Saturday, July 30, 2011

First Brew Day

Bringing the mash liquor up to 72C, grist ready weighed out in bucket next to my hobs.
It has begun! My first brew day.

The beer: Brewer's Pride taken from page 111 of this book, Home Brewing Self Sufficiency

I'll be adding to this post through the day, or at least I'll try! I'll give all the weights and water volumes etc at the end of the post.

Adding 4l of liquor at 72c to the mash tun before adding the grist, stirring and then adding a further 3l of liquor. I didn't get round to taking pics of the mash due to the temp drop causing me to have to speed things up somewhat.
Mash liquor was going into my mash tun at 72C but the grist cooled it more than I expected and it was down to 62C even with an additional 1/2 kettle of boiling water by the time the lid went on. All covered up now and resting.

I pre-warmed the mash tun with hot water too! When I tested the mash tun just with hot water the other day it held its temp very well even without additional insulation which I'm using today (a sleeping bag and large blanket.).

Mash tun wrapped in a sleeping bag and blanket. I also pushed some sheets of polystyrene around the tun yet it still lost temp more than I'd have liked... bugger!
Next time I'll warm the liquor to 80, bearing in mind this is a half size brew due to my stock pot I'm using as my copper/boiler turning out to hold 10 litres less than it is stamped as holding FFFUUUUU!

More soon... follow this link for the next part of today's brew - sparging the mashed grist

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