This is a partial mash version of my previous Irish Red Ale, using my new boiler pot. A few snags, but generally this worked out ok. The boiler sits on legs, but isn’t high enough for the fermenter to sit under the tap – so I had to use a stock-pot and transfer in a couple of stages. I may have to look at this sitting higher for this to be resolved. The rustic thermostat did not cause any serious problems for maintaining a constant temperature.
I did find the muslin wasn’t quite as good as a cheese-cloth – it doesn’t stretch as well as the grain-bag I had bought from the HBS, but it held OK. I did feel some give to the weave as I squeezed the last few drops of wort from the grain. I may have to replace this already, but at grand total cost of AU$4, it doesn’t worry me that much – just the hassle of having to sew it all up again.
The limitations with this boiler is in a single batch – I feel this would have worked better with more water in it (a double batch, for instance). But I have to reserve my judgement for when I taste the results, to determine what I can do better.
Ingredients
- 2.5kg Maris Otter pale malt grain
- 250g CaraRed malt grain
- 250g Melanoidin malt grain
- 1kg Light Dry Malt Extract (LDME)
- 115g Crystal malt grain
- 45g Chocolate malt grain
- 45g Fuggles hops pellets @ 60mins.
- 2x Fuggles hops plugs @ 5mins.
- 1/2 tab Irish Moss
- Wyeast 1335 (British Ale II) liquid yeast starter
- Estimated OG: 1.048
- Actual OG: 1.055 (plato 13.48)
- FG: 1.017
- Estimated IBU: 28.3
- Estimated EBC: 24.1
17 litres of water was warmed up to 70°C, then the Maris Otter, Carared, and Melanoidin malt was placed into the muslin liner and kept at 65-67°C for 1 hour.
The crystal and chocolate malt was steeped in water the same temperature for a little under 30 minutes, in a small saucepan.
Once the wort had been drained from the grain, I poured it back into the boiler and brought it to the boil, where I added the hops pellets in a hop-bag and left to boil for 1 hour.
At the end of the hour, I added the Irish Moss (dissolved in a cup of warm water), the LDME, and the steeped grain wort. Turning off the heat, I poured the wort into the fermenter, put the hop bag in that adding the two hops plugs, and topped up to 23Lt with cold water. I left the hops sitting in the wort for about half-hour before pulling out and leaving to cool down to a temperature suitable to pitch the yeast (19-20°C).
In order to get the most out of my hops, I mashed grains in 17 Lt water, and working out the total amount of fermentables (4.15Kg), meant that the what I had left in the wort was the right amount for hops isomeration (roughly 3kg of potential extract). This is all according to the formula that I have written about here. Thankfully, a lot of the number-crunching was done by my copy of Promash.
The brew was bulk-primed and bottled with 160g Dextrose.
