Be gentle with me

[Moley]

Oh dear, what have I gone and done now? :shock:

I visited my local homebrew shop this afternoon, and came away with 6kg crushed pale malt, 500g each crushed crystal malt and black malt, 100g each Fuggles, Golding and Northdown hops and some Irish Moss. It seemed like a good idea at the time but now I'm getting scared, I've heard that people go to the dark side and never come back.

I don't have a boiler yet, but I have that big 50+ litre pot I've already shown you, which now has a hole in the side at the bottom and an assortment of plumbing taking shape.

I don't have a mash tun yet, but I think a trip to Argos is on the cards for tomorrow morning, and I have an assortment of plumbing taking shape.

I will be looking for suggestions as to what I can do with some of the above ingredients, but I hope you will hold my hand and guide me gently as I try to get to grips with a whole host of new words and take my first faltering steps in the darkness.

 

[Wez]

Great news :thumb:

With what you've got for ingredients you'll be able to do a few great beers, when you have your kit volumes sorted let us know and we'll all argue over recipes and grapple to tell you that MINE is best :thumb:

 

[dennisking]

Its a step worth taking, sure you won`t regret it. Not as daunting as it might seem. Enjoy :)

 

[tubby_shaw]

Give me a few days to sort some stuff out and you are welcome to join me for a brewday in Redditch to see just how easy it is :thumb:

 

[Moley]

Thanks folks, I now have a coolbox / hotbox, but unfortunately not a lot's going to be achieved this weekend, we're off to a Birthday Bash / Boaters' Banter in wonderful Milton Keynes, and when we get back tomorrow afternoon there's a Grand Prix.

I'm aiming to get everything together for a first AG brewday by next Sunday morning (when SWMBO will be out of the way at w**k, poor thing), and will take pics as this could become a "How To" do it on-the-cheap.

Tubby: offer appreciated (shame I'd have to be driving), that might be interesting some time, but hey, let's muddle through this week and see how things go :

 

[A T]

I'll look forward to your first brew and the grand prix It will be good to have the week to toy around with your equipment and make sure it's all working alright

 

[Moley]

I've already mentioned my big pan, I picked this up some time ago from a local auction for a fiver, no-one else wanted it and it seemed a shame to pass it by. It's 50 litres plus.

This now has a tank fitting (bedded on a little high temperature silicone left over from fitting boat water heater flue and woodburner chimney) and an isolator valve which will serve as a tap.

I'm not counting any copper pipe or fittings which I already had in my "plumbing bits" tub, so so far I've spent £2.48 for a tank connector and £2.78 for a pack of 10 elbow joints from B&Q, £14.99 for a coolbox from Argos and £2.99 for a water butt tap from Wilkinson.

I've made up a manifold / hop strainer for what will now be my boiler:

The end has been filed down and split so it can be pushed into the back of the tank connector. The pan still needs a bit more of a clean-up and attacking with some wire wool on the inside, but it's only a bit of dried on soil (will have to find a new Christmas tree planter this year ). Don't worry, I'll do a couple of preliminary boils before I use it for brewing:

A similar strainer has been made for the coolbox mash tun (assembly instructions elsewhere on the interweb) with hacksaw slots almost halfway through every centimetre, cleaned up outside with a file and wire wool and de-burred on the inside with a round file:

et voila:

I am making a similar item but with two rows of 1.5mm holes drilled, 90 degrees between rows, this will form my sparging head:

So I've managed some plumbing, the party was good, and 'our bloke' won the Grand Prix. All in all, a pretty good weekend

 

[tubby_shaw]

A dammned good weekend I would say :thumb:
That's some nifty work with the copper :thumb:
I'm looking forward to the brewday thread :party:

 

[Wez]

Tidy work Moley :thumb:

I love reading this sort of stuff :clap:

 

[Screwy]

No doubt, your on the slippery slope Moley :lol:

 

[llannige]

Keep up the good work Moley :thumb:

 

[Moley]

Still some more plumbing to do and some very basic carpentry, but I'm heading in the right direction, so I'd like to start to formulate a plan.

My local homebrew shop doesn't seem to carry a vast range of stock, but does mean I can get the basics without having to pay carriage.

To recap, I have 6kg Crushed Pale Malt, and 500g each crushed Crystal Malt and Black Malt. Compared to prices I've seen online their hops seemed very reasonable at £2.95 or less per 100g. I bought one bag each of Fuggles, Goldings and Northdown. I think they also had Saaz, but I didn't get any of them.

I haven't worked out dead spaces or any of that stuff yet but I think I understand about brew lengths, strike / mash temperatures and sparging. I think I've also sussed bittering hops (start of boil?) and aroma hops (last 30 minutes or so?) , but what's the difference between the 3 varieties I've got to hand?

I like my beers a bit chewy but not too bitter, so what can I do with what I've got, for a standard 23L brew?
Oh, and I have moss and S-04.

 

[arturobandini]

Best advice regarding hops is to try commercial bitters that use the varieties you've got there and see what you think. Hops I don't really know or haven't had many commercial examples with I brew single hop golden/pale ales. With a good aroma steep after boiler switch off you can really get your tastebuds around a particular hop. This is under the assumption that you use hops that can be used economically for aroma and bittering. The hops you've chosen are pretty good for both with Northdown , depending on the AA content, being the only one I would ease off with depending how you like the bitterness.

