My First Ag Attempt

[browndog]

Merry Christmas fellow brewers,
I sincerely hope eveyone had a great day with heaps of food and drink and the company of friends and family. I have to say that I cooked xmas dinner for the first time and absolutely jagged it. The turkey was moist, the stuffing great and all the veggies turned out as they should. My four month old had my wife and I in stitches when he made an abrupt outburst and demanded soild food rather than his usual diet of formula. He just about ripped the spoon out of my wifes hand as she fed him some mashed up veggies. We never realised he could have such an appetite. Anyways, I digress.
Tomorrow, Browndog's Brewery is having it's maiden launch and I'll be flying by the seat of my pants. I found a recipe for a Sierra Navada Celebration Ale, it looked fairly simple so I thought I'd have a crack at it it consists of

5.2kg 2-row pale malt
0.45kg crystal malt
0.23kg carapils
I don't know whether I stuffed up or the fellow taking my order but I didn't end up with the carapils. I hope this won't affect the final outcome too much

I've been trying to get my head around Brewsmith, it seems like a great program but I'll need quite a bit more experience to know what I'm doing with it. I'm hoping that my good luck with the christmas dinner will be carrying on with my first AG brew.


Merry Christmas

Browndog

 

[wee stu]

Best of luck with the first all grain, BD.

Recipe sounds a lot like the ones out of the Beer Captured book ans Zymurgy that I have, so whilst it may or may not clone SN Celebration, it should produce a decent drinkable beer .

What hops are you using? With such a simple malt bill, the hops are going to impart a lot of the character to the beer. Presumably a hefty dose of american hops are involved.

The carapils will add a bit of body and head to the beer. It's absence will not be critical.

Enjoy the day, keep it fairly simple and tell us how it all works out.

Awrabest, stu

 

[browndog]

Hi Stu,
the hops I'm using is
28g cascade 60min
48g cascade 30min
19g cascade dry hop
19g williamette dry hop

white labs California Ale WLP001


how does that sound ?

cheers

browndog

 

[Ross]

I don't know whether I stuffed up or the fellow taking my order but I didn't end up with the carapils. I hope this won't affect the final outcome too much

Browndog

[post="99479"][/post]​

Browndog,

the carapils is there to give you better head retention, little else - it'll be fine..

Best of luck mate - look forward to hearing how it goes...

 

[Jye]

28g cascade 60min
48g cascade 30min
19g cascade dry hop
19g williamette dry hop

Hey browndog

I dont know where you got the hopping schedule but I think I heard a guest on the brewing network say that cascade and williamette dry hopped together in a ratio of 1:3 is meant to be very nice :beerbang: I will be using 60g of cascade and 20 g of williamette in the last 2min of my next APA :super:

I would possible bring the 30min addition up to 20min, other than that enjoy the day :beer:

Jye

 

[browndog]

Hi Jye,
The hopping schedule uses chinook for bittering and then cascade. I dont have any chinook so I thought I'd chuck some williamette in for dry hopping to see what happens. I'll take your advice on changing the 30min to 20 min and might adjust the levels of the dry hops to suit the ratio you mentioned.

cheers

Browndog

 

[altstart]

:beer:
Best wishes Brown dog I hope all goes well. If you decide to sell your mash tun let me know <tongue in cheek> . Seriously I hope you have a great brewday.
Cheers Altstart :chug:

 

[Aaron]

Hope the brew is progressing well mate. Do yourself a favour and have a good read of "How to Brew" or pick up a hard copy if you haven't already.

 

[Kai]

Good luck with the brew, browndog. I guess it's too late now, but if you find yourself without carapils in future you can always up the mash temp a little if possible.

