AG #9 - Timothy Taylor Landlord

Sun 24th Jun 2012

Well, my first true "if it can go wrong, it will" brew. I knew I was long overdue one of these, and when it came to Saturday afternoon and I still had no idea what I was going to be making, the alarms bells should have started ringing. I think a 2 month gap between brews also contributed.

I wanted to choose something this time that had a good reputation, and having seen so many good things about Timothy Taylor Landlord clones in books and on the internet I decided this would be AG #9!

Characteristics
Recipe Gravity         1.042 OG  
Estimated FG             1.010 FG
Recipe Bitterness     10 IBU 
Alcohol by Volume         4.1%
Recipe Color         6°  SRM        

Grains
3.5Kg Maris Otter
25g Black Malt


This should make for a light amber/golden colour, the small amount of black malt darkening it a touch beyond lager colour.


Hops

Styrian Goldings

25g Styrian Goldings          90mins
25g East Kent Goldings      90mins
16g Styrian Goldings          10mins

Reading up on Styrian goldings, it turns out that they are in fact derived from Fuggle hops, which were exported to Styria (Austria/Slovenia border) and grown out there. This is why they resemble Fuggle hops in character. Whatever their derivation they make a great aroma/flavour hop! The recipe called for 16g at the end but I ran out and only had 12g to put in at the end ("go wrong" #1). Not a huge blow but might make a small difference in the end product. If it can be distinguished from among the results of the rest of the problems I'd be very surprised!


Mash

90 minute mash as usual, and here we encounter "go wrong" #2. In my complacency and haste I neglected to fit the mesh grain filter into the bottom of the mash tun. Realising this after I had doughed in, I had a few moments of "WTF do I do now?", before I finally decided I would have to ditch the mash into the now empty grain bin, insert the filter, and tip it all back in. Maybe this wasn't the ideal solution and I should have left it to chance as to whether it would have ended in a stuck mash...

Anyway, mash temp now 62'C so way under the 66'C I needed, so I ended up adding water from the HLT to heat it up. About 1-2 litres later and we had 65.9 - that would do. On the plus side I only lost a degree or so across the whole tun over the 90 minutes.

Sparge

Oh ffs ...

So 90 minutes later I came to draw off the first runnings. I opened the tap on the mash tun and was greeted with absolutely nothing ... "go wrong" #3. The merest trickle perhaps at first but then nothing more. It now dawned on me that I hadn't cleared the tap of grain when I plugged the filter into it, instead I had just rammed the filter in quick smart and got on with replacing the then rapidly cooling grain. The air turned blue for the third time as I fumbled around in my head to find a way forward. I Bashed the tap from the outside and inside hoping to relieve the clog of grain in there, to no avail. Coat hanger up the tap? Not very hygienic and to be honest not likely to do the job. Nothing else for it other than to dump the mash into the multi-tasking grain bin again, which in itself wasn't easy considering where it sits on shelf (above) and the weight of grain and water therein. This I did, and was relieved to see the usual steady trickle from the tun when I opened the tap again. I've no clue what effect this can have on "enzyme action" or anything else in a mash but I'm hoping it's nothing drastic. First runnings returned and all going with the sparge, best check the hydrometer reading to see where we are at. As you've probably already guessed, it was broken. Again, profanities rained down to go with the actual rain outside. So, with no way of telling when .990 was reached I had to wing it and take a guess.

Boil

Hot break just pre-boil

Boil was happily pretty uneventful. First hops went in after hot break had subsided and the boil was rolling. I did lose a lot of wort during the boil to evaporation and ended up having to liquor back quite a bit, a couple of litres easily. Not that this is a problem as such, it's just every time I've had to liquor back it has skewed the hydrometer readings and thinned out the wort leaving me with lower gravity than planned. Not that it matters in this case - the hydrometer is in the bin. Add this to the fact that I'm pretty sure I stopped short of .990 during the sparge and we could be looking at a bit of a weak brew. Again, not a problem in itself I suppose.

I was so pre-occupied with all the goings wrong that at I forgot to add the late hops (#5), remembering them only 2 minutes from the end of the boil. Having added them I left the boil running another 10 or so minutes in order to impart the flavour of late hops, which you will recall were already short by 4 grams. Sigh. I did see a ton of cold break material this time during chiller cooling, which his something I've not yet seen in any of my brews until now! Every cloud I suppose :)

Silver lining

Yeast, Safale S04, was pitched at 22'C. I couldn't aerate as my big paddle had disappeared, so I pitched it as it was, which was fairly well aerated already from the drop from boiler to FV. The paddle turned up just now down the back of the shelving in the shed amongst the spiders and dust, having fallen there at some point (#6 ... ?).

A very eventful brew day which started badly, got worse, but ended with 20litres of wort in a FV, so on can't be all that bad on average. I usually have a rough idea how my brews will turn out but this time I really have no clue, with so many contributing factors and unknowns! Here's hoping phoenix rises from these ashes :) I'll report back here either way.