Jack and my first BIAB All Grain Brew

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Alastair70

In need of constant supervision
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Finally acquired all the kit needed to brew the 5L Crafty Fox IPA All Grain Kit no.2 son bought me for Christmas.

Water Treatment
Reckoned we'd need 7L to begin with. Followed Strange-Steve's excellent guide, all fairly effortless. Required quantities of gypsum and CRS added.

Ingredients
Maris Otter and caramalt (no idea of proportions of each)

Mash
Temp: 69C
Time: 60 mins
Mash Out: 76C
Time: 10 mins

Boil
Boil Time: 60 mins
Additions:
Chinook - 0 mins
Simicoe - 45 mins
Nelson Sauvin - 55 mins

Fermentation
Sasafale US-05 at 22C
Original gravity - 1.045


Fermenter now sitting in a waterbath under a duvet in the garage, with a wonderful hoppy smell filling the air. Our only major cock up was a thermometer misread during cooling, and wert then going into the fermenter at 50C the first time round. In the faff that ensued I managed to drop the digital thermometer into to cooling bucket. Got there in the end, planning 10 days in primary before spec. grad. check and dry hopping.
 
Well, after a week of frantic bubbling the airlock has finally gone quiet. We'll definitely be drinking something.
Planning to dry hop on Friday and bottle Sunday.

Next brew planned already, a Challenger/Light Munich SMASH.
 
Well, all bottled up. Got 10x330mls in the end, conditioning in a water bath in the garage to hold temp at 20C.
Got everything together to brew a Vienna/Challenger SMASH next weekend.
 
Nice! It will get smoother...if you like what you brew you will soon be wondering why you ever spent so much in the shops!! You will also be planning...months ahead.
 
Oh, a Vienna/Challenger smash sounds very tasty. How did the first batch taste at bottling?

Minor thing but the usual convention for hop timings is stating the time left in the boil so you'd be 60, 15, 5 unless you bittered with Nelson/Simcoe and finished with Chinook. :-) Took me a while to figure that out and seemed really counter-intuitive to start with, but since IBUs are based on time the hops are boiled for I guess it does make sense.
 
First batch tasted great at bottling, hopper than expected but very well balanced. Will critique properly once it's conditioned. Apologies for timings, didn't realise at the time of posting how they worked and completely missed the error reading through the thread last night.
Spent Saturday night letting Jack sample as many single hop IPA's as I could get my hands on, so SMASH no.2 is going to be a Citra/Marris Otter. And at least my good lady seems on board with me encouraging sensible drinking habits in our 16yr old.
 
CraftyFox.jpg
Cracked open on of the 225ml tester bottles and I'm well impressed. Clear golden colour, medium hoppy aroma with crisp and dry flavour. A lot of the more floral hoppy flavours present at bottling have mellowed. Comes in at 4% ABV. A perfect summer afternoon thirst quencher.
Got a load of light Munich in the mash tun and a Whites California Ale yeast starter ready to go.
This weekend's brew is a Challenger/Munich SMASH>
 
Looks great, my first AG bitter was tasty but really hazy. Munich / Challenger smash sounds great, what brand of light Munich is that? The grades of Munich very a lot between maltsters.
 
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