Just ordered my ingredients and i am VERY VERY excited.
Well the wife is away with her friends in Spain for a few days so I had my brew day.
It was slightly more complicated than I thought it would be:
My pan, which I thought was 34l, actually turned out to be only 22l when I got it out of the attic. This was ok for the mash as my mash consisted of 14q followed by 3 X 1.5 gallon for 15 mins for the 'sparge' section of the mash.
I simply used an electric kettle to boil 3 x 2l water then topped up with 800ml to bring the vol to 6.8l (1.5gal) and 70C. I have solar panels and the sun was out so it didnt even cost me anything for this energy.
For the 90 min boil I used my 22l pot and a 9l pot from my still. The boil was not a rolling boil but a gentle simmer.
My final OG came out at 1.058 which is a little under the target of 1.068 but I'm quite happy with this. The theoretical abv will turn out at about 7.5% which is not too far away.
The temperature of the mash did go higher and lower than the target temps (as I learnt how my stove behaves). For the first part of the mash the temp went up to nearly 80C at one point for maybe 5-10 minutes.
At the 2nd part I would say the temp was 70C +/- 4C for most of the 3 x 15 mins.
My boil volume was spot on with 29l I have now put the liquor in a plastic 25l fermentation vessel and also a glass gallon demijohn. Both are now happily bubbling like mad. I have a heated pad around my vessel and the temp is set to 25C.
I need to start cleaning my cooker and kitchen now. The floor is sticky as hell and the cooker covered in dried liquor. My wife comes back in 5 hour so I'd better crack on.
Thanks for the recipe Revvy. Just a couple of questions:
1. I'm considering using the 1gallon to make a fruit beer. Do I just rack it on top of fruit when it stops fermenting?
2.How much fruit (I'm going to make frambosen (raspberries))
3. Also how long do i leave the beer on the raspberries and
4.do i crush the berries first or just leave them whole?
5. When I finished the final boil I left the dead hops in the liquor overnight whilst it was cooling. is this ok or will it impart too much bitterness?
6. I filtered the wort before putting in the fermentation vessel. Is this correct or should i have just placed the whole lot in, hops and all?