OK.
I think I had one to many testers last night while bottling three batches at once so please excuse my previous vague comments. I meant to post this in the beginers section also, so if you mods want to shift it I'll understand why.
Take two.
The recipe was meant to be a SN pale ale clone suggested to me as something a little more interesting by my LHBS.
I had some instructions on a photocopied page to follow and it went something like this:
Pale malt and crystal malt mixed up by LHBS as per recipe for a 10L batch.
Mash at 50c for 30mins and 65c for 60mins. I didn't really know what I was doing but I used a decent thermometer to take readings from the middle of the bag before taking each step off the heat and wrapping in towels.
The first thing I did was heat the water to 51-52c then in went the bag and grains. 50c checked with thermometer and the pot removed from the stovetop and wrapped in towels for the 30mins.
The temp didn't really drop. Maybe 0.5c although it was under three beach towels and on an insulated surface.
Return to stove top and fire up the gas. Around ten minutes later the bag was at 65.5c. Removed from stove and placed under towels again.
An hour later and the temp was 62c.
I then squeezed the **** out of the bag with carpenters hands ( which didn't burn too bad and made short work of the job).
Then I gave it a rolling boil for 90mins with various hop additions as per the instructions.
The 10L container had the contents poured in and was sealed up. Into the bath tub with some cold water and left to cool. The morning after I threw in a starter of US-05.
End of notes from brew day.
Now the recipe book suggested an OG of 1.057-1.059 and a FG of 1.014- 1.016. Running the figures through Beersmith2 gives the same advice.
The fermenter was in my garage for a 12 days at the 20-21c mark.
The first time I tried a sample the first thing that came to mind was a slight cough syrup taste which I looked up on my tasting guide. It seems to me that "Phenolic" is the best matching description.
Now I was a little worried at first until I tested the sample. It came in at 1.006 at 21c. I placed the rest of the sample in a cupboard and tested it a few days later at 1.005.
After tasting a glass of the chilled beer while bottling I was inclined to think that it was just really strong and that was why it tasted a little like cough syrup. A few calcs and it all made perfect sense, except for the really low gravity reading of course.
The temperature of the room which samples are left in before testing rarely changes by more than 1c during the day and was the usual 21c. The day of the brew would have seen higher temps in the kitchen due to all the boiling but I remember running that sample under the cool tap for a bit to compensate. Besides that I tested it again the next day and got the same thing at room temp and the finished beer has been tested more than once.
I hope this gives a little more useful information than my original post. It was totaly crap, I know.
