AG #1 - Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout clone

[judasegg]

Hey,

I did my first AG on Saturday, took a whopping 9ish hours to complete. Here is how it went:

First, some pics

Cleanliness is next to Godliness...

Shiny...ignore the fingerprints...

Trying to be organized...

The mash...

Things started off on a frustrating note, as somehow my copper manifold came loose from the tap after doughing in. I re-attached easily enough, but was worried that tap/manifold may have gotten clogged with grains in the process.

I seemed to have lots of trouble getting a consistent temp reading? I preheated with 3-5 litres of boiling water, and doughed in using 80c water, but when I put my thermometer in, the readings seemed to fluctuate alot, depending where I placed the probe. Some places read 65c, others 72c. I ended up adding cold water, same problem again, some places read 50c, others 68c (target was 66.7). I did stir, maybe not enough?

Reminds me of marble ice cream...

I basically guessed from the readings that the temp was 65-70c, so closed the lid and waited.

My GF said my mash tun looked like Osama...

The moment of truth, I opened the mash tun tap, about half way. Liquid was flowing, yay! It wasn't even that "dirty", for first runnings. Then, after about 300ml, it just stopped dead. My heart dropped, all that sawing, filing, sanding, hours and hours of manual work, and I get a damn stuck mash on first go. At this point, I was about to give up, due to a conviently timed migraine. Instead, I racked my brain, how can I get the wort flowing???

I thought it might just be a clog in the tap, so I grabbed the nearest pointy object (old metallic thermometer probe) and sanitized it. Opening the tap fully, I stuck the probe inside and gave it a jiggle. It was like I'd struck oil! The wort flowed, a gusher! I closed the tap to about half way, and continued the drain the tun. The batch sparge was next, and went off without a hitch...

I did a sneaky test of the first batch of wort, got 1.040 at 45c. Apparently, that's about 1.049 after adjustment, so I was pretty close. After sparging, I didn't test again, but saw that I had 28 litres in boiler instead of projected 26 litres. I assumed the extra water was from the cold water I added to the tun, and would explain the low OG.


The boil
I commenced with the boil, and of course, thats when it decided to start to rain...I had put my boiler just outside conservatory, so that was a fun and dangerous move indoors. Thankfully, my boiler is electric one-element, so its a bit slow to heat up.

With the lid on, then removed, this beast is a steam factory!

I waited until wort reached boiling, added the hops. Not the smell I expected, but pleasant! One mistake I made, I failed to read the start of the Clone Brews book, which says they use pellet hops, so I should add 10% more hops as I was using leaf. Oh well, only 3 grams!!

As the boil went on, I ran cleaner, water, sanitizer through my CFC. Then, decided to test water flow. The damn water didn't come out the outlet hose on the CFC! My design was 10mm copper inside 1/2" hose, not enough room for good flow rate, and apparently it just decided to stop all together. So, I spent the next hour+, cutting off the garden hose, and transforming my CFC into make-shift IC. I really regretted lubricating the copper hose with oil to get it inside garden hose, as that had turned rancid. GREAT. So I had to clean the beast. I'm hoping I did a good enough job so I don't end up with any sketchy oil in the brew!! By then it was about 10:45 pm, and I had started at 1:30pm, so I was starting to get a bit sloppy...


Transfer to FV and pitching
So, my boil ended up being about 2.5-3 hours instead of 1.5. The boiler was down to 16 litres! ****. Oh well. When temp reached 24c, I drained into FV. I had hoped that the draining and aeration would reduce temp to 21ish, but it didn't, I was at 23.8c. Tested the OG - 1.062 (adjusted). I removed the hopstopper from the boiler and rinsed it...and it had some signs of caramelized wort on the bottom, under the hopstopper. I'm not sure if that's just a result of the extra-long boil?

I didn't really have any good way to cool the FV, so I put on lid and airlock (filled with Star San...apparently that's OK?), and put it outside while I did a bit of clean up. Probably not an awesome idea. It didn't really make a difference, either. I brought it back in, and stirred the wort like crazy...temp reading at 21.4c? Apparently stirring cooled it really well!

Pitched the yeast...2 packets of Safale-S04. WAY too much yeast for 15 litres, not sure I was thinking straight at that point, a bit frazzled, doped up on headache meds :P. But, as I understand it, that will probably have little impact on the beer.

Not my pic, and I used TWO

Anywho, brought the FV upstairs, plugged in immersion heater....went to bed.

Next day I check it around noon, the temp strip read between 20-22c, and the krausen was HUGE, about 3 inches!

Busy little bastards...

I took a sneaky peak inside, the krausen is actually nearly touching the lid! Hehe. Way, way too much yeast!

If I recall from the night before, my thinking with intentionally overpitching was that the yeast would very quickly dominate the wort, reducing the chance of my brew drama allowing for other critters to get a foothold.

One thing, I didn't seem to get a hot OR cold break? The boil was pretty vigorous, but due to being electric, was slow to get going...I wonder if I need to drill a hole in boiler and install a secondary kettle element to improve boil? I'm not totally sure what to look for in terms of break material, after draining my hopstopper appeared to be covered in hop leaves and...well...brown slime, but there didn't seem to be much of it, I was expecting a bunch of goo...

Hops and gunk

 

[gurtpint]

Congrats for you first ag brew Judas! You learn something new with every brewing session and it get smoother every time. And there's always something new to learn and so many wacky combinations to try! What a great and tasty hobby this is.

 

[dennisking]

First one out the way, it won`t always take that long. Preparing as much as you can the night before helps

 

[Good Ed]

Great stuff, you won't forget that one for a while; onto AG#2 :thumb:

 

[mrfrosty]

What an experience, sounds like you had fun along the way though which is good. We all learn from our mistakes so with that in mind your AG#2 will be awesome :thumb:

Rob

 

[Presh2103]

Doing exactly the same brew this next week. Looks great mate.

P.

 

[oz11]

Well done, and good pics!
I think one thing I read was when you said you got a stuck mash and you sterilised your thermometer to poke it through? Probably just needs to be clean rather than sterile/santised as with everything pre-boil. Post-boil is when you need to be careful.

Anyway...you'll get beer! Well done on number 1! :thumb:

Edit..just seen the date you brewed... so how did it turn out?

 

[rabbie]

Lovely beer to go for as a first timer!
You can connect a silicon hose to your mashtun outlet valve and add the mash liquor from underneath (underletting) - this should give you a better temperature distribution and minimise stirring :thumb:
As soon as you have covered the element (think it's hidden in your boiler?) with wort you can get the boiler on, no need to wait for it to fill, that can save a bit of time.

 

[unclepumble]

Well done on breaking your duck, Great beer to brew as a first, your going to love it :thumb: :thumb: :thumb:



UP

 

[Ceejay]

Nice one mate. This was my first AG beer as well, and it turned out fantastic. My Dad reckoned it was better than the real thing! :lol:

 

[Swift Pint]

:

Nice one!! Sounds like a goodfirst AG, and some nice pics too!

I absolutely love that beer!

What recipe did you use?

 

[Wez]

Welcome to the dark side :thumb:

 

[graysalchemy]

Have you got the recipe for this it does look good. :thumb: :thumb: