First post here so hello to everyone. Yesterday I had a crack at my first all grain brew (I've been brewing mead for years and have brewed from beer kits a couple of times as well) and just about survived the experience. Mostly proceeded as planned except for a few moments of 'excitement':
1. Ordered the wrong amounts of grain so had to mix and match my recipe. Ended up bodging something together that is about half-way between a bitter and a mild, which is something I've not seen recipes for before (probably for good reason!). Thought it best just to get my first brew under my belt... I'll worry about perfecting the recipe next time when I'm not feeling quite as overwhelmed by it all. My ingredients were:
3kg Pale Malt
500g Crystal Malt
100g Black Malt
100g Soft Brown Sugar
35g Fuggles Hops
35g Goldings Hops (+15g more for aroma)
Safeale yeast
2. My home-made sparger (a fermentation bin filled with hot water connected by some plastic tubing to a watering can sprinkler) seemed to do the trick although I didn't seem to be doing it for more than 10-15 minutes before the wort ran clear (i.e. nowhere near the 45 minutes I've seen recommended). I was quite careful to get the grains set up as a filter bed as my book said, so don't think the sparge water was just running through in a few isolated places. I was also panicking about getting a boil over (I've got a 29l boiler) and didn't account for evaporation during the boil or absorption by the hops, so ended up about a gallon short of my target when it came to fermenting. Will have to work on this next time, but I measured an OG of 1.042 in what I've got, so not too disappointed...
3. Didn't have time to sort out connecting my wort chiller up to a tap, so again had to bodge something together by attaching the inlet pipe up to a funnel and getting my girlfriend to hold it under the tap of a fermentation bin whilst I stood on a chair and topped it up with cold water from the sink using a bucket. Actually wasn't too much of a problem in the end and worked quite well (cooled to pitching temperature in about 30minutes).
4. Nearly cocked-up the whole batch when I was draining off the cold wort from the boiler into the fermentation bin. After I'd drained about 2/3 of the wort it started running slow, so I had the bright idea of using my mixing paddle to brush some of the hops away from the hop filter. This was a really bad move because it just ended clogging it up more and stopping the flow all together. After a few minutes of flapping around panicking I ended up getting my girlfriend to hold a sterilised sieve over the fermentation bin whilst I tipped the remains of the cold wort through it directly from the boiler. Not sure if this is was a good idea though because I guess that one of the main reasons fore boiling it in the first place was to get the proteins to stick together and fall to the bottom, so I'm worried that I've tipped all these into my bin as well now?
Anyway, to cut a long story short I finally pitched the yeast and fermentation has started rapidly, so am hopeful that it'll be ok despite my heath robinson approach. Lots of room for improvement though, so any advice gratefully received!
1. Ordered the wrong amounts of grain so had to mix and match my recipe. Ended up bodging something together that is about half-way between a bitter and a mild, which is something I've not seen recipes for before (probably for good reason!). Thought it best just to get my first brew under my belt... I'll worry about perfecting the recipe next time when I'm not feeling quite as overwhelmed by it all. My ingredients were:
3kg Pale Malt
500g Crystal Malt
100g Black Malt
100g Soft Brown Sugar
35g Fuggles Hops
35g Goldings Hops (+15g more for aroma)
Safeale yeast
2. My home-made sparger (a fermentation bin filled with hot water connected by some plastic tubing to a watering can sprinkler) seemed to do the trick although I didn't seem to be doing it for more than 10-15 minutes before the wort ran clear (i.e. nowhere near the 45 minutes I've seen recommended). I was quite careful to get the grains set up as a filter bed as my book said, so don't think the sparge water was just running through in a few isolated places. I was also panicking about getting a boil over (I've got a 29l boiler) and didn't account for evaporation during the boil or absorption by the hops, so ended up about a gallon short of my target when it came to fermenting. Will have to work on this next time, but I measured an OG of 1.042 in what I've got, so not too disappointed...
3. Didn't have time to sort out connecting my wort chiller up to a tap, so again had to bodge something together by attaching the inlet pipe up to a funnel and getting my girlfriend to hold it under the tap of a fermentation bin whilst I stood on a chair and topped it up with cold water from the sink using a bucket. Actually wasn't too much of a problem in the end and worked quite well (cooled to pitching temperature in about 30minutes).
4. Nearly cocked-up the whole batch when I was draining off the cold wort from the boiler into the fermentation bin. After I'd drained about 2/3 of the wort it started running slow, so I had the bright idea of using my mixing paddle to brush some of the hops away from the hop filter. This was a really bad move because it just ended clogging it up more and stopping the flow all together. After a few minutes of flapping around panicking I ended up getting my girlfriend to hold a sterilised sieve over the fermentation bin whilst I tipped the remains of the cold wort through it directly from the boiler. Not sure if this is was a good idea though because I guess that one of the main reasons fore boiling it in the first place was to get the proteins to stick together and fall to the bottom, so I'm worried that I've tipped all these into my bin as well now?
Anyway, to cut a long story short I finally pitched the yeast and fermentation has started rapidly, so am hopeful that it'll be ok despite my heath robinson approach. Lots of room for improvement though, so any advice gratefully received!
