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Started brewing my own beer...

It's looking good and drinking well!

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You're going the full brew there Andy. So far I have used kits; which as you know have some of the work done for you. Best way to get started probably. Interested to see how you do it from scratch. With a kit you know what sort of beer you'll end up with. If you go full artisan like that how do you know what you're getting?
 
Looking very good Chris. I find this whole thread really interesting, something hopefully I can experiment with in the future.
 
You're going the full brew there Andy. So far I have used kits; which as you know have some of the work done for you. Best way to get started probably. Interested to see how you do it from scratch. With a kit you know what sort of beer you'll end up with. If you go full artisan like that how do you know what you're getting?


Yeah, I have been brewing this way for a few years, but I started off with and sometimes Use your system for a quicker brew though - since the mashing and sparging takes a couple of hours, although most of that time you just leave the mash to do is stuff
i use receipe books and just make them up now, 4.5kg of pale malt, a smattering of chocolate or crystal malt, and 70-80gm of various hops. I tend to make pale ales and ipa these days

e.g. A book like this
https://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/how-to/books/brew-your-own-british-real-ale-book.html
 
Nice! Might have to order that Andy
 
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Started brewing at 7am

Weighed out my grains, 4.5kg of place malt, a handful please of choc malt and crystal malt
heated up around 12-14l water to 80degC in a boiler
poured the water into my "mash tun" - a cool box with tap fitted and a loop of copper pipe with slots cut on underside, to act as a strainer

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when water is 72 DegC in mash tun I stir in the grain and make sure temperature is 65 +\- 2 DegC

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put the lid on an leave to mash for 90 mins
adter about an hour I put 15litre of water on to heat up to 90-100deg

when mash finished, I run some wort off from tap into a jug and pour back in to mash tun, this is to clear he run off wort to reduce fines, the grain bed acts as a filter to the fines.

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then I put boiler on top shelf, mash tun in middle and another boiler on floor
you want 80degc water to come from boiler and I have. A spinning t piece in mash tun that sprinklers he water onto grain and rinses the grains as I run off the wort to 2nd boiler. This is called sparging

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next step is to bring the wort upto the boil, and chuck the main hops - about 75grams
and boil for 90mins, adding about 15grams of "aroma" hops for the last 15mins, and some stuff to clear the beer and my copper coiling coil.

i then connect cooling coil to a tap and run cold water through to cool water to under 25deg and then run wort off into fermenting bucket and add water to make it 25litre, add yeast and leave for a week to make the ale
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Sparging is a such a great word.

I think I'll do few more kits before I go pro like you Andy.
 
I do enjoy a good sparging session ;)

i used the kit method for a couple of years before doing full-mash method,

you can get some nice microbrewery kits now, stainless steel kit, but they are quite an investment
 
YYY
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