This brewery project is a joint venture between myself and a friend. Sadly, due to personel reasons, he hasn't been able to participate in the build or first brew, but we had a window of opportunity yesterday evening, so a brew was schedulued at the last minute. Things were a bit rushed, and we didn't get too many photos, but I'll write up what I can remember for the record...
The recipe was the Deuchars IPA clone from Wheeler's book. So mostly pale malt, with a little crystal and wheat malt. Hops were Fuggles for bittering and Styrian Goldings for aroma. I used S04 yeast, instead of Nottingham, as that was what I had to hand.
I heated 50L of water in the HLT and used 10L of that to pre-heat the MT. I suspected that I lost a lot of temperature from the MT in the first brew because I didn't preheat it. At this point disaster struck - my "backup" digital thermometer (really a plumbing pipe thermometer with a probe) packed in. WTF? Three digital thermometers die on me in the space of two brews??? What am I doing wrong? So I ransacked the kitchen and found, in the back of a drawer, an old analogue dial-type thermometer that you use to check if your roast is cooked. It measured the temperature range I needed, so it would have do...
My friend arrived with the ingredients so we immediatly weighed out the grain and underlet into the MT. The resulting temperature was a too low (so much for pre-heating the MT) so a jug of boiling water was deployed to get up to 68 degrees. Then a 90 minute wait, during which we sampled a few Fyne Ales (first time I've tried them from bottle, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were as good as on tap - top beer). Returned to find the MT had lost nearly 10 degrees :shock: So pre-heating is a waste of time, I've got much bigger problems to sort out regarding insulation!
Sparging was a lot easy with two people. I could focus on getting the runnings out nice and slow, and my friend operated the pump to keep the water level correct. We stopped after collecting 25L as the runnings were getting a bit thin. So 25L at 1032 went into the boiler.
Collecting the runnings...
After the boil it was nearly midnight, so I drained into a fermentation bucket and left over night to cool. Yeast was pitched this morning. I had replaced my stainless braid hop filter with a length of copper pipe with holes drilled in the bottom, hoping to remove a lot of dead-space. But this failed (incredibly slow at draining), so I ended up draining the lot manually through a sieve. Also, I lost nearly 10L to the boil, so I topped this up with hot water from the HLT to bring the contents of the FV up to 22L.
Old school! Yee Olde meat thermometer in action
The recipe was the Deuchars IPA clone from Wheeler's book. So mostly pale malt, with a little crystal and wheat malt. Hops were Fuggles for bittering and Styrian Goldings for aroma. I used S04 yeast, instead of Nottingham, as that was what I had to hand.
I heated 50L of water in the HLT and used 10L of that to pre-heat the MT. I suspected that I lost a lot of temperature from the MT in the first brew because I didn't preheat it. At this point disaster struck - my "backup" digital thermometer (really a plumbing pipe thermometer with a probe) packed in. WTF? Three digital thermometers die on me in the space of two brews??? What am I doing wrong? So I ransacked the kitchen and found, in the back of a drawer, an old analogue dial-type thermometer that you use to check if your roast is cooked. It measured the temperature range I needed, so it would have do...
My friend arrived with the ingredients so we immediatly weighed out the grain and underlet into the MT. The resulting temperature was a too low (so much for pre-heating the MT) so a jug of boiling water was deployed to get up to 68 degrees. Then a 90 minute wait, during which we sampled a few Fyne Ales (first time I've tried them from bottle, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were as good as on tap - top beer). Returned to find the MT had lost nearly 10 degrees :shock: So pre-heating is a waste of time, I've got much bigger problems to sort out regarding insulation!
Sparging was a lot easy with two people. I could focus on getting the runnings out nice and slow, and my friend operated the pump to keep the water level correct. We stopped after collecting 25L as the runnings were getting a bit thin. So 25L at 1032 went into the boiler.
Collecting the runnings...
After the boil it was nearly midnight, so I drained into a fermentation bucket and left over night to cool. Yeast was pitched this morning. I had replaced my stainless braid hop filter with a length of copper pipe with holes drilled in the bottom, hoping to remove a lot of dead-space. But this failed (incredibly slow at draining), so I ended up draining the lot manually through a sieve. Also, I lost nearly 10L to the boil, so I topped this up with hot water from the HLT to bring the contents of the FV up to 22L.
Old school! Yee Olde meat thermometer in action
