I still mostly do stove top brewing all these years later. I do have a share of a Mundschenk with two mates, and use that sometimes. I have a good quality 20 litre stock pot now though and it's my preferred way of brewing., sort of in-grained all grain I suppose. I use an even simpler, quicker method now, so here is the original recipe with the slightly revised method...
- 1kg base malt
- One packet of hops
- One packet of yeast
1. Heat 7 litres of water to 70-72C in a big pan and line the pan with your mesh bag.
2. Pour in the pale malt while stirring - get rid of lumps. The temp will drop a few degrees.
3. Leave for 20 minutes and then heat slowly to about 76/78C.
4. Stir well and remove the bag, allowing it to drain (place in a colander on the pan if you have one that fits).
5. Bring to a boil and add 5-10g bittering hops. 10g for low AA% hops, 5g for high AA%.
6. 30 Mins later switch off and add 5 to 10g of hops (use a hop bag if you wish), depending on your hoppiness requirements.
7. Cool the wort in sink immediately, with lid on, and drop it to 30-40C.
8. Add to sterilised bucket via sterilised sieve to catch hops, and top up the level to 5 litres if necessary. Or just leave it in the pan with a lid on. I did that first time, years ago. Fermented in the pan. Had no FV.
9. Pitch around 3g of yeast when the wort is around 20C.
If your pan isn't big enough to hld 7L plus grain, mash with half the water and sparge with the other half - heat it to 80ish and pour it through the grain, sat in a colander placed on your main pot.
I actually mash in at 50-55C with hot water straight from my combi boiler and start raising the temp straight away, on the lowest heat setting. But i'm doing 15-20 litre batches. A 5L batch will heat too quickly, I reckon.
I don't know if this will help anybody and I'm sure some people will question the method but after years of stove top brewing this system works for me. It's very easy and it gets good results. The first time I did the rising temp thing it was an accident, I turned the gas down to minimum instead of turning it off and didn't realise until the mash had hit about 80C. I thought |I'd ruined the beer but it turned out great, and crystal clear, and I got high efficiency.
Cheers.