Hey guys,
I thought i might share my first AG run with you.
1. I did this whilst i have the flue.
Fired up my rabo burner for the first time and started heating 36.5ltrs of water in my shiny new 55ltr stainless steel pot.
The burner smoked up really badly and started burning off the shiny paint, it didnt smell nice but it settled down after it was all burnt off.
I used half a teaspoon of citric acid in the mash water as a guess to get ph about right as no hardware stores sells usefull ph papers, ie to measure around low 5s. Mashed in aiming for 68, got 67 i thought that will do. The mash was done in an esky with a cut out bit of foam sittting just above the liquid, on top a nice thick towell. It only dropped 2c over full hour, however next time i wont open the lid and i think i can reduce that to 1c drop.
Wife got home and ive got the esky ontop of the counter trying to siphon into my cube for temp storage before sparge, wort on the floor, sticky footprints everywhere, she wasnt impressed. I had to modify my siphon line to run better but all was good.
I realised here however that i changed my mash steps in beersmith and didnt realise it missed the mashout step. So i drained the first runnings from the initial mash temp of 67c not 77c, oops.
Batch sparged with 25ltrs of water @ 78c as per the instruction i now had, figured ill keep sticking to them..
The wort ran nicely into my kettle (which doubles as my HLT so there is some juggling) i added the first runnings in trying not to splash it, collected just under 30 ltrs. i noted some improvements for next time regarding water volume etc and then proceeded to top up my kettle to 31ltr for the boil.
I then did a SG reading and it came in at 1032, target was 1036 but then i realised this was after i watered it down with about 2.5 ltrs of topup water so i assume my efficiency was good.
Turned up burner full blast, did my boil watched for the hot break, added the bittering hops at correct timing, and completed the boil.
Once boil was complete i lifted the pot up onto my BBQ so i had enough height to siphon into my cube, whirpooled it and then siphoned. This all was going to plan untill i tried to seal my cube, i squeezed it with my legs stuck the lid on screwed tight only to hear the sound of air rushing back in when i let go. (this was the one thing i didnt test with my dry run) &^%#!!!. I realised then that all this good work could be brought undone with an infection.
I quite simply got angry and wrenched the lid so hard i almost tore the skin off my hand... and then it sealed tight as a drum
I woke up this morning to find the wort about 20*C and chucked it in the fermenter, FG was 1052 when it should have been 1044 so i boiled off to much, added 3 ltrs of water to bring it to 1044 and threw in the yeast. Tasting the wort you can instantly taste the difference between Kit/extract and AG. Cant wait to get it in the bottles.
So things ill do next time.
Mash out - wort seems to siphon out much easier when hotter.
Review total water used to get correct amount into kettle.
Find a more accurate way of measuring how much water is in kettle. (kettle is wide and not that tall, so measuring by height on a stick is a bit meh)
Buy a digital PH meter and some 5.2 PH stabiliser.