Brew notes. Caldonian deuchars IPA

Brew day 17/07/14
TOG - 1038 TABV - 3.8% TFG - 1009

AOG - 1042

New brew. Black sheep ale.

So I've been brewing since Christmas 2012. Starting off with a kit moving on to brewing with with malt extract and finally all grain. If I'm honest it's only in the last couple of batches that I feel I'm really starting to get the hang of this.

I get all my ingredients and some kit from www.brewuk.co.uk. Speedy delivery and excellent quality.

Today I'm brewing the recipe for one of my favourite beers. Black sheep ale. You can find it on page 123 of the excellent third edition of British real ale by Graham Wheeler.

The beers OG should be 1046 with an FG of 1011  giving an abv of 4.6%

8:31 sanitise everything.  I use starsan.  It's a bit more expensive but it's also no rinse. So more convenient to use.

8:55. Malt weighed out. Bringing the water for the mash up to the required temperature. 

9:14. Grain added to mash tun (cool box). Left now to mash for 90 minutes. The cool box insulates well keeping the temperature pretty much spot on. Probably not as good as a thermostatically controlled proper tun but I haven't had a problem hitting the gravity i'm after doing it this way. 

10:53. Onto sparging.  Home made kit from two oil buckets from work. First run off goes back through the mash.

11:39. I now have 24 litres of wort. I'll take some off to boil with the hops since I don't have anything I can boil all of it in. I also take a gravity reading now since it won't really change . But I could easily add more sugar at this point if required. The gravity is 1034 a bit low so I will add some malt extract I have to bump it up. The wort at this point is still warmer than the calibrated temperature of my hydrometer. I use this handy website to do the conversion for me.http://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/

11:57. Hop's weighed out. Challenger, fuggle and progress in first.  Golding plus Irish moss for the last ten minutes of the boil.

13:31. Cooling the post boil wort as fast as possible. Then it's added to the remaining wort. The quantity topped up to 23 litres if needs be. 

14.01. The yeast hydrates for 15 minutes at 35 centigrade. 

The final gravity having increased the sugar content is now 1060 so this will be a strong one!

14:41 and done bar some cleaning up. Note I'm not using a normal air lock yet. The last time I used this yeast strain it got a bit overexcited and blew the lock. So I will keep it like this for the first 24 hours or so until it settles down then fit a standard air lock.

 

If I brew this to the FG of 1011 it should work out to be 6.43% abv. Much stronger than the recipe. Clearly I've added to much additional sugar. Never mind, I would sooner have a strong beer than a weak one!

In a couple of weeks it'll be time to bottle. I'll update this post then.