Brew day, finally! (tomorrow anyway)

[welly2]

Get to try out my 3v system at last!

Making a pale ale:

23 litres

4.5kg Maris Otter
300g Crystal Medium
300g Carapils

Packet of US-05

And I've got 300g of Cascade, Chinook and Columbus hops (100g of each). Was planning on using a single hop type in the boiling kettle and another hop type for dry hopping in the fermenter.

A mate of mine (who's up to batch 100 and makes cracking beers) suggested:

15g at 30 minutes
15g at 15 minutes
20g at 5 minutes
50g at flameout

100g of a high aroma hop in the fermenter for two days at 15c

Any thoughts on this? Excited for my first 3v brew! (and second AG brew!)

Cheers!

welly

 

[storeboughtcheeseburgers]

100g is prob a lot for the batch size.

What hops are you using for those time frames? What are you using for main bittering hop?

 

[welly2]

I was just planning on using a single hop - have weighed out columbus. But happy to chuck in anything at this point! Just waiting for the wort to boil as I speak/type.

 

[Tahoose]

Throw some cascade at it too bud, even if you just use it for a dry hop.

If it was a smash I'd say leave it as one hop, but it ain't so hop away.

Hope it turns out to be a nice brew

 

[welly2]

Ended up sticking some chinook in with it at 5 minutes and flameout (20g each) rather than the columbus at 5 and flameout and I'll dry hop with the cascade. I suspect the flameout addition probably won't add much to it as I'm no chilling it - went from the boiling kettle to the no chill cube pretty much straight away.

This first brew doesn't matter too much as it was more getting the processes in place but the wort tastes alright! So has at least a bit of potential. Just stuck it in the pool for a short while to cool down, doing the rest of the cooling in the fridge and I'll get it in the fermenter tomorrow.

 

[welly2]

Alright, a few thoughts on this brew session. Oh, and thanks to Mozzy for the moral support and the extra pair of hands! He came along this afternoon with a couple of home brews.

Firstly, what went wrong or didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd have liked:

- Mash tun lost a fair bit of temperature. It went in at 66C and I measured it out at the end of the mash at 58-59C. There's a few places where the temperature probably escaped - the ball valve was pretty hot and obviously a place of lost temperature and I wonder if it got out through the lid as well. Not sure what to do about that other than put the water in hotter perhaps?

- Almost got a stuck sparge. The sparge on a couple of occasions almost completely stopped but it continued as a trickle though. I put the sparge water in at 74C and the sparge arm was whirring around pretty quickly. Not sure if it needed to be run slower or what? But anyway, it carried on doing it's business. and got plenty of wort out of the mash tun.

- For some reason when I was moving the wort from the boiling kettle to the no-chill cube, the exit either blocked up or something else as I was unable to get the last 4L out of it (annoying). I'll have a proper look at the ball valve later when I wash the boiling kettle to find out what happened there. I'm using a bazooka tube on the boiling kettle to stop the hops from getting into my wort when I empty the kettle. I might have to think of a different solution. Perhaps remove that bazoooka tube entirely and get a hop bag? Would welcome suggestions for this!

- Didn't get as much wort as hoped - lost out on at least 3 litres. And I suspect I could have got a bit more while I was sparging - I stopped the sparge when the wort coming out of the mash tun was looking a bit thin - ended up not using about 2 or 3 litres of sparge water. Not sure if this was a wise move or not.

- Pre-boil gravity was a bit off - Beersmith estimated 1.042, I got 1.037 but the wort was still a bit warm so perhaps not as off as I think.


And what went right:

- Got plenty of wort (but just not as much as I'd have liked)

- The wort is tasty.

- I completed a 3 vessel brew - evidence is in the fridge, currently cooling the wort ready for fermentation.

- I completed a brew with an absolutely stinking hangover.

- I met another brewer (Mozzy) and I met my neighbours while I was cooling the wort in the pool downstairs. Home brew bringing people together!

- All the gear seemed to work as it should and mostly without too much trouble, excepting the issues above. The little brown pump was a beauty. Worked an absolute treat.

- First 3 vessel brew went surprisingly smoothly. A few hiccups here and there but the next brew day will be far easier when I've got the few little spanners in the works figured out.

 

[welly2]

I've just cracked open the first bottle of beer which I've named "I'll never get out of this world alive" after the Hank Williams song that was playing while I was bottling. It was far, far too early to drink as I only bottled it the start of the week but curiosity got the better of me and I stuck a beer in the freezer to chill.

Few thoughts:

- I'm pleasantly surprised and even after only a week, it had more carbonation than I expected and had a nice frothy head. I wasn't sure if my bulk priming calculation was correct - it seemed a little low but apparently it's well on its way. Another week or two and it'll be ideal.

- It's bloody tasty. It tastes like beer and I'm going to enjoy drinking it. Good hoppy flavours, no weird off flavours or green apples or anything I didn't want.

- It's clear as mud. The first bottles the beer went in much clearer than this bottle but I'm not too worried about that at the moment. Getting clearer beer will come in time. It tastes exactly like beer and that was the main goal for this first brew.

- It's got a bit of a kick to it. ABV worked out at around 5.5% but it tastes a little bit more boozy than that.

All in all, well chuffed. Next brew I'm putting down will be the Coopers Abbey Blonde recipe of the month I bought and then I'll crack on with another all grain number in the new year and then it'll be all grain from then on. It'll give me a month or so just to fix up a few small issues with my rig that I discovered from this first brew.

 

[jeddog]

Good to here. Don't ya love making beer.