AG#1 - Hooky Bitter (GW) BIAB - PICTURES!!!!

[dennisking]

Well done, great photos. :thumb:

 

[borischarlton]

Calum

Glad it all went well.

Bring the pot over when you can and I will put a tap in it for you, it will be so much easier!

Rob

 

[calumscott]

Thanks Rob, I'll ping you an email...

 

[graysalchemy]

Welcome to the Darkside Young Padawan :twisted: :twisted:

No going back now :thumb:

 

[calumscott]

The "After the brew weekend" post...

So, I think what I actually achieved over the weekend was pretty good. The end result was nearly a full bucket of wort bubbling away nicely and you can't really argue with that!! :thumb:

I also reckon that it just goes to show how simple all grain brewing can be. I read a lot of the Back to Basics brewday topics and in truth this was exactly one of those, just bigger and with scales and a big muslin bag! The sum total of the equipment used:

1 massive pot
1 massive hand made grain bag (because the commercial ones are too small)
1 plastic paddle
1 domestic kitchen gas hob
1 set of kitchen scales
1 bowl (to measure hops into)
1 digital thermometer
1 siphon tube (with the little hop stopper mesh bag that came with the Richies Festival London Porter I did recently)
1 FV, lid and airlock
1 balloon whisk

Lesson #1: AG complicated? It's only as complicated as you want to make it.


It all ran pretty smoothly, with the exception of f**king up my mash temperature and having to bring it down again. Not so easy in 35L!!! A couple of jugs of cold lashed in there helped but that pushed my length up and my pre-boil gravity down.

Lesson #2: The temperature showing on your digital thermometer isn't necessarily the average temperature of the entire pot! It was showing 66C, but then I got curious and shifted the probe 77C! Figuring that stirring a BIAB doesn't matter as there is no grain bed to worry about, the average temperature was 75C. Don't just blindly trust the thermometer.


So I ended up with more pre-boil volume than I expected because of having to cool the mash. I decided to extend the boil. I have actually no idea by how long I extended it but I figured that it didn't matter to the early addition hops as they are just there for the bitterness. So instead of 90min hops they were probably more like 120mins. The aroma Fuggles got the ten minutes they were supposed to.

Lesson #3: Take better notes you lazy git! Actually a little unfair, I was trying to do a mountain of things all at once, putting up curtain poles and the like... Next time I'll note times properly, volumes etc. I should have weighed the spent grain to see what absorption there was yadda yadda...

Lesson #4: Don't try to do too much! I would really have liked to have all the data about what was happening and when to look back over for the purposes of process improvement. Dedicating the whole day just to a brew is difficult though with a new house and a family...

Lesson #5: Derived from #3 & #4 - build a much more detailed brewsheet, complete with those data I want to capture.

Lesson #6: More important probably than all the rest. AG is great fun! Much more creative than bunging on a kit, it's not just brewing. Or is it? The realisation I think is that kits is 90% fermenting with the remaining 10% being other process like sanitation, bottling, etc. With AG it feels like there is far more "making" involved, much much more "input" to the process. Fermenting seems like a minor fraction of the whole. "Brewing" is now a whole lot more than fermenting. :thumb:


Other minor lessons:
7a - mashing your own grain makes you appreciate beer more. As my stocks are a bit low after the house move we bought some beers, Ringwood, St Austel, Adnams... Knowing the malt aromas better made those beers far more interesting than I'd ever found them previously.
7b - burnt on wort is a total b*****d to get off the hob. Not even Mr Muscle has managed it
7c - a better method of grain withdrawal is required. That was the reason behind the wort on the hob. Suggestions for a super-simple winching mechanism gratefully received!
7d - as mentioned previously, when you go AG you have to relearn than nonchalant "patience" of chucking it in FV and forgetting about it.

All in all a brilliant experience. Learned loads. Made beer. Almost total success in my book. :

Finally, a massive thank you to you lot for the help and guidance and inspiration to give it a go. :hat:

 

[calumscott]

Welcome to the Darkside Young Padawan :twisted: :twisted:

No going back now :thumb:

I think frogfurlong said it best: "Who says I'm looking for a way back?"

