Back In The Saddle, at Last!

Its been the longest layoff since I started all-grain brewing in April 2007 but on Saturday 20 February I got back in the brewing saddle it a few tweaks and additions to the Fledgling Brewery.

Equipment wise the major change was the addition of an 80L stainless steel tun, this is a thermobox from Nordic Optical kindly converted to be a bottom drained tun by user Muddydisco from thehomebrewforum there is a great thread posted there showing it's construction from start to finish which you can see by following the link here I have fitted a stainless steel false bottom which was custom made for me by John at homebrew shop Hop & Grape, although Muddydisco has also now started to make these too! Other than that I have fitted a sight tube to my HLT which has made life loads easier!

1st Brew In The New Tun

I decided to christen the new tun with a batch of my house ESB "Big Kenny"

Target 60L FV
Target 1.050
Target 30IBU
90 min 66c Mash
90 min Boil

97% Pale Malt (12.2kg)
1.5% Crystal Malt 120L (190gm)
1.0% Roasted Barley (130gm)
0.5% Chocolate Malt (65gm)
2.5tsp Gypsum

Challenger to 30 IBU
60g Bobek at 15 Mins
2tsp Gyspum

Fermenting with 2x 11g sachets of Nottingham

The brew went quite well, there were a few issues which I need to fix for the next brew, the biggest issue was the amount of grain particles that got past the false bottom, I've traced the problem and fixed it (I hope) but for this brew I had to pump back from the boiler to a cleaned out tun through a fine SS mesh and then back again to the boiler, again through a fine mesh to get the particles out. Something I'd rather not have had to have done! I'll also be wrapping the boiler in silver bubble insulation to decrease the amount of time it's taking to come to the boil. The picture here shows the fly sparge, gravity feeding water from the HLT to a spinney sparger and pumping out at the same rate to the boiler.

I backed off the boil strength a little and ran on one element, this mean that my losses were much less and from the 85L pre boil volume I ended up with 70L into the "fermenter" the OG was 1.048 which I'm happy with, I'd assumed a 75% brew house efficiency being the first brew, this volume and strength works out at around 85% which is quite good I think for a first brew with new equipment.

Why Waste The SS Tun?

Rather than ferment in my plastic fermenters I'm trying a new approach, the beer is being fermented in the thermobox tun! I have dropped an aquarium heater set to 18c in the "fermento-tun" and also placed a short piece of copper tube into the drain on the tun, the reason for this is so that when I come to draw the fermented beer out I'm hoping that the yeast cake will be just below this point so I'll be drawing beer and not yeast, we will see! As you can see from this picture fermentation has started well, tonight it's sat bang on 18c and is down 28 points to 1.020.

Beer Engine

Im in a good mood today because I've just ordered myself a reconditioned beer engine off someone in the trade at a good price. Looking forward to getting it and dispensing from a vented cornie keg. I'm also looking forward to designing my own pump clips.

Friday Night...at last!

After a manic week at work and hardly any ale in the week I've been looking forward to this Friday night. This is a half-pint sampler of the (not quite ready yet) Wezerection Easter Ale, I'm very pleased with it, it's got real thirst quenching qualities, a lovely dry finish and a cracking aroma, the elderflowers have come through a treat, they actually need to mellow a for while, looking at my notes from when I brewed this in April 2007 it took a month to come good, this isn't that far off. It had 30g Styrians at 15 minutes along with 50g dried Elderflower also at fifteen minutes and a further 40g Styrians steeped after the boil for 45 mins once the wort had hit 80 degrees. I'm looking forward to tapping this keg for real in about two weeks I think.

Other good things that have happened today, managed to acquire some Magnum pellets (courtesy of a fellow home brewer) and also managed to get an order in for some Cascade and some US-05 yeast, all of this means that I'm looking good to go on an SNPA clone brew late next week. I might try to fit another batch of Big Kenny in before that though, maybe Sunday? I also ordered a bottling stick to try to make me enjoy bottling, I hate bottling this had better work, I need to start bottling more of my beers!

Glug

This morning the kitchen is very noisy, all four airlocks are going crazy - everything that I brewed yesterday has got off to a flying start, the krausen on the AG brew is nice and clean, hopefully a sign that I managed to avoid too much trub getting in there.

Fledgling Brewery - Homebrew Equipment

Here are a few images of the equipment that I use to make my beer at home.

This is my Coolbox Mash Tun, the coolbox was kindly donated by my good friend Simon, I did feel guilty after not asking him if I could drill holes in it so I got him a Woodfordes Wherry kit as compensation. It does a very good insulating job and when it has it's lid on and is wrapped up it the 'beer quilt' it normally only looses about half a degree C over a 90 minute mash.

This is my homemade Copper Manifold which fits neatly into the bottom of the coolbox. It's purpose is to filter the wort at the end of the mash and hold back the particles that I don't want getting to my beer. The instructions for putting together a coolbox mash tun can be found HERE Thanks DaaB!

This is my 30 Litre Boiler which I purchased from Leyland Homebrew The one that they do 'off the shelf' only comes it one element fitted, I asked the guy there to add an extra element to reduce the time it takes to bring water/wort to the boil. With both elements on the boil is too vigorous so when I get a rolling boil one of them is unplugged. The copper pipe at the bottom is a Hop Strainer which as the name suggests post boil strains the hops.

This is my Immersion Chiller, it is put into the wort immediately after the boil to cool the wort rapidly to get a good 'cold break' it works by having cold water passed through it within the coiled copper micro-bore pipe, this water then comes out of the other end of it very hot after exchanging heat with the hot wort.

To be continued...