WFR's adventures in AG.

Can't guarantee how up to date I'll keep this- taking pictures, particularly at the "interesting bits" wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Anyway....

AG4 - Lucky 13 stout
I made use of geterbrewed's custom AG kit, and ordered the ingredients for GH's vanilla bourbon stout, but plan to add coffee instead of the vanilla and bourbon. I chose to brew this a bit long (was aiming for 25 litres), after bottling AG3 (the HBC's double ipa) at 7.1% (0.9% above expected strength...).

Chose the lucky name as:
- this is my 13th brew.
- I'm combining the additions of one recipe with the grain bill and hops of another.
- I'm reusing yeast for the first time (that has already chewed through a 1.060 brew )
- I was planning to brew a bit long and therefore reduce the head space in my FV
- I needed the weather to hold off during the duration of my mash, sparge and boil.

(Not sure if I can share the GH grain bill, so won't unless a mod tells me it's worth doing).

I BIAB using the HBC peco boiler kit.

Mixing just over 7kg of various malt - doughing in single handed was quite slow. 22 litres of strike water dropped from 72 to 62 degrees, so i topped up with 2 kettle loads (3.5 litres) of boiling water to get back up to 65 degrees. Temperature held well during the 60min mash.

Had to move inside as the rain started up again, before sparging with another 10 litres of water (which I collected in my 15 litre pot I got for my first 2 ags) which cooled to 80 degrees boiling the kettle throughout the mash.

Draining the mash liquor to my bottling bucket.

Getting ready to "sparge" I poured a litre of the 80 degree water at time with a jug before moving the bag onto the dish rack for squeezing.

Collected 27litres according to the bottling bucket's scale and transferred this back to the boiler to give 29litres with the dead space left in the boiler.


Hops - start of boil and half as much of a 2nd hop for a 10min addition

Yeast - US-05 reclaimed from my last AG batch, a first for me!


Cooling - boil and cooling wort, especially the last 10-15 degrees is quickly (or more correctly slowly) becoming my least favourite thing about brewing.


Cooled wort reading - GH recipe has a target gravity of 1.070 for 23 litres so quite happy with just under 25 litres at 1.060.


Just under 25 litres


Yeast pitched - fingers crossed for a clean ferment, I've started with a blow off tube just in case.


Thanks for reading - good luck with your brews!

Ooh I do like the sound of a vanilla and bourbon stout...

Some good recipes in the GH book.

The Raspberry wheat beer is my next planned brew

Uh oh...
While tasting awesome (with a triple strength 1 person cold brew cafeteria). This has dropped down to 1.006 (about 7.2%) to go with the 7.1% hbc dipa (which at least the sample was loopy juice).
Planning to bottle on Saturday, think i'll use all my 330ml's...

Wow that is 90% attenuation :shock:

First time reusing yeast...maybe over pitched and maybe the sugar solution starter was a bad idea....
Or should I be worried....

Covrich said:

Wow that is 90% attenuation :shock:

Click to expand...

Not sure why or how but today's reading (with priming sugar) was 1.010 so a bit more sensible...

Anyway after bottling 46 bottles of this it left fv 1 empty for ag5: GH raspberry* wheat beer.
Forgot to take pics as I went (will post the few I snapped below).

*planning to siphon a demi John to leave "plain" after 7 days and a 2nd to add about 500g of frozen cherry to and chuck a kilo of frozen rasps in the rest.

Forgot to mention, I order this from geterbrewed as a custom kit. Rather nicely the 20g of hops required were enclosed on a hop tea bag.
Thumbs up again for geterbrewed.

Ag4 lucky 13 stout after one week. Didn't hold the head but very nice, but of an alcohol hit (which I hope will mellow).

Bottled ag5 last night while enjoying my 2nd early bottle of ag4.

Stout looks nice, I must do one again soon

Thanks I'm really happy with it - great coffee aroma, big roast flavour with a subtle chocolate aftertaste - and now have to try and leave it alone as planned...

wfr42 said:

Thanks I'm really happy with it - great coffee aroma, big roast flavour with a subtle chocolate aftertaste - and now have to try and leave it alone as planned...

Click to expand...

That is my problem I am **** at patience, I am better at things like leaving it alone in the FV than when I started but now I find I am not even waiting a week in the bottle before I try one.

I may have a brewing problem...

wfr42 said:

I may have a brewing problem...

Click to expand...

I don't think you have a brewing problem, you've brewed loads there,
A drinking problem maybe?

geetee said:

,
A drinking problem maybe?

Click to expand...

If he hasn't already, he will have by the time he's finished it

It should last 4-6months or that's the plan at least.

Tried my "sample" 330ml bottles of the cherry and plain wheat beer while cutting the grass and finishing the raspberry sample now.

Plain it's very clovey/spicy. I tried to ferment at the upper end to get a banana flavour but may have over shot it* (first wheat beer and using wb06, will calibrate my aquarium heater set up next brew).

