First Big Partial Laid Down For This Weekend

[berazafi]

No problems Drew, the more information you can provide the easier it is for others to follow

The 65deg you can vary to achive a different body to the beer, eg 64 would be a light body 68 would be a heavy body

With the sparging if you can only do 6liters at a time i would suggest doing mulitiple ones, and i would also recoment stiring it continously for 5mins or so then drain, allowing it to sit there for 15mins probably isnt achiving anything as you are not using the grain bed as a filter.

 

[DrewCarey82]

No problem mate and thanks for that wasnt aware of what effects the temp had on the body.

Cheers.

 

[MVZOOM]

Mike

your mash schedule seems fine. The volume of water you will get depends on your system so it's hard to give advice on that. Just see how many litres you get in the kettle and then the fermenter and you can top up with water as needed.

Hops - I'm not sure of the AA rating of the hops you have, but 15g @ 60, 20g @ 15, 5 and 0 will be a reasonable starting point giving you around 35 IBUs. You could then dry hop with the last 25g, to taste.

Boil - I usually boil for 75 minutes or more. Give it 15 minutes after it gets to the boil, then add the first hops.

Loss - again it depends on your system, but something like 5-6 litres for a 75 minute boil. You'll also lose some wort in the transfer to your fermenter unless you just chuck it all in along with the cold and hot break. That'll be fine for your first go.

Anyway, it sounds like you have a handle on it all. Have fun.

Mike,
Further to Stuster's good info, may I suggest you have a go at First Wort Hopping?
Raise the initial bittering addition to around 18g and toss it into your empty kettle, so the hops soak in whilst you sparge the mash and send the sweet liquor to the kettle - you'll end up with a smoother bittering effect on the final product - have fun!

Cheers,
TL

TL - yeah, sounds like a great idea, I'll do that. I was thinking of teaming this one with a Coopers 1.7kg Real Ale goop kit, instead of 1kg LME - but I'd have to screw around with the hop additions. I'd be better off just doing a 'base' beer and understanding where to go from there. So back to plan A!

Cheers - Mike

 

[Trough Lolly]

Mike - good logic and yes, once you've got the brewday method nutted out, you can then start to tinker with the beer recipe after you've got the basics sorted. The problem some brewers have is that they are constantly making different beers, which is of course fine, but they find that they're not necessarily improving the overall standard of their home brewed beer.
When I make a beer I really enjoy and want to make again, I make sure that I have all the details from the brewday and when I do it again, I'll only make very small tweaks to improve, otherwise I'm always chasing recipes rather than improving the one's I've done...
Cheers,
TL

 

[DrewCarey82]

Tried this for the first time this w/end after close to a month of bottle conditioning.

Lovely goldy colour, nice armirillo taste.... good head retention and carbonation as well.

Really good beer, cant wait for it to age some more! - One of my fav beers so far and its still extremely green.