bearwoodbrewer
Active Member
So after 6 reasonably successful brews with kits I felt it was time to go to the dark side. Having read the books, and read them again and read every post I could find I finally decided on my recipe and headed to the LHBS.
Due to space (and time)constraints Im starting off with the BIAB (brew in a bag) method. I already had a 19 litre stockpot. I bought some swiss voile which my mum (I know) fashioned into a bag to fit my pot. I even manged to make my own immersion chiller with some copper tubing I had left over from some home improvment projects so all I had to pay for was the connectors.
My recipe of choice was one from the Britsh real ale book we all know well
Here is pic of all my kit/ingredients before I started
I wanted at least 20 bottles of 500ml beer so id calculated to get at least
12L into the fermenter. Did the necessary calculations and heated my water to strike temp.
Grain bill
Hops
Mashed in at 67 temp dropped to 63 so added hot water to reach 66. 90 mash
under a load of towels camping mats and jackets!
Pulling gain bag (small grain bill light bag!)
Boil started
Adding some of the hop additions
Copper immersion chiller in to kill the nasties 15 mins prior to flame out
Cooling- Really impressed after a 15mon stand it only took 9 mins to chill to 22 degs.
I then transferred to another FV (my bottling bucket) through a sanitized sieve and another sheet of Suisse voile before transferring to my actual FV to aerate
So after all that (5 hours hard graft and a few beers along the way) I pitched the yeast and waited. I managed to hit my target OG (higher by 1) and after 11 days I'm down to 1.006 so I'm bottling in two days time.
Having sampled the sample I must say this is good and far superior to the kits (that by the way ive been very happy with).
Would I do it again.....
Yes but its a LOT of work for 12L so ill be trying to increase my yield next time using a concentrated wort (another post maybe?)
Finally a big thanks to all on here with your quick and useful suggestions on the way..keep up the good work people
Due to space (and time)constraints Im starting off with the BIAB (brew in a bag) method. I already had a 19 litre stockpot. I bought some swiss voile which my mum (I know) fashioned into a bag to fit my pot. I even manged to make my own immersion chiller with some copper tubing I had left over from some home improvment projects so all I had to pay for was the connectors.
My recipe of choice was one from the Britsh real ale book we all know well
Here is pic of all my kit/ingredients before I started
I wanted at least 20 bottles of 500ml beer so id calculated to get at least
12L into the fermenter. Did the necessary calculations and heated my water to strike temp.
Grain bill
Hops
Mashed in at 67 temp dropped to 63 so added hot water to reach 66. 90 mash
under a load of towels camping mats and jackets!
Pulling gain bag (small grain bill light bag!)
Boil started
Adding some of the hop additions
Copper immersion chiller in to kill the nasties 15 mins prior to flame out
Cooling- Really impressed after a 15mon stand it only took 9 mins to chill to 22 degs.
I then transferred to another FV (my bottling bucket) through a sanitized sieve and another sheet of Suisse voile before transferring to my actual FV to aerate
So after all that (5 hours hard graft and a few beers along the way) I pitched the yeast and waited. I managed to hit my target OG (higher by 1) and after 11 days I'm down to 1.006 so I'm bottling in two days time.
Having sampled the sample I must say this is good and far superior to the kits (that by the way ive been very happy with).
Would I do it again.....
Yes but its a LOT of work for 12L so ill be trying to increase my yield next time using a concentrated wort (another post maybe?)
Finally a big thanks to all on here with your quick and useful suggestions on the way..keep up the good work people
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