The cherry is very very subtle but smoother than the plain brew.

The raspberry has a very clean taste and initial sharp bite and is a very nice post cutting the grass beer (which was the plan).

Will maybe crack a large bottle of each in a weeks time.

Brew day yesterday of Black Sabbath Stout.

60 min mash at 66 degrees.

4kg Pale Malt
500g Black Malt (100g more than the recipe called for )
240g Cararye
150g Dark Crystal 120L
120g Roasted Barley

Using up left overs on the hops

50g Fuggles @60mins
17g Phoenix @10mins
2g Fuggles @10mins


Lesson of the day - DON'T balance your FV with equipment for sanitising and your post mash beers on their way to the fridge "just" on the edge of the work surface. Cleaning up a coffee stout and cleaning all you kit is not an efficient start to the day...

First time having to measure out grain as my previous AG brews have all been premade or custom kits. This meant I had to cool my strike water for the first time ever and over shot it initially so ended up in 25L for my mash.


Rehydrated the yeast at this stage with cooled boiled water.

Loved the colour of the pre boil (and post boil) wort.


I "sparged" differently for this brew, pouring 10 litres through the grain in the still attached grain bag and then dunked the bag in 2litres while transferring the wort back to the boiler. Think I needed more stirring here as my efficiency was at 68% according to brewers friend this morning...


2 simple hop additions, while I sampled a bottle of there's summit out there


Then the mandatory wait and tidy up during the cooling process.


I stopped taking pictures here as I had to send of some panicked messages...



I've had the boiler trip the electrics on the first two brews (and have it plugged into on of those safety plugs) but was really surprised to see this and very lucky, as you can see I wrap my boiler up to keep heat in, that it didn't set the blankets and towels alight.
Having an electrician friend look at it today, but it puts the brakes on adding a 2nd element to speed up the boil.

Finished with 5 gallons, according to the FV scale, of 1.046 wort (over 10 points short) and have airlock activity this morning!

Plan is to put this away until Xmas, but I may sneak a taster to update this thread.

Next up: a re-run of the hbc dipa.
Aka adventures with hop filters...

This was a repeat of my first peco full length biab. I really liked it (and finished the last bottle of my first batch last night). As I type it is reduced by 10%....

This time I was sent mangrove 44 in place of us-05. So a new yeast under my belt. (Pic 1)

This is a large grain bill (6kg+ iirc from the first time) and while it was cool outside this morning I wasn't prepared for my strike water to drop 12 degrees - must find a good calculator for larger grain bills. Two kettles of boiling water got me back to 66 degrees and I wrapped up the mash in 23litres at 8.30am. (Pic 2)

I realised while mashing that I hadn't attached the hop filter yet, but knew i had an opportunity when I sparged/lautered. I collected 12litres of water from boiling the kettle during the mash and poured 10 litres through (5litres with the bag in place and after it started to slip 5litres with it over my bottling bucket) before dunk sparging the bag in the final 2 litres. I transferred the wort back to the boiler while dunk sparging to get a head start on getting up to a rolling boil, and had to stop and transfer back again to attach the now twice forgotten hop filter...

I really need to look at my sparging technique as this took my a full hour today and it was after 11am when I got to a rolling boil.

The hbc dipa comes with nugget as it's bittering hop and four times as much zeus split over a 10min and flame out addition. All of these are currently leaf hops. (Pic 3)

I finished cleaning bottles for bottling up my black Sabbath while cooling and then the fun began...

(Pic 4)
Once down to temperature I started to transfer to fv...first gallon no problem...then the tap started to slow....

Gently drawing my paddle along the hop filter worked initially but was stirring up everything in the boiler...and then that wasn't enough either...no matter what I tried with the paddle made no difference...there was no flow and approx 3 gallons of wort in the wrong vessel.
In hindsight (just now actually...) maybe I should have jugged or siphoned it across...but no I choose to remove the filter. Which worked initially until the tap blocked.
Thankfully I transfer through a sieve so I rationalised that I could remove the tap and finish the transfer through the tap hole collecting the hops in the sieve...this worked but I know I was going to add a lot of what would normally be left in the dead space.

Iirc following warnings I set the hop filter at it's highest possible angle for my first brew and have slowly lowered it...will set it high again if I do this a 3rd time.

So wish me bubbles in the airlock in the morning...I've collected 25litres of 1.055 (again lower efficiency through dilution - I'm guessing at sparging) cloudy wort with a hint of arm hair for the rehydrated yeast to munch through.

My first SMASH.

A really efficient (time wise) brew day, pretty much 5hrs on the nose, though my bhe according to brewers friend dropped to 65%.

4kg Irish minch pale malt
20g pilgrim at 60mins
10g pilgrim at 10 mins
10g pilgrim at 5mins
10g pilgrim at 0mins

Reclaimed M44 west coast

Collected 20 litres (according to the fv scale) of 1.041 wort, which is bubbling away this morning.