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Next time i will be more organised and give ppl enough warning and make sure it doesnt clash with something quite as big as the clipsal 500.

Anyone who is rocking up sms me on 0401 space space 438 and then a slight pause to throw bots off my trail and 652. Giving myself an early minute or 3 for a cheeky pint at grumpys on the way home and then to clean up the remaining bottles i have promised people.

drsmurto wrote:
Giving myself an early minute or 3 for a cheeky pint at grumpys on the way home

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Paleman wrote:

drsmurto wrote:
Giving myself an early minute or 3 for a cheeky pint at grumpys on the way home

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr

You dont know how hard it is to not stop in there every day, i have got in down to about twice a week now.

How did the brew day go?

I will say only one thing - label your bags of grain. You cant sub 3.7kg of marris otter with melanoidin......

drsmurto wrote:

I will say only one thing - label your bags of grain. You cant sub 3.7kg of marris otter with melanoidin......

Woah! That would be one hell of a brew mate! Did you strike water to it? This sounds like a good story in the making

mashed for an hour and then started run off. Was a lot darker. Realised then what i had done and tipped it.

had a thought the next day tho from a convo i had with the boys in grumpys- melanoidin is basically a turbo charged munich so in theory, i could have made a dunkel out of it? Altho most say you shouldnt use in excess of 10% melanoidin in a batch.

I would have saved a bit of the run off and then used it in a second mash with the MO (if I had time), would have been quite nice I would think. I have not used more than 7% but I don't think 10% would be too much.

I was tempting to save it, even boil it and use it for starters etc.

I ended up heading off to Clarks Rubber and bought the piece of rubber foam stuff to fit on top of the grain bed in the esky. Temp loss over an hour the next day for the actual brew was less than 0.5C! Very impressed. And with pre heating the mash tun i am nailing strike temps, holding the mash temp and efficiency is now consistently in the high 70s. I ended up adding another 2L of water pre-boil to adjust gravity back to what i wanted to keep abv and IBUs in the same ball park.

Bit colder here yesterday so i was able to run the wort thru the chiller at damn near full speed and it still went into the fermnter at ca 25C. Left it while i went to partners parents for dinner and the cricket and came back to a 20C wort that i poured into another fermenter from 1m to aerate and added trub from last ESB. less than 12 hours later its going nuts. In the 'brew fridge' with a block of ice sitting at a stable 18C.

drsmurto wrote:I ended up heading off to Clarks Rubber and bought the piece of rubber foam stuff to fit on top of the grain bed in the esky. Temp loss over an hour the next day for the actual brew was less than 0.5C!

Dr.

What exactly did you buy, as I've been interested in giving something like this a try for a while but had never thought of Clarks. My esky is big but cheap and with use over time the esky itself has expanded and the lid is not as tight as it once was, so putting some insulation in may be my best bet.

No idea what it was called, i just pointed at it to the shop assistant and she cut it to size for me. It was 12 mm thick. Feels like rubber, almost like a camping mate but more expensive. 50 x 35 cm cost me $14. Kev suggested i try it and it worked a treat! Cheers Kev!

I bought a camping mat from the local cheap shop for mine, I think it was about $12 and was enough to make 3-4 for my little 25L esky. The one layer of about 3/4 inch thickness seems to work great, I trimmed it with a stanley knife to fit like a cork and really seal the heat in, I float it on top of the mash and even for 1 hour rests I never lose more than .1-.2C or so

So, how did your brew day go?

drsmurto wrote:mashed for an hour and then started run off. Was a lot darker. Realised then what i had done and tipped it.

had a thought the next day tho from a convo i had with the boys in grumpys- melanoidin is basically a turbo charged munich so in theory, i could have made a dunkel out of it? Altho most say you shouldnt use in excess of 10% melanoidin in a batch.

Noooooooooooooooooooo!
All that lovely melanoidin - gone! Yeah, it would have been a rip snorter dunkel or bock - 4kg of base malt tossed in and a shedload of Perle / Northern Brewer / Hallertauer and you'd be in business. Some high gravity tolerant lager yeast like California Lager (Steam Beer) yeast and you'd have a keg of bliss ready for those cold autumn weekends!

Cheers,
TL