AG #2 - Dry Stout

[jayk34]

Up early this morning to bottle my first ag attempt at greg hughes Brown Porter. Bought a new brewferm autosyphon as the amount of trub in the fv was half way over the tap. What a complete clusterf#@k constant bubbles the entire time obviously due to the seal in the plunger. Had to abandon the syphon and get my old one out and fit the bottling wand onto it. All bottled and got 38 500ml bottles. The sample from the fv tastes promising

Grains weighed out, the smell is fantastic

Now in the middle of mashing the Dry Stout. The setup is a bit eclectic !!

Getting sparg water ready in the meantime. I brought 27 litres of water up to mash temperature in the burco and then extracted 15 litres into the cooler to leave the correct mash temperature. I then top up the cooler with water boiler in an ordinary kettle taken from a fv filled with water treated with Campden tablet.

Now sparging with the re-purposed cake cooling rack with ends bent to raise grain bag above wort.

And to get the maximum 27 litres i use a ratchet pulley to hold the grain bag whilst sparging

The dry stout went relatively well and took 5.5 hours including cleanup. The recipe was for 23 litres at 1.048 but I Ended up with 20.5 litres to go into the fermenter at 1.054. Decided against diluting it down with water.

Made another batch of dog biscuits with some of the spent grain as our dog loved the last batch.

 

[jayk34]

Up at this ungodly hour as a notification on my phone woke me up. I normally don't leave phone on but glad I did this time as it was an alert that the dry stout temperature has fallen to 17.9°C. Got up and went downstairs and found that I hadn't plugged the heat pad into the inkbird. Plugged in and temperature rising, so hopefully disaster averted but now no point going back to bed as I have to go to work shortly.

 

[jeg3]

Up at this ungodly hour as a notification on my phone woke me up. I normally don't leave phone on but glad I did this time as it was an alert that the dry stout temperature has fallen to 17.9°C. Got up and went downstairs and found that I hadn't plugged the heat pad into the inkbird. Plugged in and temperature rising, so hopefully disaster averted but now no point going back to bed as I have to go to work shortly.

Guilty of that as well.

I forgot to plug the fridge and heater into the inkbird in January. That coupled with very cold water in the counterflow chiller during transfer to the FV meant 17degC wort that went down to 15 overnight.

It then took all day to get back to 20.

 

[moto748]

Have you got a recipe for the dog biscuits?

 

[jayk34]

Have you got a recipe for the dog biscuits?

I use 2 cups of spent grain to one cup wholemeal flour and 1 egg. Mix together and then roll flat onto a greaseproof paper lined baking tray.

I cook at 190 for 15 minutes and then take out and cut into small squares using a pizza cutter and then put next in and cook for 25 minutes at 190 until outside crispy. Depending on how thin you have rolled the biscuits out, I then turn oven down to 80 until the biscuit is fully dry in the middle.

It should be noted that I believe some/possibly all dogs are gluten intolerant so maybe research for any I'll effects. My dog didn't appear to have side effects like constipation (her poo was a bit more solid but she went regularly) or scratching (week no more than usual).

I finished a batch of that recipe scaled up twice over a period of 2 weeks.