First Mash

[montjoye]

So I bought a shiny new urn yesterday. It's a bit less shiny now, but it has done a full grain mash. Yay, happy dance. I stuck to my guns and set up for full grain rather then buying any more pre made wort. A few more pics would have been good for the photo diary attached, but these give you an idea of what I've been doing for much of today.

Method for an English Pale Ale, by BIAB informed by Geoff and Dan at the demo I attended back in Jan. Recipe from "Brewing Classic Styles"

-Put 27L water in the urn the night before. Bring to boil and leave until the next day (in an attempt to get rid of chlorine)
-heat to 72C
-put bag in and tie off
-add grain while stirring (3.63kg Simpsons Maris Otter,  230g Simpsons Crystal 120L, 115g Briess Special Roast)
-temp has dropped the expected 5deg to mash temp of 67C
-wrap in towel and blanket, leave for 1hr
-temp dropped to only 65.5C- should be good! (brew shop man said slightly lower mash temps can be good for BIAB but starting temp is most important)
-raise bag (on new vintage pulley, squee), drain, squeeze bag
-minimal sparge by pouring a kettle of near boiling water over the bag, squeeze again.
-take bag away, dump contents to compost when cool
-bring wort to boil
- add 34g East Kent Goldings hops at start of boil, 14 g at 30min, half teaspoon yeast nutrient and irish moss tablet at 10min to go, another 14g hops at end of boil.
-turn heat off. stir vigorously in one direction to form whirlpool. cover with lid and clean teatowel
-leave ~15min to settle
-run off slowly through tubing to 2x 10L sterilised "cubes". Use another clean teatowel as airfilter.

Normally only one "cube" (plastic carboy thing) is used. I couldn't get a 20L one and I struggle to lift 20kg in a controlled fashion anyway. I needed 1-2L more wort to fill the cubes, they should be totally full to exclude air. I just have to cross my fingers this time I don't get too much oxidation. Next time I need 1-2L more liquid prior to the boil, probably should scale up the recipe too as I seem to have ended up with pretty much exactly the target wort volume.

When the wort has cooled to 20C or less, I can proceed with the bit I'm used to doing- transfer it to the fermenter, pitch the yeast etc.

Monday evening:
transferred to fermenter and yeast pitched. Confusion about the tap being open when I thought it was closed led to the loss of a few hundred mls and a sticky floor. OG 1.042 at 19C, recipe says it should be 1.038. Wonder if higher is good? Means the mash worked anyway and I achieved decent "conversion".

Nov 13th
ferment slowed right down. density at 1.014. just past two week mark. 60 bottles. labels made but too tired to apply them. So 3.7%. more sediment than I would like in the early bottles, looked fairly clear after that.  Ferment temp mostly 20-22 with brief excursions to 24.