Post #4 made 7 years ago
by Wolfman101
Right, just finished the first brew at 11:30pm, but started at 7:30. 4 hours feels ok, but there is still a mess to clean up tomorrow morning.
It's raining too much to get back out to the shed.
Story of the brew was;
Thermostat on the urn isn't to be trusted, but is probably good enough to set 5° low and come back to after 30 mins and increase to strike temp when I'm ready
Lost the top of the bag into to the run halfway through pouring the grain - learning = gets some bulldog clamps to hold the bloody bag in place
My thermometer doesn't work, or I fouled up the biabacus file. It said to strike at 67, which was only 1° above mash temp. It seemed wrong, but I did it, so I was consistently 1 - 1.5° below mash temp for the entire mins.
Learning- get a decent thermometer and strike at 3° above mash temp. Either the thermometer is cactus or the st-1000 temp probe I was using to monitor the mash temp was off.
I could get 5kg of grain out of the urn without a rope. I have a massive pot, so this was good to drop the bag into with a colander in the bottom. I got lots of wort from squeezing the bag, so that seems to be a good step.
Volumes before boil were bang on the biabacus totals, And I seemed to get very close to my 21 l ferment volume into 20l cube with no worries. I was going to cube ferment, but I think I will put into a normal fermenter, just to see how it compares to the actual final totals.
Boil went well, but it took longer to reach a boil than I expected. 30 mins to get from mash temp to boiling. It was pretty cold in the shed, so I ended up keeping s camping mat coiled around the urn, so might look into making that a permanent thing.
Hop sock is a dirty wet rag, which resulted in the biggest mess on the floor for the night. - learning, stainless steel spider or ?
No chill cube worked well. I was hoping to be able to push the final bit of air from the handle out through the bottom tap, but it ended up spitting wort every where, so I'll just have to live with the bubble from the handle.
All in all, good nights work
Beer looks a lot clearer than I thought and I'm looking forward to getting in fermented and into a keg.
Also, boiling in a low roof tin shed, means condensation starting to drip over things at 50 mins into the boil. Learning, brew closer to the door and set up a fan to push the wet air outside. It was only about 8° here tonight so wet air was always going to be a problem.
Also, I can now play with my bikes in the shed while brewing beer, and being close to the kegerator means a lot more drinking on brew night.
A much more enjoyable evening than opening cans, so I'm happy.