One of my favourite hops is Styrian Goldings and I bought some Aurora on the assumption that they were "Super Styrians" so they had more AA, therefore less needed at the start of the boil, but all that lovely Styrian taste. As soon as I got them in the boil I was thinking "This doesn't smell anything like Styrian Goldings?" now the beer has had some time in the keg and maturation it's clear they have little in common. If I wasn't already such a fan of Styrians then I probably wouldn't have been able to tell at that point that there was no real common taste profile.

Northdown Wonder is a good recipe that Paul from Barleybottom has put up in a few places...i'll see if I can find it and post it up.

 

[tubby_shaw]

Did your hops come with an alpha acid figure quoted moley ? If they did can you let us know what they were :)
With regards to the difference in hops, each has it's own individual flavour, aroma and bitterness so as arturobandini says the best way is to try some commercial beers, to see which you prefer :thumb:

 

[Moley]

I'm pretty sure all I've got is a name and a “use by”, but I will check tonight.

Testing a few commercial beers is an arduous task, but I suppose I could manage it, if you insist

However, how do I quantify their bitterness? For example I got to sample (quite a fair volume of) Frog Island's Best Bitter and Fire-Bellied Toad at the weekend, and those were about as bitter as I'd like to go. My favourite beers would probably be Hobgoblin, Newky Brown and Old Peculier, but I don't have the grain bill for anything like that at the moment. Pedigree, Landlord's and Director's are all quite acceptable

I'm used to looking for OG or ABV on pump clips but I've never thought to drop a hydrometer in my pint pot to check its FG, or ask a bar-person about IBUs.

I would, at some stage, like to attempt something like Badger's Blandford Fly, “a light coloured medium bodied ale with a low bitterness and a subtle spicy ginger character”

 

[tubby_shaw]

We can normally find or have an "educated guess" about the bitterness :thumb:
Also you'll find most "small" commercial breweries quite approachable :)
You have the contact details for Frog Island brewery, drop them an email explaining who you are, and that you are an amateur brewer who has enjoyed their beers and could they tell you what hops they used and what bitterness they brew to. It'll cost you nowt and you may be surprised how much info you can be given :thumb:

 

[Moley]

Good news and bad news:

Although I detest chipboard, it's convenient and it's free (we buy in sheet paper on half tonne pallets and it has an A1 chipboard 'lid'). I have a goodly array of power tools and a saw bench so this took me less than 10 minutes to mark and cut out.

So the good news is that, apart from a good clean-up, my 3-tier system is complete:

If I say so myself, I'm well pleased with my sparge head (which can be removed and replaced by a simple pouring spout within seconds):

Bad news is that my in-laws are descending upon us on Sunday, staying for a few days. I've yet to establish their ETA but Mrs. Mole will probably be expecting me to clean and tidy prior to their arrival, rather than turning the kitchen into a brewery.

Inaugural AG brew may have to be postponed. However, no "in-laws" jokes from me, mine are ace, and father-in-law will certainly be keen to test my (kit) brews to date.

 

[EskiBrew]

Inaugural AG brew may have to be postponed. However, no "in-laws" jokes from me, mine are ace, and father-in-law will certainly be keen to test my (kit) brews to date.

Sounds like the idea time to trial a brew - you can rope your father-in-law in to help - he'll love it :party:

 

[pith-head]

That sparging rig looks a tidy bit of kit, no moving parts, thats got to last a lifetime for sure.

Have you tested to see if it cover's all the mash with the hot water spray?

 

[Moley]

That sparging rig looks a tidy bit of kit, no moving parts, thats got to last a lifetime for sure.
Have you tested to see if it cover's all the mash with the hot water spray?

I thank you, for an arty-farty creative type I'm a pretty good plumber.
I still need to drill a few more holes in the corners and the end that I'm holding in the pic.

As for the Sunday brewday, it'll be ok, I'm an early riser, I can just bring things forward a couple of hours, if I get my liquor on early and dough in (hey, I'm getting all the lingo :lol:) around 7am, I'll be ready to start sparging by 8.30 when the wife buggers off to work, boiling by 9.30 and clearing away by 11.30, or is that a tad over-optimistic? Missus gets home around 12.30, in-laws have got a 3 hour drive so they ain't going to be that early - job's a good'un

Right, bear with me now while I try to ‘think aloud` and work this through:

Many thanks to BrewStew for an excellent “How To”, but where have the photos gone?

I haven't measured my dead spaces yet but let's use round numbers and say it's one litre each in boiler and tun (boiler might be more, tun should be less). If I want to end up with 23 litres in my FV then I need to extract 28L because I'm going to evaporate 4 in a 90 minute boil and leave 1 in the boiler?

If I use 5kg of grain I will lose 5 litres to that, plus 1L left in the tun and 1L in the liquor tank, 28 + 7 = 35 litres.

Moving on to sparging, I'll be checking gravity of runnings every now and then. This will get lower and lower as the sparge progresses and the sugars are extracted, but I stop at .990 irrespective of whether or not I've got my 28 litres as the grains are fully spent and I don't want excess tannins. If I start with more grain I may get to 28 litres before it reaches .990, but I stop at that even though the grains still could yield more sugars, and that gives me a higher O.G.

Aaah ... I think I get it .... I'm flushing the sugars through but closing the tap when I've got what I need or the grain is knackered, there's still liquid in the tun but it's of no use to anyone, that accounts for the loss volume.

Does it sound like I've sussed the theory?