Tasting Number XI

Fantastic, just what I was aiming for, vigorous fermentation ended Monday and all is quiet now and I have 20+ litres of golden brown beer. With 3 more weeks to soften it will be great.

Measured final gravity at 1014@20C, will do the alcohol calculations another day.

Brewing Number XI

Number XI will be a winter beer for a new year's eve party, brewed along the same lines as Adnams Broadside.

4kg Pale malt
500g Munich malt
70g Black malt
1 tsp gypsum

Boiling Hops
Start of boil:
Challenger 39g
Fuggles 34g
Goldings 14g

Last fifteen minutes:
Fuggles 12g
Irish moss 12g

Yeast - WYeast 1968 propagator London ESB from 21APR08

Following the same method as number 7

1. 10l water heated to 63C
2. 13:30 Added the milled grains and gypsum and hold at 56C for 30 mins.
3. 13:55 Start heating 5l water in another pan.
4. 14:00 Add the 5l boiling water, make sure temperature is now 68C and hold at 69C for 30 to 45 minutes.
5. 14:45 Raise just slightly to 70C and hold 10 to 20 mins until an iodine test indicates complete conversion.
6. 15:00 Start heating another 5l water for flushing grains.
7. 15:10 Raise temperature again to 75C and separate grains from wort. Flush grains with hot/boiling water.
8. 15:30 Conversion complete, grains washed using white plastic barrel, worked well actually. Heating to boil started.
   
9. Put the hops in the grain bag for a trial, should be easier than filtering the hops from the liquid later.
10. 16:00 Boil started.
11. 17:30 Boil finished.
12. Measured OG at 1054@20C, really I should do this before the boil as I guess it doesn't change much. Diluted with 6l cold water after cooling, final temperature 23C, yeast pitched.
13. 18:30 All done for the beer, clearing up started for another half hour.

In the end it has made about 20l and the OG is 1038@20C so it should make a respectable beer. I'd have preferred a bit higher but couldn't be bothered to boil some extract.

Still face the problem of filtering the beer before it goes through the cooler, not sure what to do about that. Will consider options when I get my own boiler.

Yeast preparations

Opened yeast today, Monday, slow expansion through the week as it is old.
Pitched to 1l starter on Friday morning, by Sat morning it was going well. Perfect timing.