Really not much to report on this brew day; everything went more or less to plan, the starter was deployed successfully, things started happening around 18 hours later. Temperature is a bit lower than other yeast I’ve used to date and the colour is still quite dark, but all’s well. Raw brew day notes below, next stop cold-crashing and kegging.
Brew Day Notes
0635 Start dough-in
0645 Start mash rest
0705 First stir, start mashing. Consistency is nice, with only 26 litres showing in the malt pipe. That should be 25 litres but I’m guessing that the grain has yet to fully absorb the water and settle down. Will keep an eye on levels.
0820 Heating to 75℃ for mash-out, prepare HLT for sparge. 25.5 litres in the malt pipe, SG 1.059 (1.042 @ 61.2℃)
0828 Start sparge
0837 Sparge finished, heaters to 100% for boil. SG 1.042 (1.024 @ 64℃) against expected 1.044, volume 28.5 litres against expected 28.86. That’s a hit of 6% on mash efficiency and 4% (so far) on brewhouse efficiency. Hmmm.
0908 Start boil tracker, 60 minute additions in.
1005 10 minute additions in, about to cut in chiller for sanitisation. 26 litres beforehand, 24.75 after. Pausing boil tracker while we regain temperature. Not bothering with Trubinator today.
1015 Starting chill & whirlpool, tank temp 99.5℃.
1025 Tank temperature 65.2℃, return temperature 27.2℃ at 10% pump. Still a way to go before we can transfer, so let’s take some readings: approximately 23.75 litres, OG 1.054 (1.040 @ 55.8℃). Was expecting 26.46 and 1.047 respectively, so I’ll likely do a fermenter top-up to get back down to the planned 4.7% ABV instead of projected 5.3%.
1040 Start transfer
1100 Transfer finished, should have used that Trubinator after all! 19 litres showing in Fermzilla. Topping up with 3 litres of Celtic Spring for total 22 litres, OG now 1.044 for predicted 4.6% ABV.
1210 Clean-up finished