 

[PD]

well done Callum...its pure fun....
From now on it gets even better... after the worries of your first brew you can relax a little and play more.
Start to design your own brews with softwear, ( even if like me you use established recipes as a basis, you can always tinker )

I think the best lesson I learned after brews 1 & 2 was to slow down and enjoy the whole process, dont rush from one process to the next your beer will not come to any harm if its covered in clean vessels and the 10-15 min breaks you give yourself allows you to make your notes up calm yourself down plan the next stage in your mind etc. My first brew was a total rush causing minor problems that escalated and worries that lasted until the first tasting....

Glad it all worked out...Happy brew days.

 

[caerleon]

Nice first brew congrats!

 

[Baldbrewer]

well done :thumb: sadly you will no longer be happy drinking a pint in a pub.

when you know how "good beer" tastes!

 

[andylanc1975]

Damn, damn, damn, another post that has got me itching to get to the dark side!

Unfortunately SWMBO has said that whilst I can move to the dark side, I can't until after Xmas as we need those funds for presents or something. Apparently it's not the done thing to give a 20 month old a bottle of beer by way of a present? I said he'd be eternally grateful to receive something that his dad has made by hand... but what do I know?

Great post though, love the pictures and the write up, bookmarked for my dive into it next year :thumb:

 

[calumscott]

Well I can't yet say that you must, that would be a bit previous given that all I've tasted so far was the post-boil wort (which was promising I have to say!), but it has become quite clear that you can get started for not a lot of money...

...50-odd quid + ingredients on top of the stuff that you'll have already for kit brewing and you're there! Seriously, for this brew the only things I didn't have were the pot and the grain bag...

What's SWMBO getting you for Christmas then...?

 

[andylanc1975]

:cry: we're not buying each other presents this year, we decided to spend it on a weekend away from the kids instead (which was last weekend). Damn!

 

[calumscott]

OK, a week in and time for dry hopping and a quick gravity measurement.

20g EKG in a muslin bag in, a sample out. 1.014 and still fermenting so that's good...

OMFG! (as the kids say nowadays) So it's nowhere near finished, it hasn't been dry hopped, carbed or conditioned and it's already the best beer I've made by a clear country mile... It's been a while since I had a hooky bitter, but I do think that this tastes not a million miles from what I remember.

Time for me to hold my hands up and admit... AG beer is significantly better than kit beer...

Also a good time to thank all you lot for your help, advice, pointers, and what not. :hat: This is all your fault...

Calum = fooking chuffed! :

 

[calumscott]

Bottling Day!!!

Money Shot II - Gives me about 3.9%

Bottle sterilising

Its a one bucket effort tonight - only enough WVP for one

Priming Syrup

Now there's a bit of a hiatus in the picture taking as one's daughter decided it would be a great night to play up...


And 37 bottles of Hooky-ish Bitter Bottled!

AG#1. (As Gordon Ramsey would put it) DONE!

 

[jimp2003]

Bottling can be a pain in the bum if you are not in the mood for it but there is nothing more satisfying than seeing all those bottles of lovely homebrew lined up. :

Nice brewday day report and a tasty looking recipe. :thumb:

 

[PD]

Well done Calum.....Come on its Sunday, your first brew is bottled and stored away, your boiler awaits.......

There's lots of brews to be done.

 

[Dieseljockey]

Bottling can be a pain in the bum if you are not in the mood for it but there is nothing more satisfying than seeing all those bottles of lovely homebrew lined up. : :

100%..that's why I use cornies..but I intend to bottle more next year, easier to give a bottle.

Well done Calum :clap: ...missed this post for most of it, so just catching up. What's the next brew??

 

[rich27500]

I don't chill Callum, it's not as necessary as you might think. The Aussie BIAB guys don't because of water conservation, they just lob it in plastic jerry cans which they call no chill cubes.

 

[calumscott]

Run up to christmas is a bit hectic for us so next brew is an american style pale the weekend after next.

I should probably show these two wines some love now that I've got no beer at all in FV!! :shock:

 

[calumscott]

Oldstout's going to be chuffed - I'll have a new stash picture before long... :thumb: