StillSmart

Hi Guys

I was drinking a little of the home made good stuff last night and was toying with the idea of doing an all grain wash, anyway after drinking a little more of the good stuff and waking up this morning, (with no hangover)

I remembered I'd filled my HLT with 70 litres of water and set it at 80-82°c overnight!!



Time to find and dust off the mash tun then, if the waters hot I might as well use it, here's my mash tun, it's a 38lt stainless thermopot with a mash master gauge fitted.





I also had a bucket of grain that I think I weighed out for a full mash TTL pale ale and a 1.5kg bag of marris otter.




It worked out that I had 6.333kg's of grain all together, so transferred 16.5 litres of hot water into the MT and stirred in the grain.






The strike temp was 74°c and after mixing it all in it was sitting nicely at just over 66°c, that's where it at, at the moment, it will have mashed by 1.10pm (90mins)



I'm thinking if I add 3kg of sugar to the 25litre fermenter before I sparge.
It should be good for a 12% wash, I'll update as I go along today.


>:D

Go boy.. that's a nice little setup you have there..I have the same thermopot for my brews. Waiting to hear how it all pans out.

Aye, keep up the good work.
I have this old 25kg bag of Golden Promise with 10kg left in, that needs using up. This might inspire me to spend a little time mashing.

Just realised my first school boy error, my mash tun wasn't sterilised, it's never had to be in the past because I always boiled the wort afterwards, it was fairly clean to start with so I'm just going to risk it being ok.

Mainly cos I can't be bothered boiling it for 10mins, I'm sure it'll be ok.

Ok part two

I let it mash a little longer than the 90mins, mainly because I was a bit slow getting my fermenter sterilised, anyway I poured 3kgs of sugar into the fermenter and once the wort from the mash tun was running clear I started letting it mix with the sugar.





I then turned on the fly sparge and adjusted the rates of the sparge water and the wort output so it was nicely balanced and coming though at a decent speed.





I've got some in a trial jar cooling down and I'll post the SG when it's 20°c

SG = 1.090 looking good for 12%

It's going to be a while until the main batch cools enough to pitch any yeast but when it does in gonna use up half an open tub of Allinsons bread yeast and ferment it at 24°c

Price wise

6.333kg of malt approx £10 if bought in small quantities
3kg cane sugar £2
Half tub of yeast approx 34p

£12.34

If it was a sugar turbo
6kg sugar £4
Turbo yeast £3-£4 depending what you use

So it's more expensive and more complicated to make but hopefully the result will be a much cleaner neutral.

I've just been looking at what other ingredients I have left over from my beer making and I've got 6kg of Pilsner malt and two 1.5kgs tins of malt extract, the next runs going to be using these up I think, although it is very expensive to used liquid malt extract £9.99 a tin!!
But it saves mashing if you don't have the gear to do it, just one word of caution to anyone wanting to use liquid malt extract, don't use the tins that come with beer kits, they have been boiled with hops and you don't want hop oils going through your still so make sure it's just pure malt.

Good stuff, hoping it makes a fine neutral for you.
Do you think adding some crystal malt would compensate for the thinner taste of the additional sugar?

It had a little crystal in it and some other bits cos it was originally mixed up to make a pale ale, I guess you can throw anything you want in and it won't make much difference once it's been stripped.

I pitched the yeast late last night once it'd cooled down enough, popped it in my fermenting fridge, set at 24°c and went to bed.

This morning I had a bad thought "I didn't airate the wort! What if it's not started!"
Luckily it was going just fine with a nice foam on top, as I never boiled it I guess there was still enough air in there to get things going :-)