AG Mild Ale.. brewday.. bloody cold

Strugglers Mild

Recipe Specs----------------

Batch Size (L): 23.0
Total Grain (kg): 4.000
Total Hops (g): 50.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.037 (°P): 9.3
Final Gravity (FG): 1.009 (°P): 2.3
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 3.64 % Colour (SRM): 17.6 (EBC): 34.7 Bitterness (IBU): 18.0 (Tinseth)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes): 60

Grain Bill----------------

3.400 kg Pale Malt (85%)
0.400 kg Crystal 60 (10%)
0.200 kg Chocolate (5%)

Hop Bill----------------

40.0 g Fuggles Leaf (4.1% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (1.7 g/L)
10.0 g Fuggles Leaf (4.1% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma) (0.4 g/L)

Misc Bill----------------

Single step Infusion at 68°C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with Safale S-04

Recipe Generated with BrewMate

Woke up friday morning wanting to get a brew on the go, it was a bit cold outside but thought sod it, the recipe is based on hydes dark mild but i wanted to up the abv slightly from 3.3% so i thought i would play about a bit so i guess this is my first "own" recipe.. although i cheated by basing it on another

i was a little worried that the peco boiler might not cope in the cold weather but it didnt struggle at all getting to temp.. in fact i overshot the mash temp slightly and ended up with around 68-69C mash temp once the grains where in.

I have never made an ag beer with a smaller grain bill before and i noticed that it did make it alot easier to dough in and manipulate the bag ect.

lost very little temp with the mash and sparged by hanging the bag above the bucket to drain and pouring water into the bag using a funnel like i did on my hobgoblin clone..

boil went well and added flame out hops and turned on the chiller, i had to nip out about half an hour later so turned off the chiller, i returned about an hour later so the hops had had a good hour to steep in the wort.. gave them a squeeze and drained the wort into the fv

i had just under 23ltrs in the fv according to the scale on the side and i took a OG reading and to my surpise got 1.042, higher than expected.. looked in brewmate and adjusted the efficiency up to match the og and it worked out at about 79% efficiency, so i added another litre of water and got a reading of 1.040, if the brew ferments to around 1.010 then itl be about 3.9%.. happy with that

so my efficiency had improved, but i thought that could be down to the fact that there was more water per kg of grain than my previous brews possably making my mash more efficient and i definately didnt loose as much water as i only used 3 litres for the sparge.

makes me wonder if downsizing the grain bills lowering abv would make me more efficient in general.. without loosing alot of abv but saving on grain

anyway.. a good day.. but a bit nippy , no pictures this time... ill save it for the finished product :)

i am after a bit of advice..

this has been fermenting for almost a week and has been quite a tame fermention, its got down to 1.014 from 1.040.. but was expecting it to get lower,

ive tried to rouse it up a little by adding a heat belt and giving it a stir and it helped a little.. got it down from 1.016 to 14

now i am thinking that theres not actually anything wrong its just my mash temp was too high, i knew it was a bit high as i overshot with the heat but carried on anyway.. i guess the bottom of the mash could of been 70c if the top was 68-69

anyway.. the point of the post is.. is it worth pitching extra yeast?, if iam right and its unfermentable sugar then i presume extra yeast will have no effect?

iam going to leave it a bit longer and keep the heat belt on.. maybe father time will sort it

i am sure itl still turn out to be a nice mild.. just looking for reasons why i havent hit my target fg so i can learn for next time

Alcoholx said:

i am after a bit of advice..

this has been fermenting for almost a week and has been quite a tame fermention, its got down to 1.014 from 1.040.. but was expecting it to get lower,

ive tried to rouse it up a little by adding a heat belt and giving it a stir and it helped a little.. got it down from 1.016 to 14

now i am thinking that theres not actually anything wrong its just my mash temp was too high, i knew it was a bit high as i overshot with the heat but carried on anyway.. i guess the bottom of the mash could of been 70c if the top was 68-69

anyway.. the point of the post is.. is it worth pitching extra yeast?, if iam right and its unfermentable sugar then i presume extra yeast will have no effect?

iam going to leave it a bit longer and keep the heat belt on.. maybe father time will sort it

i am sure itl still turn out to be a nice mild.. just looking for reasons why i havent hit my target fg so i can learn for next time

Click to expand...

b
I think you are right about the mash temperature. Adding more yeast is probably not going to work. But as you say, it will come out pretty much what you were after in the first place.

Slid said:

b
I think you are right about the mash temperature. Adding more yeast is probably not going to work. But as you say, it will come out pretty much what you were after in the first place.

Click to expand...

Thanks slid.. i realise my question kind of answered itself but i just wanted to run it past somebody, its the first time ive brewed with a specific target in mind or altering a recipe to get a something different ... normally i follow the recipe and just hope it turns out well :)

another bit of knowledge locked away in the grey matter..

cheers

ps.. its still at 1.014 so i think ill leave it to clear now..