AG#22 Hobgoblinish Ale

[jimp2003]

Evening All.

I will be getting up early tomorrow to help a mate brew up a batch of something akin to Hobgoblin. It's not intended to be a clone as I don't believe you can ever do that on a one-off brew but I have based it on Orfy's recipe that I have heard a few people refer to.

Here it is:


Brewlength: 23l
Original Gravity (OG): 1.048 (°P): 11.9
Final Gravity (FG): 1.014 (°P): 3.6
Alcohol (ABV): 4.40 %
Colour (SRM): 15.1 (EBC): 29.7
Bitterness (IBU): 32.6 (Tinseth)

86.49% Belgian Pale Malt
4.5% Crystal 60
3.6% Carapils (Dextrine)
2.7% Aromatic Malt
2.7% Chocolate

15g Fuggles (5.2% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (First Wort)
15g Willamette (6.3% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (First Wort)
15g Fuggles (5.2% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
15g Willamette (6.3% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
15g Fuggles (5.2% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma)
15g Willamette (6.3% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma)


Single step Infusion at 68°C for 60 Minutes. Boil for 60 Minutes

Fermented at 18°C with WLP005 - British Ale


I am going back to my BIAB roots for this one so that we have a nice easy brewday. Also. as I brew outdoors and it is forecast to be below freezing all day. this will give me the ability to add heat to the mash if needed.

There will be a few firsts: First time I have milled my own grain, first time using WLP005 and first time using Dingemans PAle Malt.

I will try to take some pics and report back tomorrow.

Cheers!

Jim

 

[RobWalker]

looks like my kinda beer! hope you enjoy it and all goes to plan :

 

[jimp2003]

Everything went very much to plan thanks Rob!

I started to take some pics but that fell by the wayside after the mash - we were too busy chatting.

We were due to start at 8am but I got up a little bit early to start heating the water so we could hit the ground running when Grant came round. As my gas bottle felt a bit light I decided to heat the bulk of the water in my electrim HLT then transfer it to the kettle.

It was a cold one. It didn't get above freezing all day and was about -3 all through the brewday. I brew at the front of the garage:

Obligatory grain shot. I forgot to take a close up of the home-milled grains...

Mashed for 60 mins in the 50l steel pot. Here is my solution for insulating the pot:

The pot sits on a square of Kingspan insulation and the cover is made from two HDPE buckets made so that one fits inside the other with a 50mm gap all the way round which was filled with polystyrene and expanding foam. I had to make a cut-out when I fitted a tap to the pot so that gets bunged up with a towel.

Mash started at 67.7 degrees C. We added the bulk of the chocolate halfway through the 60min mash. Gave it a stir and took a temp reading and it sat at 66.6 C :twisted: . Mash ended at 65.8 C which I thought was fair enough given the ambient temp.

Pot was then put on the burner and temp was raised to mashout.

Here you can see nice clear wort over the grains indicating good conversion. Of course being BIAB the wort did not stay that clear after the bag was pulled...

Thats where the pics ended unfortunately. After draining the bag it was dumped in a bucket and we did a mini sparge with 3l of 80 degrees C water. I always think this step is worth doing as it gave up 3l of sweet tasting wort.

The brewday proceeded very smoothly with the whole process only taking 4 hours plus a little bit at the end for washing up.
We ended up with 24l in the FV bang on the 1.048 OG target. WLP005 starter was pitched at about 20 degrees C and within 6 hours there were signs of fermentation.

Its currently sat in the fridge set at 19 degrees C.

Cheers!

Jim