My first attempt at an ‘alll grain’ beer was on 04/05/09. I had collected together enough equipment and, foolishly, made a beer with out doing a dry (or rather wet) run. This resulted in the hose from the imersion cooler bursting off and water spraying all over the inside of the shed and also some into the beer, after the boil and before the ferment, so it may well end up being a disaster and all be infected. Using Wheeler’s Beer Engine I devised a recipe using East Kent Goldings with a starting gravity of 45 and a bitternes count of 37 and gaining two thirds of the bitterness from the 90min hops and one third from the 15 min hops with a further 15g steeping when the wort had cooled to 80 c. As for the grains I used 98% Marris Otter and 2% Crystal
I used a similar schedule for the second beer but used Bobek hops instead of the East Kent Goldings
5200g of Marris Otter & 110g Crystal – I choose not to use a varity of malts so that I mainly showcased the hops in the beers. I added a small amount of crystal with the idea that it might add a small amount of colour.
Altered cool box into a mash tun – copper pipe manifold added to a cool box facilitated the draining of the wort into another bucket.
Mash on – the grains are added to hot water so that the resulting mixture is at 67°C when the lid is shut on the mash tun and the 90 minuite mash starts.
First runnings of the wort – the sugary solution is drained out of the mash tunand then more hot water is added
Hops
The Boil
Cooler in to bring the wort down from boiling to a temperate that I can pitch the yeast.
All tucked up and fermenting