I've been like a kid wanting to play with a new toy all week, so I decided throw caution to the wind and set up in the kitchen yesterday.

As mentioned in the last post I worked up a recipe based on a couple of Wheeler recipes but more as a guideline and, as a geek, I had to find a good reason to use technology, so I added a bit of twiddling with Brewzor and got something that should work:

  • 18 litres of water
  • 2.55kg Brewpak pale malt extract
  • 40g Styrian golding hops at start of boil
  • 7g Styrian golding hops for the last 10 minutes
  • Half a teaspoon of Irish moss

Leeds water is generally ok (is it possible to get a water profile in this country?) so it was straight out of the tap and into the mash bin. Half an hour to get it up to 40 degrees or so to stir in the malt, then a 90 minute vigorous boil with the hops:

image1

When the boil was finished, I let the wort settle and transferred it to my fermentation bucket to cool overnight. Now, I'm not too sure if this was a good idea: initially I tried to run the wort out through the mash bin tap but it clogged with debris straight away, so it was out with the sieve and pouring into the bin, which seems rather inelegant and makes the floor sticky.

I left the bin overnight and got up far too early this morning to finish off by transferring from the fermenting bin to the mash bin, cleaning out the fermenting bin and transferring back to it to make some aeration, then pitching the rehydrated yeast and putting it in the spare bedroom to ferment. The house is usually around 18 degrees C and given the summer this year, isn't going to go much over that, so it can sit there and burble away for a couple of weeks untill bottling, all being well.

So, what have I learned out of the process? I definitely need at least another fermenting bin. If this works out, I might not do another malt extract brew as it seems too inaccurate to do if I want to take it seriously so the next brew will be all mash, unless I throw in the quarter of a tin of extract that was left from this brew. I understand the principle of calculating what happens, now I just need to see it applied. I need something to stop the boiler tap from clogging, and I need something to keep the kit tidy in. Off to the hardware shop I think...

UPDATE: 2:30PM and I can hear bubbling coming from the back bedroom, so the yeast is happy so far.

UPDATE2: 10am the next day and it's bubbling away merrily, utterly confusing the dog.