OK. Will let it sit a while longer and see how it tastes. Also bringing some into work to see if there are ppl that like it. Would rather someone drinks it over dumping it but I want to do another batch now that this one isn't nice, so kinda need the bottles (used all my nice grolsch swing-tops)! Will see what happens

Blending might not be a bad idea!

OK. So have been giving away the last batch to friends who seem to like it far more than I do! Lucky for me and lucky for them

So just started mashing my next batch. Sticking with the same recipe but I want to try and do it properly this time. To try and improve extract efficiency, I have made the bag looser than last time and will also stir the grain at 45min into mash. Should hopefully help!

In terms of Hops, I have done the correct calculations now and I have decided that when I take the grain out, I will wash the grain bag and use this for the hop additions to make sure I get the best circulation around the hops as possible

Wish me luck!

Thanks Dick.

I seem to have hit a snag tho :( I am hiring exactly the same urn as last time. It's the same individual one. There was a mark I made on the element and its the same urn but they seemed to have fixed the dry-boil control mechanism! Last time I used the urn I just put it on 6 and it got to a nice rolling boil and stayed there for 90 min. Now it seems to be stopping intermittently :( When it first got to the boil, it stopped for some mins and then it got to the boil again and was going for a good 10min but has now stopped again! How do I adjust my timing for this in terms of hop additions?

What a pain. Maybe it'll be 3rd time lucky ....

OK, so for your benefit and mine, here is what I did

Brought up to strike temp and added grain while stirring vigorously. Used same grain bill as last time. 4kg Pale Malt, 0.2kg Crystal and 0.1kg Melanoidin. After stirring them in, the temp was 66C and I closed it all up. 45min into mash I opened up and stirred vigorously before closing up again. Even though I insulated with blankets and towels. The temp was down to about 61C after the full 90min mash.

Pulled out bag and let drain as much as possible before putting it in my fermenter bucket. While I was bringing wort up to boil I poured about 3l of HOT water through the grains and let it sit for a while before straining and adding to wort. I then did this again with another 2l of HOT water.

Once all water was added I brought to the boil and in the meantime cleaned out my grain bag. At boil I added 23g of 7%AA Cascade hops into my boil using the grain bag. As mentioned above, boil came and went so I left it for 30min more than planned so total boil was about 120min (if not a bit longer). The time I stopped was pretty random. Just tasted the wort and it tasted quite nice and bitter so I pulled the grain bag. With the unreliable boil I decided to use a hop tea for the last addition. I put 12g of the same hops as above into a french press and poured just off boiling water over it from the kettle. Stirred and let sit for about 10-15min. I then poured the tea into the boiler, which had been turned off.

Volume at the end of the boil was about 22l before adding the tea and another 1.5l of cold water. I then realised I should take a gravity reading so I just tapped off a bit of wort and I will now add more water till I get to about 27-28l so I can have 23l for my fermenter and 5l of trub. Should also help cool the wort a bit. Would like to get it into the fermenter tonight to cool.

Shew. Will keep updated as I go along. Lets hope this tastes good

Gravity is 1.040 again, really thought I would have got a bit more efficiency :( Oh well. And now i've added more water at the end so will be lower alc ...

Will keep in touch as I go

Hmmm. Seems temp effects the Gravity reading far more than I expected (or the wort was a lot warmer than I thought). I took some of the wort out of the boiler after I topped up the water to 27l. I let it cool till it was luke-warm to warm and measured the gravity. It read 1.034. I then left the sample tube overnight with the hygrometer in the sample and this morning it's reading 1.040! It seems I still have much to learn. Going to open the fermenter and check temp just now to see if I can pitch the yeast.

Can I do an efficiency calc with these values?

efficiency = (40 x 27)/(4.3 x 307) = 81% ??

Hi all,

Have just bottled my second all grain brew. Should be much nicer than my first, seems that even though the urn played up a bit it didn't effect the hop additions too badly. We'll see how it tastes in a few weeks!

Starting to plan my final brew before I head over to Vancouver, Canada (Again, if anyone has any links/contacts there, please let me know!).

I know this is a bit off topic (and even off forum!) but I have an Ale kit left as well as some Crystal (about 600g) and Malanoidin (about 800g) malts. I would like to do a partial mash/extract brew to use up the ingredients. I also have half a sachet of Safbrew S-33. I will do a yeast starter with the half sachet to make sure it's still healthy and to give me enough for a good start.

I am looking to make a nice malty ale. Any ideas on how much of the grain I should use and what proportions/methods to use to get out the fermentables? I also have some brewers sugar too if it's not enough grain. Unfortunately, I'm all out of hops!

I'm assuming that what I need to do is take about 3 litres of water and raise to mash temp and then add all of the crystal malt as well as about 100 to 200g of the melanoidin and let it mash for 90min. Then strain and sparge by pouring over some boiling water. I would then use this as the base water for a regular extract brew and add the extract and top-up to my full brew length. Then measure the OG and add sugar as required. This sound about right?

Thanks

Ah, this I can answer. You don't actually have to do a mash to use crystal. I don't know about melanoidin though, sorry. But you could make a decent IPA with just the Ale Kit (a can of hopped extract I presume?), half the brewing sugar and the steeped crystal made up to 18L.