Made 20L of the LCPA recipe i posted yesterday followed by 20L of my house ale - post # 5
First off, crushing the grains. Done by hand as am yet to get a motor or drill to drive the mill but its kind of therapeutic anyway. Took me about 45 mins to crush 2 batches (~4 kg each).
Here's the crushed grain in the esky ready to dough in. One of the advantages of the falsie is that i can crush quite fine and still have no issue with run off.
The HLT (my Mums old preserving urn now serving a higher purpose) and the 55L willow esky. Brand spanking new, i bought an identical one off ebay for $20 and managed to convince the partner we could use the old one as a normal esky as i really needed the new one as it would keep a better temp for brewing. I didn't take a pic of the false bottom but its a beer belly falsie and it works a treat! Nice clear run-off, piece of piss to use and clean.
Dough in. This is one of the best smells on brew day, the hot water hitting the freshly crushed grains. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Skipping straight thru the multiple infusions (cos thats just me adding more water to the esky and stirring like a bastard) to the boil in my converted 50L DAB keg. The NASA burner gets it to the boil in 10-15 mins and then i have to turn it right down. Boil for anywhere up to 90 mins. This time i boiled it till it cleared a little before adding 60 min hops so total boil was probably around 75 mins.
After the boil i whirlpool like crazy and then let it sit for 10 mins before lifting it to a height to allow me to drain it thru the plate chiller (dont get me started on the no chill debate). Single pass gives me a wort anywhere between 25 and 30C depending on how much time i spend tweaking taps.
Close-up of the plate chiller
Into the now deceased fermenting fridge. With day time temps here high 20s low 30s and with 2 x 2L bottles i can get temp down to 12C if i rotate them twice a day.
The starter going crazy plus an experimental ginger beer using wheat malt extract. Seems very dark to me..... Turns out the starter is not 1056 as i originally thought, its 1098 and so didnt go into either beers. I will collect the yeast and put it back into the fridge for next time but i reckon i should now have enough yeast to direct pitch into an IPA...
Pic of the backyard
Pic of a few of the locals. My late Nana told me that a garden with blue wrens is one to be proud of. These normally extremely shy little creatures are regular visitors to my oasis from the rat race. In fact, the bird life is amazing here.
And finally my chill garden, 3 x jalapeños, 3 x bolivian rainbows and 2 x white habaneros. My orange and choc habaneros didnt germinate.
Hope this is useful to those considering going over to the dark side. All up a double brew day took me 10am to 6 pm but then i didn't pre crush the grain and during that time did chores and watched the cricket. A lot of the time is spent waiting altho a double brew day is more manic trying to get dozen of batches of water to a set temp since i was crazy enough to do 52/66/78 steps for both brews! Crazy fool! Single brew days with a single infusion allows me to mow the lawn, and get work done around the house. I would also suggest not cracking the first beer until well into the boil.
Cheers and beers
DrSmurto
heres a pic of the other days mash,hows my thermometer 
