Evening all,
I thought it would be good to keep a running thread going of what I've been brewing, hopefully I can ask silly questions when I get things wrong.
This weekend I had the chance to fit a quick few hours of brewing in; wanting to stick with something simple that I had brewed before, I dug out the recipe for Brewdog’s Dead Pony Club.
I was hoping everything would go well so that I can give a few bottles away as Christmas presents. I really need to improve some of my equipment so as to make the mash a bit easier – I batch sparged this time around but would love to be able to fly sparge. My post-mash gravity was way off target (according to Beersmith) but then OG after the boil was spot on so maybe I’m just reading something wrong.
At some point during sparging I realised I was using the wrong recipe and was going to end up with 8 litres that wouldn’t fit in my small fermenter.
Not to be fazed, I got the large fermenter out and swapped the taps and thermowells over (not sure why I only appear to have one tap at the moment!).
Disaster averted and the boil went well. I was really maxing out the capacity of the pot I was using though and got closer than ever to a boil-over. I usually use an autosyphon to move wort from the kettle to the fermenter once cooled but unfortunately this time it got clogged straight away with some hop leaves and when trying to clear it I dislodged the small plastic clip in the bottom of the syphon. This clip seems to reduce the backflow of the liquid which then meant I couldn’t get any wort out – I reverted to the more traditional method – sucking on the end of the pipe!
I’ve no idea how I’m going to get that clip back in….(any advice?!)
I was happy just to get the yeast in at this point, fairly confident that we’d have some nice beer to drink. Unfortunately when I turned on the Inkbird, I forgot to actually put the temperature probe into the thermowell. I thought it odd when we got home and the beer was still only at 16C … it was actually at 30C, so this beer could taste interesting.
I might try and get away from work in good time on Friday and see if I can’t have a more successful brew day, making a stout for the first time.
Thanks for reading, cheers!
I thought it would be good to keep a running thread going of what I've been brewing, hopefully I can ask silly questions when I get things wrong.
This weekend I had the chance to fit a quick few hours of brewing in; wanting to stick with something simple that I had brewed before, I dug out the recipe for Brewdog’s Dead Pony Club.
I was hoping everything would go well so that I can give a few bottles away as Christmas presents. I really need to improve some of my equipment so as to make the mash a bit easier – I batch sparged this time around but would love to be able to fly sparge. My post-mash gravity was way off target (according to Beersmith) but then OG after the boil was spot on so maybe I’m just reading something wrong.
At some point during sparging I realised I was using the wrong recipe and was going to end up with 8 litres that wouldn’t fit in my small fermenter.
Not to be fazed, I got the large fermenter out and swapped the taps and thermowells over (not sure why I only appear to have one tap at the moment!).
Disaster averted and the boil went well. I was really maxing out the capacity of the pot I was using though and got closer than ever to a boil-over. I usually use an autosyphon to move wort from the kettle to the fermenter once cooled but unfortunately this time it got clogged straight away with some hop leaves and when trying to clear it I dislodged the small plastic clip in the bottom of the syphon. This clip seems to reduce the backflow of the liquid which then meant I couldn’t get any wort out – I reverted to the more traditional method – sucking on the end of the pipe!
I’ve no idea how I’m going to get that clip back in….(any advice?!)
I was happy just to get the yeast in at this point, fairly confident that we’d have some nice beer to drink. Unfortunately when I turned on the Inkbird, I forgot to actually put the temperature probe into the thermowell. I thought it odd when we got home and the beer was still only at 16C … it was actually at 30C, so this beer could taste interesting.
I might try and get away from work in good time on Friday and see if I can’t have a more successful brew day, making a stout for the first time.
Thanks for reading, cheers!