One brewday, one mash up...two completely different beers

[brenmurph]

Heres a quick ( I wish) report on an unusual brewday ( as usual in Kildare)

Hello all, just a little feedback on the day

As expected it was a quieter day because being summer people are on hols and at other weekend events and so on.

JD stayed all day and our local member owen dropped on for an couple hours  as well at the usual drop ins to say hello and have a taste. Few or our regulars were away on holidays and my two sons were working.

As it was a quieter numbers for the brew kellie decided I have to look after my own food as she spent the day in the garden and gardening in the Polytunnel.

Justin suggested the parti Gyle and so it went

Plan was a parti gyle making two radically different beers. As JD was a little late I had already cracked the 4.5 Kg of whole grain malt.
I knew JD suggested the Pale so I proceeded with a basic Pale ale recipe:

4kg maris otter
150 g biscuit
100g  Amber
100g wheat

Mashed with our new super dupper but simple mash in a bag system ( worth seeing in action)  smooth clean, efficient (80% return)  easy to sparge, easy to dispose the spent grain.

Ok The hard bit:

We had to split the batch of mash into two brews.

The complicated bit was the beersmith software basicaly we had to take a gravity reading on our first runnings ( the first lot of wort before we sparged ( rinsed) the grain so as expected we got 9 litres at 1070.

Next bit we sparged in two rinses 7 litres and 3 litres which gave us our weak beer  so we now have 10 litres of strong wort and 10 litres of weaker wort>



OK from here we have to do two seperate brews: so two boils and so on  that the time consuming bit :

Brew 1... American amber ale:

og 10 litres at 1067 prob about 5.9% alcohol.

Hops were bravo for bittering vascade for late addition at 10 mins boil and Sonnet ( saaz x Goldings) for finish.
US05 yeast

Brew 2 English bitter

0g 1037 x 10 litres prob about 3.6 % alcohol

Hops were  Hersbruker and galena for bittering ( and some flavour) and Hersbruker for finishing at the end

Nottingham yeast

I used some of my usual tricks for yeast starter in the fermenter ( long story but simple approach) the American amber was fermenting away before bedtime ( 4 hours in) and the second batch was away and running this morning. Both smell beautiful sitting at 20 c.


Hopefully this little story was of interest to some who may want to try this approach to brewing 2 racilly differing beers in one day with the same mash

Justin and myself decided we are saving a few bottles for the Nationals in March just nice time to lager and mature a 6% hoppy beer.

Next brewday a month from now come and jump onboard..we dont do thisgs normal around here.. last brewday we made the spruce tree beer which has got super review from ordinary dudes and a guest I had from Chech republic this week....

any questions feel free to post...till the next brewday.. thanks to JD , ownd and all the popper inners and our regulars who couldnt make this one..



regards Brendan

[DEMPSEY]

Sorry I had to miss out,people keep ringing me and texting me wanting to give me money :. I will switch off the phone next time

[JD]

Thoroughly enjoyed the day, Bren. Looking forward to the next one. Really looking forward to sampling the two beers as well, particularly that light bitter. If that one turns out well, which I'm fully confident it will, then partigyle will definitely be on my own agenda when I eventually get my rig rebuilt.

Partigyling brings with it its own issues. On the day we discovered a few things:
* Brewsmith doesn't have direct support for producing a partigyle recipe. We had to do a lot of fiddling and interpolating.
* There will be two losses due to boil offs, not one. You will need to factor that in when deciding your mash and sparge volumes.
* If you have one kettle, your boils will be serialised and your brew day will be automatically at least 90mins longer. If you have a HLT sitting idle, it might double up as a second kettle for the second boil.
* Apart from the two sanitized fermenters, you'll need some extra buckets to hand during the process to facilitate separating the runnings. 

Bren's system is a tidy system that is very easy on work with. My own system has a deeper dead space in the mash tun and that might prove awkward for collecting all the first runnings. I might look into this mash bag idea a bit more. It worked very well yesterday.

/J

[brenmurph]

plenty more where that one came from Dempsey

REMEMBER were the only group who brew all the time ( unless Im missing something) every week...this week 2 mashes x 3 beers, last week 2 mashes...and so on.....
Anyone wants in on a mash just let me know.  I make an formal invite to HBC members once a month alternating with North Kildare aka liffey brewers..
So dont be shy if you want to jump in on a mash day just shout and Ill tell yis when Im brewin again

[brenmurph]

JD  re calculating cost of the brews yesterday. 

When using beersmith you can keep stock when you get new supplies enter stock and cost ( just like a shop would do)  and then beersmith tells u exactly the cost of your brews.

Brew 1   €5.10  + 60 cent for esb ( and maybe 50 cent when water rates come in)
Brew 2   €3.65  + 60 cent for esb

Tot 8.75 + 1.20  = €10.95 for 40 pints

So 25 cent a pint for this type of brewing.

Last mash was a 26 litre ( I call that 52 pints cos I put a head on my beers therefore 500ml = 1 pint in a glass)

Cost €8.75 and 60 cent for esb

So 17 cent a pint for this single brew of a best bitter

Now that Im buying MCI malt with a 40% saving take about 30% off these figures above.

[Ciderhead]

Now that Im buying MCI malt with a 40% saving take about 30% off these figures above.

it has a lower carbon footprint, "Guaranteed Irish",and I bet it tastes better too

[brenmurph]

tanx cider and I 100% agree

25kg bairds cost me 37.50 couple weeks ago....MCI about 20 inc delivery!