DeepThought
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- Oct 2, 2021
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Just completed my first ever AG brewday and thought it only polite to share.
The recipe was a simple one, a cascade SMaSH pale ale, grain bill 5kg of maris otter.
Armed with several hours of YouTube viewing under my belt, a Klarstein Maischfest with added pump and some misplaced optimism about how much effort a brew day really is, I was ready to roll.
My plan was this:
Following a minor grain spill, it soon became clear that the bag I used was utterly useless for the task, it was too shallow for the kettle and I was perpetually battling against the weight of the grains trying to drag the whole thing to the bottom. Eventually I gave up entirely and just let the thing sink to the bottom of the tube insert.
This meant my sparge plan needed to be rapidly revised, in the end we lifted out the grain tube, bag and all, dumped it in a fermenting bucket and poured the sparge water over it as a sort of halfway house between batch sparging and dunk sparging. This actually seems to have worked surprisingly well though I don’t think you’ll be seeing it in the books any time soon. The lifting part was a lot more difficult than expected, I can only assume the guys on YouTube spend a lot of time in the gym.
Brew (mostly) in a bag…
The boil was mercifully uneventful. One observation was that the Klarstein has two power settings, not quite enough, and far too much. I spent much of the hour bouncing between the two in an effort to get sufficient boil off without dumping a gallon on my shoes.
The next lesson learned was with the cooling.I wasn’t at all prepared for the speed at which the initial cooling happens, as a result, I looked away for a couple of minutes to get some sterilising done and it had dropped a full 10 degrees below where I intended to add whirlpool hops. After some debate I decided to warm it back up a few degrees and chuck them in. It’s got two chances there.
In the end I got about 23 litres into the fermenter with a SG of 1.050. This is a little short of the estimate of 1.054 but frankly I’ll happily take that. I think the estimate assumed 82% efficiency which is a bit optimistic for a first attempt.
Anyway, I think I’ve earned a beer.
The recipe was a simple one, a cascade SMaSH pale ale, grain bill 5kg of maris otter.
Armed with several hours of YouTube viewing under my belt, a Klarstein Maischfest with added pump and some misplaced optimism about how much effort a brew day really is, I was ready to roll.
My plan was this:
- Heat full volume to strike temperature
- Drain off sparge water volume into a cool box.
- Mash in a bag
- Heat to mash out temperature
- Lift out bag and dunk sparge in cool box
- 60 min boil with hop additions at 60, 30 and 10 minutes.
- Whirlpool hops to be added during cooling at 79 degrees.
- Ferment
Following a minor grain spill, it soon became clear that the bag I used was utterly useless for the task, it was too shallow for the kettle and I was perpetually battling against the weight of the grains trying to drag the whole thing to the bottom. Eventually I gave up entirely and just let the thing sink to the bottom of the tube insert.
This meant my sparge plan needed to be rapidly revised, in the end we lifted out the grain tube, bag and all, dumped it in a fermenting bucket and poured the sparge water over it as a sort of halfway house between batch sparging and dunk sparging. This actually seems to have worked surprisingly well though I don’t think you’ll be seeing it in the books any time soon. The lifting part was a lot more difficult than expected, I can only assume the guys on YouTube spend a lot of time in the gym.
Brew (mostly) in a bag…
The boil was mercifully uneventful. One observation was that the Klarstein has two power settings, not quite enough, and far too much. I spent much of the hour bouncing between the two in an effort to get sufficient boil off without dumping a gallon on my shoes.
The next lesson learned was with the cooling.I wasn’t at all prepared for the speed at which the initial cooling happens, as a result, I looked away for a couple of minutes to get some sterilising done and it had dropped a full 10 degrees below where I intended to add whirlpool hops. After some debate I decided to warm it back up a few degrees and chuck them in. It’s got two chances there.
In the end I got about 23 litres into the fermenter with a SG of 1.050. This is a little short of the estimate of 1.054 but frankly I’ll happily take that. I think the estimate assumed 82% efficiency which is a bit optimistic for a first attempt.
Anyway, I think I’ve earned a beer.
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