Hi Folks
I had my first brew day yesterday - my equipment was:
mash tun (hop and grape coolbox conversion from ebay)
brewpak boiler
ebay wort chiller
5 gallon fermentation bin
I used VWT steriliser to clean the equipment the night before and rinsed in the morning. I also filled the boiler up the night before and didn't use any chlorine tablets on the recommendation of my home brew shop.
I followed JimmyTheBrewers video for instructions, although I made my own recipe up based on some forum posts about Doombar (my target brew!):
3.5kg of pale malt
400g of crystal malt
200g of roasted black malt
from my local homebrew shop.
my mash tun instructions said to use 1.5litres x no of kg of malt + 2litres in the mash tun but jimmythebrewer seemed to fill his up, and I ended up doing this to get the temperature up to 67.
the mashing process was fine - I didn't have a syphon so just dripped the runnings straight from the boiler into the mash tun and then into the fermentation bin (after some first runnings into a jug).
I batch sparked by putting through 15litres more water for 5 minutes and the loaded both batches into the boiler.
The boiler got up to about 90 degrees and then conked out! I tried replacing the thermostatic lead with a normal kettle lead and this worked for a bit to get the temp up to about 80 degrees, then would click and turn off once it hit about 90.
I tried putting a kettle in but the electricity switch tripped to chucked my hops in (45 grams of north wood) and then left for 45 mins (attempting to get the water boiling. I also put in 180g of brewing sugar.
after 45 minutes of simmering I put in 10g of northern brewer for the final 15 mins.
I then run the wort chiller through and that got the temperature down to 30 degrees or so, I threw in the yeast (old gervin ale yeast), sieved the hops into the fermentation bin (I dropped the sieve in so might as well have not bothered!).
Then I threw the airlock on, smashed my hydrometer (so no reading available for that) and stuck it in my spare room wrapped in blankets.
A day later it is smelling sweetly and bubbling away out of the airlock.
So any idea if this is going to be drinkable? - it's my mate's stag doo at the end of the month and was hoping to give it to him as a gift/punishment.
Is it possible to have a drinkable brew without the rolling boil stage? or will there be too much nastiness floating around that hasn't been boiled off - also any comments on the recipe or boiler problems would be appreciated.
Although it took me all day and made a big mess in my utility room I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to doing another one.
I think it might be time to buy a book to work out all the calculations etc as I just winged it a bit!
Appreciate any advice.
Phil
I had my first brew day yesterday - my equipment was:
mash tun (hop and grape coolbox conversion from ebay)
brewpak boiler
ebay wort chiller
5 gallon fermentation bin
I used VWT steriliser to clean the equipment the night before and rinsed in the morning. I also filled the boiler up the night before and didn't use any chlorine tablets on the recommendation of my home brew shop.
I followed JimmyTheBrewers video for instructions, although I made my own recipe up based on some forum posts about Doombar (my target brew!):
3.5kg of pale malt
400g of crystal malt
200g of roasted black malt
from my local homebrew shop.
my mash tun instructions said to use 1.5litres x no of kg of malt + 2litres in the mash tun but jimmythebrewer seemed to fill his up, and I ended up doing this to get the temperature up to 67.
the mashing process was fine - I didn't have a syphon so just dripped the runnings straight from the boiler into the mash tun and then into the fermentation bin (after some first runnings into a jug).
I batch sparked by putting through 15litres more water for 5 minutes and the loaded both batches into the boiler.
The boiler got up to about 90 degrees and then conked out! I tried replacing the thermostatic lead with a normal kettle lead and this worked for a bit to get the temp up to about 80 degrees, then would click and turn off once it hit about 90.
I tried putting a kettle in but the electricity switch tripped to chucked my hops in (45 grams of north wood) and then left for 45 mins (attempting to get the water boiling. I also put in 180g of brewing sugar.
after 45 minutes of simmering I put in 10g of northern brewer for the final 15 mins.
I then run the wort chiller through and that got the temperature down to 30 degrees or so, I threw in the yeast (old gervin ale yeast), sieved the hops into the fermentation bin (I dropped the sieve in so might as well have not bothered!).
Then I threw the airlock on, smashed my hydrometer (so no reading available for that) and stuck it in my spare room wrapped in blankets.
A day later it is smelling sweetly and bubbling away out of the airlock.
So any idea if this is going to be drinkable? - it's my mate's stag doo at the end of the month and was hoping to give it to him as a gift/punishment.
Is it possible to have a drinkable brew without the rolling boil stage? or will there be too much nastiness floating around that hasn't been boiled off - also any comments on the recipe or boiler problems would be appreciated.
Although it took me all day and made a big mess in my utility room I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to doing another one.
I think it might be time to buy a book to work out all the calculations etc as I just winged it a bit!
Appreciate any advice.
Phil
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