AG#1 - Red rocket boy.

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DrD

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Morning all,

Thought I'd write up my brewday from the weekend, first AG, done as a BIAB in a 38 L pot on my electric/ceramic hob.

The recipe is my own as I couldn't find a recipe I wanted to make, seemed to make sense mathematically, the colour of the wort/young beer seems about right and the taste of the wort didn't seem dissimilar from kit brews, which I took as a good sign. Forgive any over/under explanation of the recipe, haven't had to do it before.

Was going for something approx 1.052-54 OG, good amount of colour and hop bitterness, aiming for a red hue. Can post the colour/bitterness estimates later but I recall them being about 25 EBC and 40 IBU.

21 L into fermenter (23.5 L cooled wort w/trub):

4580 g Maris otter (EBC approx 4.5)
400 g Crystal (EBC 150)
30 g black patent (EBC 1280) - for the red colour

90 min mash at 65 C

28 g challenger hops - (AA 8.2%) @ 90 mins
24 g EKG - (AA 5.7%) @ 20 mins
24 g EKG - (AA 5.7%) @ 5 mins
5 g Irish moss @ 15 mins

90 min boil, followed by no chill. S04 yeast @ 19 C until done.

Stuff that I didn't already own from being a wine/kit brewer (i.e. vessels, hydrometer, spoons, etc etc) was a 38 L Meyer aluminium stock pot (£38 delivered, eGay), very sturdy. £3 pizza tray wired to a 8 cm high wire grill from my combi microwave got the bag off the heat. Brew bag was a net curtain cut to size from Dunelm (£4, priced per metre) held on with a bungee cord (£1.50). I measured the volume in the pot using a st/st ruler to measure headspace (36 cm diameter pot PI*r^2 = 1.017 L/cm of headspace). Equipment costs = £46.50.

Grain/hops bought from thehomebrewshop as delivery was free, meant I could get all my kit for the same price as malt miller, but got Warminster MO rather than Crisp MO. On that note I massively underestimated the size of a 25 kg bag of milled grain!!!

Anyway, the messy bit.

I did a boil with just water to make sure my ceramic hob could boil it, the largest ring (2.3 kW) and half a small ring (1.3 kW) could fit beneath the pot to bring it to boil quicker although just the large ring worked too (single ring covered in pic).

Pot with bag/pizza tray assembled on hob:
IMAG0307_zps7042f279.jpg


Weighed out grain:
IMAG0308_zps879b9c29.jpg


Starting to dough in:
IMAG0309_zps480e449c.jpg

I underestimated my strike water temp, so had to fire up the hob after adding the grain.

Insulated using foil and the bubblewrap my HBS order arrived in:
IMAG0310_zpsaf68eef5.jpg


Pot held temperature well but the temperature continued to rise (due to ceramic hob staying hot) so added a bit of my reserved sparge volume as cold water to bring it back down. Pot held temp then for 90 mins at 65 C.

Mashy:
IMAG0312_zps526c5656.jpg


Bag removed and squeezed like it owed me money, then rinsed in my remaining sparge volume of hot (78 C) water:
IMAG0313_zps0260f99c.jpg


Onto the boil, got a moderate rolling boil with 1 ring, vigorous rolling boil with 1.5 rings, so hop time:
IMAG0317_zps0d42bbb1.jpg

IMAG0314_zps604a8331.jpg


And a swift pint of kit beer:
IMAG0315_zpsac73482e.jpg


At about this point, the steam set off my fire alarm, despite it being in another room behind a closed door with the cracks sealed with tea towels, so fan out the window to vent the kitchen:
IMAG0319_zps88fb6b0c.jpg


I was worried the colour wasn't as red as I had hoped:
IMAG0320_zps2df313a4.jpg


Until I added the irish moss, good looking hot break (I think) and a deep red colour:
IMAG0323_zps47b0ad42.jpg


FG 1.058 in cooled wort (higher than I expected by about 4 points):
IMAG0332_zps80aeae13.jpg


Day after pitching the yeast:
IMAG0335_zps74a9a1db.jpg




All in it seemed to go well, I got better efficiency than I had expected and the partially fermented beer is tasting/looking promising.

Genuinely can't wait to try it, hope this thread wasn't too much of a TL;DR.
 
Well done - All looking good!

You probably got higher efficiency than you were expecting because you "squeezed the bag like it owed you money" (love that :D) . I've previously got efficiencies up to 90% from squeezing almost every last drop of wort out f the bag

If you wanted your OG to be exactly as your receipe states though, you can use a dilution calculator - and get more beer! :cheers:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/dilution-and-boiloff-gravity-calculator/
 
Well done - All looking good!

You probably got higher efficiency than you were expecting because you "squeezed the bag like it owed you money" (love that :D) . I've previously got efficiencies up to 90% from squeezing almost every last drop of wort out f the bag

If you wanted your OG to be exactly as your receipe states though, you can use a dilution calculator - and get more beer! :cheers:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/dilution-and-boiloff-gravity-calculator/


Makes sense :thumb:.

I wasn't overly concerned what the OG was really, prefer to be just over 1.050 but I'm a fan of stronger beers so will see how it tastes undiluted first.

Need to plan another brew now!
 

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