 

[ruserious]

gday bd,

new bloke here, my first AG is a goal for '06, so will be interested to see how it went for you.

cheers

 

[browndog]

Well what a day I've had...... Ross made it look so easy. It makes me think of the story of David and Goliath, you know, the one where David goes to load his sling and finds he's all out of stones.
Surprisingly the day started out well exept for the stinking hot weather. Brewsmith said I'd need 34.03Lwater, mash in 15.65L at 79.2C and hold at 67.8C for 60min. The temp in the tun held at 68C for the whole 60min So alls good so far.
10am and time to sparge. Brewsmith told me I'd have to do two rounds of sparging, I assume this is due to the fact that my tun only holds 30L. After the hour it only took me another 10 mins to finish the sparging so I think I may have done it a little too quickly. The estimated SG pre-boil was 1.050 and I ended up with 1.043. However the estimated pre-boil volume turned out spot on at 27.02L.
Things started to go a little down hill from here.
Turns out my two ring burner is not up to the task, I only got a weak boil going after 70mins. Anyhow, it was boiling but only just, So I carried on regardless of the 33C temp and stifling humidity sweating like a pig. Did all my hop additions (and used Jye'ssuggestion of williamette/cascade at 3-1 70min) correctly then ran into more trouble when it came to chilling the wort.
First off trimming a garden hose for the chiller I managed to put a reasonable cut in my finger, swearing profusely and bleeding everywhere it was back into the house to get patched up. I discovered that is is not a good idea to put your hose connectors directly onto the chiller as if they leak or pop off, you will get tap water in your wort. I only managed to get the wort down to 29C with tapwater so I switched over to my "you-beaut" prechiller (in the process hooking the hoses up incorrectly and getting a small burst of tapwater in the wort), another copper coil in a bucket of ice, however after zipping up the road to get a bag of ice, I discovered one bag was not enough and had to go back for another. Even with two bags of ice I could still only get the temp down to 26C.
Final batch volume was supposed to be 21L but I ended up with 17.5 and had to top it up with chilled water from the fridge, at least I got the temp down to 22C. The estimated SG was 1.065 and I ended up with 1.052. I then pitched with WLP001 and stuck the fermenter in an insulated cupboard with a 3L iceblock, about this stage I was loosing interest at a great rate.

Oh yes, and I forgot to add the irish moss too!

So Gentlemen, I give you Browndog's Blood, Sweat and Tears APA

I won't be drinking this stuff from a pint glass let me tell you, I'll be using a 7oz and savouring every drop, I don't care how bad it is hehe.


cheers

Browndog

 

[GMK]

Welcome to the All Grain Obsession - try dpoing your first all grain in front of 15 people on Anzac day 2004...

Lots of slip ups and lots of..hmmmm Help

 

[Vlad the Pale Aler]

Its all a learning curve.
You will still end up with a good drinkable beer, what are you brewing next?

 

[browndog]

I'm going to make a better Blood sweat and tears APA, when I can do that, I'll move on to something else, I'd like to do an oatmeal stout or maybe an english bitter.

cheers

Browndog

 

[johnno]

Good one browndog.
It will only get easier with every brew.

johnno

 

[TidalPete]

gday bd,

new bloke here, my first AG is a goal for '06, so will be interested to see how it went for you.

cheers

[post="99525"][/post]​

Hello! A Real Australian here on the forum at last. No Yank-inspired "guys" from this fella. :super:
All the best with your first AG ruserious. I'm not anywhere in front in experience with only four AG's & the brewery closed until I tee up my temperature control (amongst other things).
Browndog,
I can sympathize with your trials & errors. Been there, done that, & have a long way to go before turning out the "Perfect Brew". Good luck with your endeavours & a Happy New year to you both.

:beer:

Spelling edit completed.

 

[tangent]

my advice would be: patience

it takes a while to bring 25+ litres of liquid to the boil
It takes a while to cool it down as well
welcome to thermal inertia, it's as slow as Lost with the commercial breaks.
If you'd chilled out and had a beer your finger would be fine, well, maybe not.

stick with it blokey matey cobber!

 

[wee stu]

well done browndog, and welcome to the fraternity of all grainers.

It gets easier with time, and the results are amost always worth the trials and tribulations.

I recently came of age (my 21st all grain brew) and I am still far from stuff up free.

awrabest, stu

 

[TidalPete]

stick with it blokey matey cobber!

[post="99561"][/post]​

Tangent,

You are to be recommended. :beerbang: We are forever Aussies & can do without the yankspell in our posts. Good luck to you in your brewing.

:beer:

 

[tangent]

onya Tidal
i hate baseball caps too!