So, my first excursion on my new kit didn't go *that* well at first... Don't get me wrong, the kit worked fine, everything nicely made and finished - it was the bits that I put together that didn't go so well.
The plan was for a single hop Chinook pale, mostly because I have a selection of unopened packets of hops from last year that I'm planning to use on the test brews, so it was as follows:
- 98.4% Maris Otter
- 1.6% Caragold
- 34.7 IBUs Chinook @ 60 minutes
- 5.3 IBUs Chinook @ 20 minutes
- Left over Chinook for aroma
- Safale US-05
Getting from HLT to mash tun to boiler went fine. A thermopot as a mash tun is a wonderful thing and keeps the mash at the heat you want it for a very long time indeed. It was still fairly hot when I dug it out the next day. The boil took longer than expected as I think one of the elements wasn't running, but I suspect that was due to my overenthusiastic wiring hackery rather than any problem with it.
Then I had to transfer from boiler to fermenter and that's where things went a little bit askance. I succumbed and bought a HopRocket for aroma purposes and connected it between the boiler and the cooler in the approved way, but rather bodged it. Hot wort softens silicone hose rather quickly, and if you don't secure your joints with hose rings, it will try and find its way out wherever it can, more so if you are overenthusiastic with the flow from your boiler through your pump, you can end up squirting hot wort across the floor. A couple of field repairs later and the leaks were more or less fixed, but having not learned my lesson I pumped the remaining wort through at too high a rate, which doesn't cool it. It got down to about 35 degrees but wort in a stainless steel tank takes a long time to properly cool down. Overnight in fact. In the meantime I had to dispose of my very enthusiastic US-05 colony as I didn't think it would be much the use the next day, and rethink my fermenting plan. However, the wort's OG was a decent 1050, which seemed promising.
The next morning the wort had come down to a usable temperature, and looked OK, but rather than risking some expensive US-05 I decided to pitch some assorted ale yeasts I had lying around. It was all probably of a Nottingham strain anyway so I activated three packets and pitched it. I had intended to set up some heating with some aquarium components as I that's where most of my problems lie, and why I 'm now in the garage rather than fermenting at baby-friendly temperatures in the house. However, the ATC-800+ temperature controller I had bought had a small problem - the wiring diagram that comes with it is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Fortunately, October in the Costa del Airedale was warm, with an average of about 16 degrees, so I wrapped the tank in blankets and left it for a few days with not a great deal of optimism and some ruminations about this whole brewing business.
After five days I took a sample (it's so much easier with a tap in your fermenter) and it checked in at a very respectable 1014, so the ale yeasts were doing their job. I decided to leave it for a few more days to see if it would reach the target of 1012. It came down another point over another five days, which was fine by me, so I decided to rack and bottle.
As an improvement on a racking cane, I've invested in a Brouwland bottle filler from BrewUK, but when you're trying to pull everything together in a bit of a hurry, these aren't the most intuitive things to use. I assumed it was gravity based or pressure based, but when I filled the reservoir and tried to fill a bottle, nothing. To cut a long story short, in the end, I hastily cleaned out a King Keg and filled it, and popped a CO2 capsule in it, still not expecting much. The bottler, perhaps remarkably, is still syphon based and requires 'priming' (a good suck) to get started. Doh.
After a week I gave the keg a go, and it actually wasn't too bad. After another week it had carbonated nicely and is pretty drinkable. It's not the beer I had intended to make, but the relatively low hopping rate and lack of aroma hops probably accounted for that - I used a total of 100g of hops on a 55 litre batch - but I've had commercial British beers that claimed to be 'hoppy' and that didn't taste much different. Despite going counter to the 'right' way of brewing a beer and stumbling through with new and untested kit, I still got something out that worked, proving that beer really is a forgiving mistress. I suppose it isn't much different from the way that beer has been made for most of its existence, but not the way you want to be doing it on some serious hobby kit.
Still, I have to learn from my mistakes and, unlike Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, not repeat all of them exactly, and from this it's been:
- Make sure all connections are working correctly.
- Control your flow rate through the plate chiller to make sure it actually chills. Oh, and use decent connectors for your cooling water.
- Know how your bottling kit works before you start bottling.
I also need to do something safer and more reliable with power, and I'm building a simple power board to balance three elements and three pumps. It's at time like this that you understand why 'homebrew' has become a term in other hobbies besides just making beer.
It doesn't look likely that I'll get a chance to make another beer before Christmas, and the intention is to do another test before getting into doing something a bit more serious so there'll be more thinking and planning (and a King Keg of beer to get through).