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peebee

Out of Control
Joined
Aug 15, 2013
Messages
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Location
North Wales
I've had my new brewery for nine months now. One of its "features" was incorporating a cooker timer. So I can set up the water beforehand and have the whole thing burst into life early in morning and pre-heat everything for when I eventually climb out of bed.

Trouble is, I can't resist having a sneaky peek at some unearthly hour.

The novelty will wear off eventually?

Wasn't the easiest day. Hop filter clogged (the same filter that appeared in an recent thread that someone described as the "mother of all hop filters"!). This filter has THREE "bazooka" type filters so just goes to show you can't have too much hop filtering! Still, ran off 55L of the 60L (big brew!) and drained off rest (it was clogged, but only too much to supply the pump not to thwart gravity).

2015-11-28 06.40.35 WEB.jpg
 
All those buttons and lights and gauges !!!!!!!

😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
 
All those buttons and lights and gauges !!!!!!!

Yeah, well I needed something twinkly having built a new brewery in lots of shiny stainless steel and covered it all up in wood!

There's some buttons and lights under the bench too! Don't want to mislead potential builders into thinking they can fit all their controls into such a small box: All the heavy switching (30-40A) is in a separate bigger control box. What you can see in the piccie is just controls (<1A).
 
Recovered about 3.5L from my near disaster with the clogged "mother of all hop filters". But it did its job really: This was 60L of 1.060 wort full of the remains of quarter a kilo of whole hops, enough to block most filters I think.

So what was I brewing? In my early days (1980s) I used to drink, and brew a clone of, "Gales HSB" ("Hordean Special Bitter"). Now sadly gone though Fullers took up HSB at a much reduced gravity. So, going back to my roots...

88.5% Pale Malt (MO)
6.0% Torrified Wheat
4.6% Crystal Malt (135 EBC)
0.9% Black Malt

Fuggles (12 IBU)
Challenger (19.5 IBU)
EK Goldings (2.5 IBU: Late addition, last 10 minutes)

Aim at OG 1.057, but got 1.060 (better than a few months ago, tried this and got 1.066 - didn't taste like bitter!). Used to use wheat malt because I was fascinated by the stuff back then: However for those wondering as to the "head" retaining character of torrified wheat... well you should have seen the state of my fermenter when I turned on the aerator ahead of pitching!
 
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