper never really came through too much, perhaps down to me using too little or adding it to the boil way too early.
I fear it may have had a slight infection (something about the taste just feels iffy, maybe I'm over-reacting) but I'll report back in a week or two after they've both aged properly!

Nice head on it though!