AG #12 - Leftover/TTL Take 2

Tue 30th April 2013

Very slack. Another 4 months without a brew, though it's hardly surprising considering the protracted winter and me being an external brewer.

This was a leftover brew that ended up containing similar ingredients to the ill-fated Timothy Taylor Landlord brew I did last year. It being a weekday there were no available brew-monkeys and the dog, as usual, proved less than able (or interested). I intended to get back into the shed and brew from the tier setup but this was scuppered by my HLT boiler breaking 58'C into heating. It turned out to be my fault, as a steady trickle of sanitiser water emptied from the plug socket on the side, explaining everything.

No major problem, just a bit more lugging liquid around, which I decided would be easier on the patio.

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
275g Amber Malt

Hops
33g East Kent Goldings @ 90mins
25g Fuggles @ 90 mins
20g Fuggles @ 20 mins

|Mash
Really struggled with this today for some reason. Despite best efforts I could only achieve a temperature of 65'C despite much addition from the HLT. The 275g of leftover amber malt were a late addition to compensate a little for the vast amount of addition water to try and get the temperature up. On the up side it lost barely a degree over the 90 minutes so probably no cause for concern on the mash temperature front.

Sparge

Goes with lamb or beef.

Unremarkable sparge thankfully, although much arsing around with chairs and books to get the height right for the HLT to sparge the mash tun, and then again to get the mash tun the right height for the drop into the now dead boiler.

... and then again to poor it all back into the now empty working boiler as it changed roles from HLT to boiler.

... and then again to poor it back into the dead boiler because I forgot to put the bloody hop strainer in again.

... and one final time to poor it all back once again into the working boiler now fitted with the strainer.

Definitely going back into the shed for the next one.

"Be with you after this stick"

"Here, let me help with that"

"wait ... a stick"

Boil
90 minute boil for this one. Boiler kept a solid 100'C again through out and the cooler brought the whole lot down to 25'C in 20 minutes, which is unprecendented.The only drawback to a 90 minute boil is the amount lost to evaporation, which in this case was roughly 2 litres. I could have liquored back but decided to just go with it. As it turns out there is about 18 litres in the FV which is pretty good.

Yeast
Safale s-04 pitched at 22'C and a starting gravity of 1044

Played it safe with this one, so not expecting miracles but should be a half decent pint :)