ESFB mash day

[montjoye]

Extra Special Festival Beer, plus ‘sperimental small.
Ha, and wave to Batty. Now I realise what those initials remind me of  :-)


Previous night- quick tidy of mash area, set up urn, fill with 30L of water- from a hose!
Heat to boiling- took about 70min

7am- turn on urn to start heating to 67+7deg. turns out it should have been 67+6deg like last time, despite 1.5kg more grain. I suppose the grain would have been around 10-15C warmer today than last time I mashed.
Add 1t each CaCL and CaSO4 (for better or worse, Melb water is soft)
Brew bag into urn
Add grain while stirring. This time the grain bag was so heavy I scooped most of it in with a metal bowl.
Check temp- 68C, should have been 67C bother, but only 1C out. Stir a lot to try to bring temp down. Wrap in towel, then wool blanket. Leave 1hr
9am-mash finished, grain bag lifted and draining, heat is back on to bring to boiling. My goodness 7.5kg of grain fully wetted is heavy!
9:30am- bag pretty much drained- drop into clean trug with a towel over to keep out dust and insects.
9:45- boil achieved.
10:45- boil finished
11:30ish – wort run down to cubes. Confused that I only got 17L(most of this~ 4L gap is lack of sparge, lack of squeezing grain bag, silly me)

11:45-urn cleaned, refilled with 26L water, heat on again to bring to mash temp for small beer.
(pour myself a beer and organise some lunch)
12:30- water to 74C. put grain bag back in urn. Temp dropped to 64- suppose the water in the grain would drag the temp down further. Heat back to 67C while stirring.
12:45- mash on, wrapped, timer for 1hr
1:45- raise bag. Wort temp 66C, excellent heat retention. It smells like there are goodies in that there water. I’d also say that the vast majority of character from the crystal malt went in the first mash. So this will be paler and plainer, which probably bodes well for the flavouring working with the malt flavours. Add fuggles hop bag.
2:15-boil achieved
(prep spice bag, juice the leftover orange and mandarin, drink juice topped up with soda- lovely)
Measure cooled pre boil density= 1.026. So max alcohol will be ~3.3%, probably rather less. Tastes nice actually- sweet and a bit porridgey. This is pre hops.
Oops, lost some time in there somewhere
3:45-boil finished, took spice bag out. Whirlpool. Leave 15min
Run down to cubes
Finish ~4:30? Got distracted by a visiting DrQ


ESB
Recipe is from “Brewing Classic Styles”. calculated up to deliver enough goodness for a 28L finished wort. Aiming at 21L post boil.
Grain: (used Joe White for all- is ozzie and cheaper than the imports)
7.24kg pale ale malt
300g pale crystal
150g dark crystal

60min boil- 75g EK Goldings Hops
10min- Irish moss tablet and 1/2t yeast nutrient
1min- 35g Fuggles hop flowers! Plus 2g EK Goldings

I’m using hop bags this time- to reduce hop splatter during boiling and hopefully sediment after.

Small beer(which I am amusing myself by thinking of as “breakfast beer”, low alcohol, orange)
Grain from above post first mash
1t CaCl

60min boil- Fuggles hop bag from ESB, plus the last squeezings from the goldings bag (given I have no idea how much to use, I’ll just be efficient). The fuggles were only in the ESB wort for a minute or two.
10min- Irish moss tablet and 1/2t yeast nutrient
5min-xg rind- Valencia Orange and Clementine mandarin, 5g home grown cracked coriander, 2g cardamom, 2 chamomile tea bags, one bay leaf. (I’m working on an unsubstantiated theory that witbier flavouring is a possible survival from the older tradition of flavouring beers with things other than hops).


Things I want before next time:
-a proper eye bolt for the shackle- it’s just tied up now, one day this will give way I’m sure
-a better arrangement for hooking the rope at different levels
-a better scale- mine struggles to make up it’s mind between 0-5g. Not good!

Tired now, and hot. It got to 39C on the back verandah, despite the tentish cloths I hung to keep most of the sun off. I've still to do the last of the washing up... but I have two new worts!

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[(Anonymous)]

44 year-old Mechanical Engineer Budzinski from Unity, has several pursuits including metal detecting, nike free and fashion. Unearthed some lovely spots after spending 8 weeks at M'Zab Valley.