Virgin All Grain Brew Day.

Yaaaaay finally i get to post a thread in here

Had a group brew day today, it was my first all grain brew and also on a totally untested setup.Waiting on confrimation from one of the guys but my recollection is in my eskie i had 18kg Maris Otter,2kg Crystal 145ebc, and 25 litres water total.

I could not fit any more, we had to brew 200 litres between five of us , we brewed an Old English Ale, aimed for an SG of 1070 ish. I know my first runnings were up at 1096 anyway lol. Good grief talk about being thrown in at the deep end.

Of course my mash got completely stuck but with that amount of grain i am not surprised. Could not be helped as i had one of the big mash tuns Still a very long but enjoyable day, i learned a lot especially some things to avoid. This was not a normal brew day, it was a monster brew day

wow spewing I missed this! So how did it all go in the end?

Good m8 but a bloody long day, i think we were 8 hours or more at it. For me the guys saw a couple of things that need fine tuning on my setup which was great because now i know what i need to do. Was very good to see all the guys brewing as now i have a mental picture of how a brew day should go which will be great for when i do my own.

Damn but hot wort is sticky out of the mash tun

One thing that was very apparent is that i badly need a proper boil kettle, the aluminium keg is going to be my HLT for definite now so i need to find a kettle somewhere. Also manifold in eskie needs reworking, blocks too easily with big grain bills.

Blowing back through a silicone hose to unblock a copper manifold sure takes the wind out of you

Since i did no mash out on this beer i took the grain home with me and mashed out for 30 minutes and still did a 60 minute boil i think it was,did all the hop additions etc and i got 20 litres post boil at OG 1050

Its in a keg now tapped and its bloody lovely, the OG of the first original runnings that went into the group brew was 1090 so i knew there was plenty of fermentables left in the grain so i saw no point in the chooks getting that.

Thats great Greg! Post the vid if you do one!

Might do a taste test video later today,did not actually video when i brought the grains home

Way back at the start of 2014 i did my first all grain which turned out to be a group brew day between about 6 of us all with our own setups brewing a single beer.We brewed an Old Ale that was aged in a Bushmills whiskey barrel for about ten months. It was bottled up last month and my share was 46 x 500ml of roughly 8% abv barrel aged Old Ale

It needs a good bit to carb from what the others have said but samples were promising,i just got my share a few days ago but they were stored cold so need at least a couple weeks to carb fully.However not one to wait i just cracked one and it is very lightly carbed which i think suits the style a lot.

All i can say is OMG what a beer. First impressions it is like drinking a glass of fine sherry,definitely a sipper as i have only got a third into a bottle and i can feel the buzz already,i think that 8% abv is a very reserved estimate tbh,toffee/molasses/caramel/sherry/oak i could go on.So pleased with this brew and defo a special occasion beer i am going to try to get out to a few people in 2015.