IainM
Landlord.
I got back home yesterday evening after a weekend away, and really wanted to put a brew on, but as quickly as possible. So in the car I devised a plan for a three-hour brew-day, and still have enough time to carve pumpkins with the lad, make dinner, and watch the first episode of the new season of Humans with SWMBO. The time-saving strategy was this: A 45min mash, a 45min boil, reducing the time to heat the water up by using the Peco boiler, kettle and stove, mashing as soon as I had enough water to start a think mash, then thinning it out as soon as the stove and kettle could bring water to mash temp, and speeding the chilling by chucking a 2L ice cube into the wort.
The recipe was an adaptation and combination of the two Mild recipes in the Greg Hughes book:
3kg Maris Otter
0.5kg Extra dark crystal (385 EBC)
0.1kg Chocolate
30g EKG (5.7%AA pellet) @ 45min
15g EKG (5.7%AA pellet) @ 15min
0.5 Protofloc @ 10min
MJ M15 Empire Ale yeast
So, I got in, whacked 10L Ashbeck in the boiler, turned it on, and topped it up with three kettle-loads of boiling water, so in less than 15 mins I had 16L at 73C, perfect. Added the grain, got the desired mash temp (68C). Insulated, put 5 litres cold water in a stock pot on the hob, and filled the kettle again. When the kettle and stock water got to 68C ten minutes later, poured it in, gave it a stir, insulated again, put another 5L cold water in the stock pot. After 45 mins from starting the mash, and only 65min into the brew day, I chucked in the 5L, which was boiling by this point, which raised everything to 73C, a decent mash-out temp. Lifted the bag, turned on the boiler, and squeezed out all the wort I could. The boil started 20 minutes later, so I had the copper chiller in and chilling 130 mins into the brew day. Using the method I posted about for chilling the last few degrees using ice, I added a 2L bottle of frozen spring water (-15C), after cutting off the plastic bottle, to 22L wort at 28C, which was mostly melted ten minutes later when I started transferring to the fv. I hit my desired pitching temp of 18C exactly, so three hours after walking through the door, the fv was full and sitting in the trug at 18C, yeast pitched, and all I had left to do with rinse out the boiler and clean the element. I got 22L into the fv in the end, and I hit my OG exactly (1.036, 71% brewhouse efficiency). I'll definitely be using some of these tricks again in future brews.
The recipe was an adaptation and combination of the two Mild recipes in the Greg Hughes book:
3kg Maris Otter
0.5kg Extra dark crystal (385 EBC)
0.1kg Chocolate
30g EKG (5.7%AA pellet) @ 45min
15g EKG (5.7%AA pellet) @ 15min
0.5 Protofloc @ 10min
MJ M15 Empire Ale yeast
So, I got in, whacked 10L Ashbeck in the boiler, turned it on, and topped it up with three kettle-loads of boiling water, so in less than 15 mins I had 16L at 73C, perfect. Added the grain, got the desired mash temp (68C). Insulated, put 5 litres cold water in a stock pot on the hob, and filled the kettle again. When the kettle and stock water got to 68C ten minutes later, poured it in, gave it a stir, insulated again, put another 5L cold water in the stock pot. After 45 mins from starting the mash, and only 65min into the brew day, I chucked in the 5L, which was boiling by this point, which raised everything to 73C, a decent mash-out temp. Lifted the bag, turned on the boiler, and squeezed out all the wort I could. The boil started 20 minutes later, so I had the copper chiller in and chilling 130 mins into the brew day. Using the method I posted about for chilling the last few degrees using ice, I added a 2L bottle of frozen spring water (-15C), after cutting off the plastic bottle, to 22L wort at 28C, which was mostly melted ten minutes later when I started transferring to the fv. I hit my desired pitching temp of 18C exactly, so three hours after walking through the door, the fv was full and sitting in the trug at 18C, yeast pitched, and all I had left to do with rinse out the boiler and clean the element. I got 22L into the fv in the end, and I hit my OG exactly (1.036, 71% brewhouse efficiency). I'll definitely be using some of these tricks again in future brews.
