2nd All Grain (19) – All Grain American Pale Ale No.2

RATING: 4/5 Stars

24 January 2009 – After the raging success of the last APA, I decided to a similar brew, however using only Cascade hops (plus a little more of them )

• 3200 g Ale Malt
• 600g Munich
• 200g Crystal
• 20g Cascade hops @ 60 min
• 20g Cascade hops @ 30 min
• Irish moss @ 10 min
• 40g Cascade hops @ 5min
• US05 yeast – rehydrated (in one my new sexy Erlinmeyer flasks)

Mashed with 14L of water at 71deg which came out at spot on 65deg (yeah!). Mashed for an hour with no drop in temp.

Drained and sparged with extra 18L of water at 80deg. Ended up with a little under 26L in Kettle after drain stopped.

Boiled for around 10 min in kettle till hot break then for another hour with hop additions as above. This time I turned the burner down by one ring which resulted in not such a vigorous boil and hence not such a huge evaporation problem like last time.

Transferred to 20L cube after flameout for no-chill and was a perfect volume.

Added to glass fermentor and pitched yeast the next day at 26deg and brought down to 18 deg over the next few hours (with my damn fine fridgemate – this thing is f%&king awesome). 

25 January 2009 – I noticed this time that the US05 took off much quicker. I’m convinced this is due to a much better rehydration (boiled water at about 30deg) and aeration.

10 February 2009 - bulk primed with 130g of dextrose into PET and champagne bottles. nice and clear already due to 2 1/2 weeks in fermenter

8 March 2009 - This is a very nice beer, maybe a little dry hopping next time for more aroma….certainly my fav so far and slightly better than the previous APA

The Mashmaster Fridgemate

Have a look at my new piece of brewing porn!

This great little piece of equipment is connected to my fermenting fridge and keeps the inside within 1 deg. of where I want it.

Many thanks to Rob at http://helms-deep.cable.nu/~rwh/blog/?p=29 for help to put this together…

1st All Grain (18) – All Grain American Pale Ale

RATING: 4/5 Stars

10 January 2009 – Oh yeah! my first all grain brew, and wow it actually went really smoothly, no doubt due to the hours of planning over the last few weeks!

I’ll start with the recipe (with thanks to Pat at Absolute Homebrew for his help on the grain bill – and the grain!)

• 3200 g Ale Malt
• 600g Munich
• 200g Crystal
• 20g Perle hops @ 60 min
• 20g Cascade hops @ 30 min
• Irish moss @ 10 min
• 30g Cascade hops @ 5min
• US05 yeast – rehydrated

Mashed with 13L of water at 71deg which came out at about 63deg. added 1.5L of boiling water to reach target of 65deg. Mashed for an hour with no drop in temp.

Drained and sparged with extra 16L of water at 80deg. Next time I will recirculate for longer as the wort was crystal clear after a few more litres. Ended up with 26L in Kettle after drain stopped.

OG of 26L was 1.036 which I calculate as 76% efficiency.

Boiled for around 10 min in kettle till hot break then for another hour with hop additions as above.

Transferred to 20L cube after flameout for no-chill, and realised that I have only drained around 15L of wort into the cube (About 1 L left in kettle). Have lost more to boil than I thought and will have to re-adjust for next time.

Added to glass fermentor and pitched yeast the next day at 24deg and brought down to 18 deg over the next few hours. Added 4L of water to the fermenter as well to bring up to 19L.

 

The Mash….

 

First runnings….

 

The Boil…

 

In the temp controlled fermenter…

24 January 2009 – The Beer was now beautiful and clear. Racked to secondary fermenter and primed with 130g of dextrose (as calc. by Beersmith) boiled up in 250ml of water. Bottled in a mix of PET and my new weapon of choice – champagne bottles!

29 January 2009 - Just cracked the top off my first AG batch, and OMG how good is this! IT’s only been in the damn bottle for a week and it tastes just great.

All those extract beers that I have brewed and waited months so that they tasted good enough, and this sh!ts over all of ‘em in a week.

11 February 2009 - mmmmm…sensational. already drunk half of this stuff, my mates love it. Wished I’d jumped to all grain long ago. If anything needs a touch more late hops which I believe has been addressed in the next brew….we’ll see

10 March 2009 – See you later, drinking the last bottle now…ahhh the memories….not quite as tasty as the next APA, but great all the same….

New Glass Carboy

Just bought a new glass fermenter on ebay (paid a bit more than I should have actually). I;ve been wanting to use one of these for ages, which most of the guys in the US use.

Going to pick it up tomorrow….

The “All-Grain” Brewery

After quite a few kit, extract and partial brews, it is now time to step up into what is known as AG brewing. That is, brewing from pure malted barley rather than the cans of goo from the supermarket or home brew store.

After months of sourcing the relevant equipment, the brewery is now complete as can be seen in the photo below.

The main components from left to right include:

1. Hot Liquor Tank – 20L SS pot
2. Mush Tun – 10 Gal. Cooler with SS braid
3. Kettle
4. 4 Ring propane burner

This set up will be used to create around 19L or wort which will then be transferred to a ‘cube’ for colling overnight before being pitched into a fermenter.