Sorry for the stupidly long post, I needed to get things off my chest.
Yesterday, I had the first chance to brew since the arrival of my second child at the end of May. Wanting to make use of the now rare opportunity, I decide I would attempt my first double brew day. The plan was to make a super hoppy American red ale for me and a porter (mostly) for my father in law, who like to keep in beer. I should have jacked in the idea of two brews when I didn't get started till 9pm, but as I often finish late I decided to plough on regardless.
Well unsurprisingly it was a catalogue of errors from beginning to end. Firstly I only remembered that I was half way through a project to mount my grain mill on a new base (that fits over a bucket properly), when I got to the shed. 25 minutes later and I'm packing the jigsaw and sand paper away and ready to start milling my grain.
To save time, I decide on a 40 minute mash and 30 minute boil and only a basic dunk sparge rather than my usual faffing around topping up the boil with the runnings from a second dunk sparge. I therefore dropped my efficiency by 10 points to 70%.
The mash went OK, although my still half finished brew shed proved so disorganised that the 40min mash ended up being a full hour. I got the boil on and started milling grain for the next brew.
At that point I popped outside to sling a bucket of water into the bushes and trod in something the dog left behind. I didn't realise until I had trodden it all over the shed floor. After a lot of swearing, a change of shoes and some scrubbing of the floor I was ready to go again.
As the first boil was coming to a an end I mashed in the second brew. I had already given up the idea of using my new counterflow chiller as I didn't have the right spanners to tighten the final compression fittings, so it was back to my immersion chiller. After chilling to 27ðC (all I could manage with the warm ground water at this time of year) I started draining the kettle but found the bazooka filter kept blocking, a problem I've never had before. Eventually I got it into the fermentor at 2.45am.
At this point I decided to jack it in for the night. The heavens had opened and the bottom of the garden had flooded so I got soaked to the skin heading back to the house.
I got 3 1/2 hours sleep and the didn't even get a chance to look at the second mash till 2pm the next afternoon. I had used my second smaller kettle for the second mash and as it was meant to be a short mash I hadn't bother to insulate it. By the following afternoon the mash was down to 35ðC and I as worried that bacteria would have been breeding. Luckily the mash pH was still 5.5 so no lactobacillus infection evident.
After a quick dunk sparge I got the second boil on. I checked the pre-boil gravity and it was at a whippy 1.060! Given my target OG was 1.048 I knew the extended mash had boosted my efficiency a lot. I topped up the boil with several extra litres of water and boiled for 30min. After the boil I had an OG of 1.055 and was 3L over volume, so there were some small silver linings.
Hopefully pitching the yeast at ~25ðC won't have a detrimental effect. The first brew is in the brew fridge so hopefully I got it down quickly enough. The porter is just at ambient temperature so I'm hoping it will chill down overnight.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they actually turn out OK in the end.
Recipes posted below.
Yesterday, I had the first chance to brew since the arrival of my second child at the end of May. Wanting to make use of the now rare opportunity, I decide I would attempt my first double brew day. The plan was to make a super hoppy American red ale for me and a porter (mostly) for my father in law, who like to keep in beer. I should have jacked in the idea of two brews when I didn't get started till 9pm, but as I often finish late I decided to plough on regardless.
Well unsurprisingly it was a catalogue of errors from beginning to end. Firstly I only remembered that I was half way through a project to mount my grain mill on a new base (that fits over a bucket properly), when I got to the shed. 25 minutes later and I'm packing the jigsaw and sand paper away and ready to start milling my grain.
To save time, I decide on a 40 minute mash and 30 minute boil and only a basic dunk sparge rather than my usual faffing around topping up the boil with the runnings from a second dunk sparge. I therefore dropped my efficiency by 10 points to 70%.
The mash went OK, although my still half finished brew shed proved so disorganised that the 40min mash ended up being a full hour. I got the boil on and started milling grain for the next brew.
At that point I popped outside to sling a bucket of water into the bushes and trod in something the dog left behind. I didn't realise until I had trodden it all over the shed floor. After a lot of swearing, a change of shoes and some scrubbing of the floor I was ready to go again.
As the first boil was coming to a an end I mashed in the second brew. I had already given up the idea of using my new counterflow chiller as I didn't have the right spanners to tighten the final compression fittings, so it was back to my immersion chiller. After chilling to 27ðC (all I could manage with the warm ground water at this time of year) I started draining the kettle but found the bazooka filter kept blocking, a problem I've never had before. Eventually I got it into the fermentor at 2.45am.
At this point I decided to jack it in for the night. The heavens had opened and the bottom of the garden had flooded so I got soaked to the skin heading back to the house.
I got 3 1/2 hours sleep and the didn't even get a chance to look at the second mash till 2pm the next afternoon. I had used my second smaller kettle for the second mash and as it was meant to be a short mash I hadn't bother to insulate it. By the following afternoon the mash was down to 35ðC and I as worried that bacteria would have been breeding. Luckily the mash pH was still 5.5 so no lactobacillus infection evident.
After a quick dunk sparge I got the second boil on. I checked the pre-boil gravity and it was at a whippy 1.060! Given my target OG was 1.048 I knew the extended mash had boosted my efficiency a lot. I topped up the boil with several extra litres of water and boiled for 30min. After the boil I had an OG of 1.055 and was 3L over volume, so there were some small silver linings.
Hopefully pitching the yeast at ~25ðC won't have a detrimental effect. The first brew is in the brew fridge so hopefully I got it down quickly enough. The porter is just at ambient temperature so I'm hoping it will chill down overnight.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they actually turn out OK in the end.
Recipes posted below.
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