Coopers Brew A + mini-mash #3

Made a hop tea today with 50g of cascade. First error, boiled up 500ml of bottled water and poured it into the cafetiere containing the hops, without letting it cool to 80 degrees ~ however this may have saved me because when I went to pour this into the FV the glass part of the cafetiere slipped out and Plop! into the brew it went. I had sanitized the inside of it before use, but I can only hope that holding boiling water for 10 mins would have killed off any nasties on the outside. We'll see ~ I'm too long in the tooth to overly stress about these things if I am completely honest. Anyway, it will all sit in there until next weekend.

The sample I took before hand measured 1014, which is a lot higher than I was aiming for, although I thing it was still pretty active, so perhaps it will drop a couple more points. If it doesn't, it will be a nice session IPA at about 3.5%, and I shall claim that was my intention all along.Tasted quite excellent. 

Coopers Brew A + mini-mash #2

After 2 days, the airlock has stopped, and looking at the lack of krausen, I think its nearly done. Had this been any other yeast, I would have suspected a stall, but the threads on the UK Home Brew Forum suggest that this rapid fermentation is normal. I'm still going to leave it in the FV for the normal 2 weeks to clean up, but am considering dropping the temperature for the last week to aide clearing. As the rapid fermentation stage is over, I'll probably add the hop tea at this point, and take a sample for gravity testing. I didn't get any 'sewer' smells that you sometimes get with kits while fermenting, with this brew ~ I've read that this odor may be caused by a stressed yeast; perhaps the brew fridge temperature control, size of the yeast pitch (11g rather than the usual 7g kit yeast) or the fact that there are no simple sugars in this brew have helped?

Coopers Brew A + mini-mash

Type: Kit + Mini Mash Brew
Sugars: 1 Coopers Brew A IPA, mash liquor as per schedule.
Yeast: CML US Pale Ale Yeast, re-hydrated as per packet instructions.
Hops: 23g Bobek 15 mins, 50g Cascade flame out, 50g Cascade hop tea at packaging.
Additions: Lidl bottled mineral water, 1/4 protofloc talet @ 15 mins.
O.G. 1042
Volume in fermenter: 20L

Mash Schedule;

2Kg Golden Promise, 200g Medium Crystal, 200g Torrified Wheat. Strike water 73 degrees C. Mash at 63 degrees C 50 mins, raised to 73 degrees C, dunk sparged 10 mins.

First of two brews to use up my last two Coopers kits before going fully all grain. This was the first time I'd used my Burco Cygnet 30L boiler, and it went really well. It heats up water much more quickly than a pot on the stove. The grain bag I purchased is too small really, but it will do until I either buy a bigger one or make a mash tun; and that will have to wait until I have made an immersion chiller to allow me to do full volume boils.

I used 8L of water for my mash, but was a bit worried towards the end of the boil due to loss to steam ~ it was getting a bit shallow in the boiler. Once topped up to 20L in the FV, the wort temp was 26 degrees C, so if I use more water in the boil next time I am going to have to chill the wort somehow, perhaps by sitting the FV in an ice bath for a bit.

Brewers Friend predicted an OG of 1049 with an efficiency of 65%, I hit 1042, which gives me an efficiency of 47%, which isn't very good, but I'm not that worried at this point. I just want to get used to the general technique. Sample tasted really good, and not very 'kitty'. 

The yeast was pitched at 26 degrees, which is high, but as it was re-hydrated in 'tepid' water, as per the instructions, of 36 degrees, I thought I'd pitch it, then get the FV in the brew fridge set at 20 degrees C. The good news is that the 'cooling' part of the fridge got it down to 20 in pretty short order ~ the brew fridge had only been called on to heat brews up to this point so its good to know that part of its functionality works well. Its presently holding at 20 with no heat or cooling inputs, due to the exothermic reaction of the yeast.

The Crossmyloof yeast took off like a rocket; it was going like the clappers after 4 hours. Pretty impressive.

Now its just a waiting game. Will I get the kit 'twang' or will the mash disguise it? We shall see.

Re-culturing yeast

I've re-cultured yeast from bottle conditioned Coopers Pale Ale before, using a fairly simple method similar to the one described here. It went well, but for some reason, didn't do it again. Perhaps because I didn't really think the resulting brew was that fantastic. I don't know. Anyway, I am building a stir plate (more on that later) so have selflessly been trying various bottle conditioned ales to see which ones might have interesting yeast in them, and have settled on the following to try;

Fullers 1845
Gales HSB
Morland Hen's Tooth
Samuel Smith Stingo
Shepherd Neame 1698
Thwaites Nutty Black
Youngs Special London Ale

Once dry January has finished, of course!