First Wort [ homebrew/ ]
Ran the new rig through its first complete brew today. A delight! Everything went very smoothly, with only minor hiccups.The mashtun's heat-retention was probably the biggest question of the day. Happy to report that it's brilliant. Less than 1º temperature drop over the full hour of mashing!
Burners are fine, though I may try swapping them around for a brew sometime, just as an experiment. I'm pretty sure the 2 burners are pretty unequal, and I don't need such a massive flame under the boiler; once it's reached a rolling boil, only a very tiny flame is needed to maintain the boil.
Pump behaved admirably. The drainage plumbing bits I added are unnecessary: Once the mashtun-drain is disconnected it works just fine as a drain.
The only thing that went wrong was an unexpected leak of coolant-water from the chiller! This after testing it 3 times and not experiencing a problem yet. The only challenge was to keep the leak-water out of the cool wort, since it is dam-water, so something I definitely don't want landing in the wort.
The crush was terrible, though, so very poor extraction. OG 1.030! OK, so I have a week to solve the crusher issue while this batch ferments out.
All done, including cleanup, in a fraction over 4 hours. Pretty good going for a first run, and possibly the most relaxed brew day I've ever had.
Comments on this entry:
Your Lost.Fm bar says that you're listening to Turisas and among others the song "Sahti-Waari". Sahti is a traditional beer in Finland, spiced with juniper berries. The song is roughly about fighting oppressors and gaining fighting spirit from beer.
How fitting!
Long Time Reader from Finland
Cool! I'll have to find a recipe and try my hand at brewing Sahti.
There are lots of other Finnish bands I listen to... Nightwish, Finntroll, Korpiklaani, Kivimetsän Druidi, Ensiferum among current favourites. (So mostly in the Viking/Battle/Paga/Folk-Metal space.)
Guess I'll have to come and visit and share beer sometime ;-) Thanks for the info!
Mike,
Good to follow your brewing adventures and I'm thrilled that you're having a crack at home-malting.
Your low extraction might not be the fault of the crush - it could be the grain mix. You didn't mention what proportion of pale malt you'd had in with your home made crystal. I've found my home kilning for crystal doesn't always convert all the starches to sugar in-situ so a good proportion of enzymes are required from the pale malt. Also - upping the steep time and good 'flushing' of the grist will help.
Are you taking pics of your rig, if so.. are they online anywhere? I'd love to see your setup.
It's a long shot (and some way from you) but when I was down there I did visit a small brewery near Hermanus (Birkenhead Brewery) and I think they malted their own grains from memory - they might flog a few sacks to you if you're passing.
Tue Oct 20 10:42:05 SAST 2009 Adrian - http://www.bellebouche.com/blog
