First Ag This Weekend

Burchman82 · 25/3/09

Hey guys,
Starting my 1st ag batch this weekend with my bro, we went shares in a complete kit from likapop (thanks dude)
heres some photos he took before we bought the kit (i havent taken any yet)

Went down to the only store in Townsville that sells grains and talked about it for about an hour and ended up with a basic brew consisting of:
4750g Moris Otter
250 crystal malt

going to use about 2.5l per kg water/grain ratio

mashing for 60min @ 69degrees
mashout for 10-15 at 75deg

fly sparge to about 27L

using english kent gouldings hops at the following points in a 60 min boil
30g at 45
20 at 30
10 at 15
10 at 0

which give 20.27 ibu at 23L i believe (im still figuring out all this stuff)

wish me luck guys

PS if your wondering what the white bucket with the immersion chiller type thing in it is for. Apparantly, whats best up here in the hot tropics is to put a bag of ice in there to get the immersion chiller (welded in the boiler) even colder. Since tap water up here is pretty warm, figure thats a smart thing.

dpadden · 25/3/09

nice kit boys, I wish you all the best....English Pale Ale I presume you guys are going to brew?

BigMav · 25/3/09

Yeah thats what we're aiming for but as long as it's drinkable I'll be stoked for our first ag.

FreemanDC · 25/3/09

Calton won't want their kegs back now.

The fun police will be here soon.

chappo1970 · 25/3/09

Well Done....mumble...mumble.... and a damn good buy there. <_<

peas_and_corn · 25/3/09

It's always great to see another brewer go off to make his first AG brew! Hope all goes well!

Cocko · 26/3/09

It would appear you are going for your P plates in a porsche... Fickin awesome!!

Happy driving my friend/s as the corners will handle better.....

Enough similes, Have a great brew day and the beer will tell you the story!!

Cheers

Surely brew day photos will follow!!

BigMav · 26/3/09

Yeah we will be taking a tonne of photos along the way so you guys can tell us where we have gone wrong!! Cheers for all the support guys. Can't wait for brew day. woohoo.

raven19 · 26/3/09

BigMav said:
Yeah we will be taking a tonne of photos along the way so you guys can tell us where we have gone wrong!! Cheers for all the support guys. Can't wait for brew day. woohoo.

We all like photos!

FWIW - can I recommend taking plenty of measurements, readings, notes, and hold off on having the first beer until the wort is making its way into the fermentor.

Have you done a water run with the system to check for leaks, etc?

Am sure it shall go really well for you though, all the best.

If need be, have the PC ready so you can ask any urgent questions online here at AHB.

Burchman82 · 26/3/09

Cheers again guys (from bigmav and I)
brewday is happening tomorrow night after mav finishes work so will have the laptop handy to post pics/ask questions!
i can smell the malt already. LETS GO MAV!

dpadden · 26/3/09

raven19 said:
...hold off on having the first beer until the wort is making its way into the fermentor.

gee raven I hope you don't no chill, could be days before you get that first beer... :lol: \

I usually hold off until first hop addition, then go for broke B)

raven19 · 26/3/09

Paddo said:
gee raven I hope you don't no chill, could be days before you get that first beer... :lol: \

I usually hold off until first hop addition, then go for broke B)

Fair call - I do no chill actually, but when I brew, my brewing mate puts his into the fermentor thru an ice chiller.

I just go the cube.

I am sure the first AG brew shall go great guns though.

drsmurto · 26/3/09

raven19 said:
Fair call - I do no chill actually, but when I brew, my brewing mate puts his into the fermentor thru an ice chiller.

I just go the cube.

I am sure the first AG brew shall go great guns though.

So you have the option of chilling but you choose not to? Why?

goomboogo · 26/3/09

You could drop the mash temp down a couple degrees from the 69c you mentioned. A 66-67c mash and increase the ibu up to around 25 and you're away.

Burchman82 · 27/3/09

well we are away, just dropped the elements into the HLT, filled her up and heating up to about 78deg
Will keep posting as we go

tazman1967 · 27/3/09

Dont forget the pics

Burchman82 · 27/3/09

ok we got the water to 78 and put it in mlt and started stirring in the grain, it dropped to 65deg. we are currently heating up the kettle to put a bit more hot water in.
we got about 12-13Litres of water in there, sound about right?

edit: Just put in the boiling water from kettle, got it to 67.5degrees. now the lids on we wait for an hour

i guess we mashout next

Burchman82 · 27/3/09

how long should we have the mash sitting in the MLT for? ive heard varying from 60-90mins.
and how long should i mashout for?

Joe Palooka · 27/3/09

Burchman82 said:
how long should we have the mash sitting in the MLT for? ive heard varying from 60-90mins.
and how long should i mashout for?

No time period. If you want to mash out, get the temperature up to 77 degrees and that's it, you've mashed out. It will make the runoff easier is all.

Sorry - the mash time, 1 hour is heaps.

Wife is kicking me off. Good luck. You might need 30-35 litres all up to make 21-25 litres of pre-boil wort. So don't forget to figure that into your sparge water heat-up. Sparge water is good at 77 degrees (not hotter). Get set up to cool little runoff samples to 20 degrees (like, swishing a saucepan in the sink of cold water), and as long as the hydrometer says you are over 1.010 you can keep on sparging. Have a good time, but don't get pissed yet.
Ta ta.