True Batch Brew Porter

[Kevin O'Roundwood]

Howerye lads

Just a quick question. I've been making a rake of country wine for the last few years and took a notion to start brewing beer lately. So I got a beer kit (St Peter's Red Ale), and stuck it on. Grand. Fairly straightforward touch wood. Then I heard about the True Batch Brew kits and picked one up in Hollands in Bray the next time I was passing. Spent a great eveing brewing the other night but possibly fecked it up in the mash.

At the start I got the water temp to 71 degrees as instructed and stuck in the grains. But it being the first attempt I underestimated how hot the pot would get and how long it would take to cool down to 65 odd degrees. Long story short, it ended up being 90 degrees at one point and it took about 30 minutes to get it down to 68 degrees...

The sparge and boiling went relatively well and it's bubbling away like a mad yolk now. The whole process was fascinating and got me fairly hooked. I wonder though will this batch be any good - do those sort of mash temperatures spell death for beer?

Any thoughts?

Kev

[giacomo]

90 is indeed quite high and you might have deactivated quite a significant amount of enzymes there. But the best way to tell is by gravity: what is your OG? I remember my porter from the same kit to start at about 1.045 or something like that...

The bubbling means anyway that some fermentable sugars were converted anyway; the worst case scenario is a pretty sweet and little alcohol beer

[Simon_]

Yeah all enzyme activity is supposed to stop somewhere around ~76C

You never know though you might have invented some fantastic new style of beverage

[Kevin O'Roundwood]

Thanks lads,

The specific gravity was 1.072 - pretty high from what I've seen in this forum so far... It'll be interesting to see how it turns out anyway. If it's still vaguely drinkable I'm sure it'll still be polished off!

Might start looking at saving for some proper equipment. From what I can gather so far it would seem that one of those cooler box mash tuns and a converted FV boiler (like this https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/33lt-boiler-pack-includes-hop-strainer-p-576.html) might see me right. I have that 'Home Brewing - Self Sufficiency' book by John Parkes and that is pretty much what he recommends and it seems fairly straightforward, but when I have a look around this forum it seems there's a million different options. Hard to get the noggin around...

[googoomuck]

I've been gathering up gear to move to all grain for over 6 months, made my own boiler and chiller, got kegs through a group buy. Regulator etc picked up recently, bought a tap last night. Best advice I would give would be to read, read, ask questions and take your time. The deals from get er brewed for upgrading your system look to be great value if you don't fancy making your own gear and have the cash. 

[Kevin O'Roundwood]

Cool - quite like the idea of making/converting my own gear but with so much to learn about the whole process I wouldn't know where to even start. Is the odd old keg easy to come or are they only usually sold in bulk?

Gonna do a few more kits anyway to get my head round it all. And I'm going to have to drink a lot of beer... ah well....

[googoomuck]

I converted my keg by looking at Gary's thread on here and looking at YouTube videos, on my phone and don't know how to link the thread but if you search Gary and keggle it should come up. I used two Argos kettle elements and wired them by using the cellar dwellers video on YouTube. My father in law had a keg lying around, but I'd imagine if you keep and eye out you'd pick one up handy enough, failing that use a 33l bucket and the kettle elements. Try hacking a few kits with different grains and hops, the coopers web site has some great recipes for kit hacking. Recently I made a small batch (1 gallon) of extract ale, 500g of spray malt, 20g of hops split and added at different times and a  coopers yeast I had left over. Turned out great and gives you a taste of what it's like to brew extract. Like you said though, only trouble is all that lovely beer that needs drinking

[Kevin O'Roundwood]

Class, just found Gary's thread and your own. A lot to go on here. Did you have to grind the top off your keg aswell? And where did you get the copper tubing for the chiller? Would Woodies or somewhere (cheaper...) carry it?

[derfel]

B&Q have the copper for a chiller, it's around €35. You would probably get it cheaper in a proper builders providers,
specially if you can look like you're in the trade.

[cruiscinlan]

Any plumbing supplier will have copper pipe and will prob be cheaper than Woodys, 15m of 8mm pipe was E27 in Galway when I checked. 10m of 10mm is E31 online in Woodys at present.

[googoomuck]

Yeah I cut the top off the keg and drilled the holes under adult supervision haha. I bought the copper pipe (which is 10mm oil pipe, comes with a plastic covering which is easy to remove) in a builders merchants for €3 a meter I paid for 3 meters but got over 4, woddies is silly money for the same thing €40 or something like that.

[googoomuck]

Now I have cornies I think I will have a go at making another chiller and use my original one as a pre chiller. The only thing I had at the time of making the original was a bucket of paint, should be able to get a better shape with the corny.

[Kevin O'Roundwood]

Ah for feck sake! a 'pre chiller'? Just when I thought I might be getting to grips with brewing! What do you need that for??

Jesus I'm going to bed....

[googoomuck]

Haha it will connect to the mains water and sit in a bucket of iced water, the "waste" outlet will run into my new chiller cooling the water, making it more efficient.

[Kevin O'Roundwood]

Ah right, so you're chilling the water that you use to chill the wort instead of just running it straight (and not so cold) from the tap?