All-grain brew #5 is an attempt at a Courage Directors clone. The recipe is adapted from Graham Wheeler's "Brew Your Own British Real Ale".
I am ably assisted today by the oldest of my three brewing apprentices. She has lately confirmed that she "likes the smell, but not the taste, but, well, I don't know, I might like it, but well, when I'm older I might ..." ;)
Brew Length: Aiming for 20L
Grains
Maris Otter Pale Malt - 3100g
White Sugar - 300g
Crystal Malt - 220g
Black Malt - 22g
Looked something like this (grain is piled up the side, not an egg shaped grain bucket thankfully :) )
Mash info
90 minute mash @ 66'C, Strike temp 76'C
EDIT: Lost 2'C ! More than I had hoped for. Will look at insulating the lid of the tun properly for next time, as that'll be where most of the heat escapes I imagine
Hops
Target - 22g @ 90 minutes
Styrian Goldings - 4g @ flame-out
Boil
90 minute boil, with hops going in as above. Irish Moss and chiller in @15 mins
In an attempt to quell the rapidly rising pre-boil foam (below), a quick burst from the hose, which turned out not to be on the "tap" setting but on "pressure hose", sent froth up the shed wall.
After that a mercifully uneventful rolling boil! 99.6'C sustained for the whole 90 minutes - not bad for a single element Electrim :)
Yeast
Safale S-04 @ 20-28'C
Pitched @ 26'C - got impatient.
Gravity
OG: 1046 - 1048
FG: 1011 - 1013
ABV%: 4.4 - 4.9
Actually achieved 1042 @ 26'C which temp. corrects to 1044. Not a million miles away, probably lost a couple of points when liquoring back during boil.
SO! All in all a very good brew day - no major problems, a couple of tight timing moments.
Yeast cracking on apace this morning:
Now to think about what next month's brew will be ...
UPDATE 2/10/2011
Final gravity was 1012, giving an ABV of 4.2% - a little low but will turn into a perfectly adequate session beer :)
And finally into the Corny keg:
Some brewing terms explained
Liquor: Just hot water.
HLT: Hot Liquor Tank, holds water to be used for mashing/sparging
Brew Length: Basically just volume, in this case 19L
Strike Temp: The temperature at which the liquor in the HLT hits the mash tun. Adjusted up by 10'C in this case, to account for the cooler tun and the grain temp of 20'C, so strike temp was to be 78'C (was nearer nearer 80 in truth)
Mash: conversion of starch in malted (roasted) barley into sugar at specific temperatures
Sparge: The process of extracting sugars from the mash, adding liquor to the mash tun.
Boil times: 90 mins means at the start, 15 mins means 15 mins from the end.
Flame-out: The end of the boil
More to follow ...
