All done and dusted, a pretty straight forward brewday. Just sitting down with a cup of tea. Even managed to do four loads of washing and started the gardening.
About 5 hours from start of cleaning to end of cleaning.
I used the HBC Brown Porter kit that comes with -
Grain: Maris Otter, Brown malt, Chocolate malt, Crystal
Hops: Fuggles
Yeast - US05
The brew smelt lovely and I have high hopes for it. I will add two vanilla pods towards the end of fermentation.
I had a slight issue with the mash. I hit 74c pretty quickly but on adding my grain it was down below 60c so had to put the boiler back on and it took an age to get back up, I think I ended up at the 67c I wanted and after an hour it was at 66.1c. Again my hop filter came off but I don't mind empting the contents through a sieve.
Did a dunk sparge and ended up with plenty of wort. I have about 25 litres in my FV but did lose a few points for shooting over (even had to through some wort).
It should have been 1.044 but I had 1.041 the yeast will get it down to around 1.010 so it should be a nice 4% which is what I am after in this brew.
Below are some photos of the day.