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Archive for November 2010

Building a dual purpose Copper / Hot Liquor Tank from a 50 Litre Stainless Steel stock pot and two Backer kettle elements. The Stock Pot. The Elements.

The Tools and the Holes, 3mm Cobalt drill, allen key, 21mm Q-max cutter, adjustable spanner, 10mm HSS drill:
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15mm Polycarbonate tube in the Brass push-fit (Bent Tap Connector), Copper pipe goes right through the drilled out Tank connector to connect the 15mm Ball valve & Hop Stopper:
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White Plastic clip, drilled and tapped M10, Stainless Nuts, Washers, Threaded Rod:
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Inside the vessel, sight tube on the left, and copper stub for connecting Hop Stopper, I’ll most likely swap the washers for some silicone baking sheet ones:
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Sight Glass fitted with Tank connector and Brass Push-fit:
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Ball Valve tap fitted:
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Syphon effect extension with 8mm restriction at bottom:
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Hop Strainer soldered and fitted, just needs a shed load of holes drilling in the bottom third of the 22mm pipe, made almost exactly the same as my own so you can tilt the boiler a little when its time to run off and you get a little bit more wort for your hard work. The End Cap just pulls off for cleaning and the Brass Compression elbow allows you to get a Cask Tap cleaning brush right inside to clean too:
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Left to right – Element, 37.5mm Q-max cutter, pierced slug, Carbide Burr, Psudo-Dremel, Spanner & Allen key (My Q-max cutter is for cheap-ass kettle elements so i had to whizz round it with the Dremel to open the holes up and make a snug fit for the M40 threads on the element):
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Fitted element:
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Both elements fitted, I decided to fit them at 90 degrees:
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After fitting I wired up the plugs on the Element leads, and filled the vessel full of water to check for leaks. No leaks found so I emptied out and did a boil test with both elements which was good for cleaning the pipework out, I gave the element sockets a wiggle and one almost popped off.
So I’ve decided to get the KM8 bearing nuts to secure them instead, I’ve also sanded down the original plastic cowls which helps but one of them still feels a bit dodgy so I’d prefer it not to fail when having 45-50 Litres of boiling wort in it… so Bearing Nuts it will be!
Once its all secure I will do another boil test and give the copper pipework another good flush through.

Last piece of the puzzle… all that is needed is a good boiling to clean out the copper pipework and also clean off the IC I’m making.
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www.bearingboys.co.uk/KM8_Bearing_Locking_Nut

Rangeleys Ale – A Blonde Ale bittered with Magnum, lots of late Saaz, a touch of Centennial at the end. Brewing for a Christmas present.
Recipe based around one I made called ‘May Day’ which turned out to be rather tasty so essentially this is a Tweaked re-brew:)

Should be a good one 🙂

Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 4030g – 85%
Caramalt – 235g – 5%
Wheat Malt – 235g – 5%
Aromatic Malt – 115g – 2.5%
Cara Red – 115g – 2.5%

Hops:
Magnum @ 60 mins 11g
Magnum @ 30 mins 5g
Brewers Gold @ 30 mins 6g
Saaz @ 15 mins 50g
Saaz @ 0 mins 30g
Centennial @ 0 mins 20g

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.049
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.8% ABV
Total Liquor: 33 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.4 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 37 EBU
Colour: 13 EBC

Yeast is Safale US-05 for a nice clean beer
Mast at 68c for 90mins
Boil for 60mins
Liquor salts as per the GW Calc ‘Dry Pale Ale’

The Start of creating a Bottle Label:
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Pretty cold in my garage, so malt at 12c:
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Weighing out the Gypsum:
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Weighing out the Calcium Chloride & Magnesium Sulphate:
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Mash put to bed for 90mins:
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Hops Weighed out:
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Top-down shot of the Mash running into the copper:
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I did a 30min steep at 80c for the flame-out hops:
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its actually 1055, 14 Brix:
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Running to the FV:
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🙂

*Bottled 2nd Dec ’10 with 70g white sugar

Odd Ends Stout – This is going to be as black as a black thing, the mash starting to colour well straight after mashing in 🙂
This recipe uses up a load of odd bits of malt up, some fairly old but frozen Willamette hops and a few Sovereign hops left from last weeks Porter. 

Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 3400g – 63.1%
Carafa Special III – 405g – 7.6%
Lager Malt – 400g – 7.4%
Flaked Maize – 375g – 7%
Amber Malt – 270g – 5.1%
Brown Malt – 235g – 4.4%
Black Malt – 100g – 1.9%
Flaked Oats – 92g – 1.7%
Crystal Malt, Dark – 48g – 0.9%
Chocolate Malt – 28g – 0.5%
Crystal Rye Malt – 22g – 0.4%

Hops:
Willamette @ 60 mins – 48g
Willamette @ 30 mins – 48g
Sovereign @ 5 mins – 25g

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.017
Alcohol Content: 4.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.7 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.9 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 38 EBU
Colour: 253 EBC

90 minute Mash with 60 minute boil.
Yeast is Nottingham
Water treatment is almost the General purpose profile in the GW calc with the Calcium Chloride upped to the same amount as the Calcium Sulphate.
Calcium Sulphate: 6.3g
Calcium Chloride: 6.3g
Magnesium Sulphate: 3g
I omitted the common salt & chalk additions.

Blended malts & Water Treatment Salts:
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Strike Temp:
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Doughing in, the Mash smelt of Bitter Chocolate & Coffee:
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Mash Temp aimed for and attained:
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Hops at FWH, 30mins, 5mins, protafloc & old yeast:
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Blooming good mash efficiency:
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FWH getting the First runnings from the Mash Tun:
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Boiler Almost full:
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Natural Gas burner:
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30min Hops going in:
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5 minute hops and old yeast as nutrient going in:
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1052+ on the Hydrometer, the refractometer says 14 brix which is near as dam it 1055:
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All cleared up, yeast pitched,  House Smells of Stout! 😉

*Bottled 23rd Nov ’10 with 65g white sugar

London Porterish – This is a bit of a user-upper / Christmas gift / Christmas beer / a beer I only recently tasted at a beer fest and thought was amazing (Fullers London Porter). So this recipe is based around the one in the Graham Wheeler book, though a touch of Wheat malt added for head and the mix of Crystal malts is using up odd ends of malt. Hops are Sovereign which I have never used before.

Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 3990g – 70%
Brown Malt –  625g – 11%
Crystal Malt – 340g – 6%
Wheat Malt – 285g – 5%
Chocolate Malt – 225g – 4%
Crystal Rye Malt – 170g – 3%
Crystal Malt, Dark – 57g – 1%

Hops:
Sovereign @ 60 mins – 56g
Sovereign @ 10 mins – 19g

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.058
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 5.6% ABV
Total Liquor: 34 Litres
Mash Liquor: 13.7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 33 EBU
Colour: 144 EBC
60min Mash @ 68c
60min Boil
Cooled to 21c before pitching yeast
Mash treated with General Profile in the GW water treatment calc
3g of common Salt added to copper at the end of the boil

Updates on my Twitter-T.watter page – https://twitter.com/pdtnc
Malts, Temp & Salt additions:
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The three tier:
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Waste of time checking pH as usual:
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Mash efficiency 95.3%!:
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First runnings being recycled, FWH & old yeast ready in copper:
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10min hop addition:
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StarSan-ing everything that will touch sterile clean wort:
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My Mash was on at 8.05am
The Boil started at 10.30am
I collected 30litres @ 13.5 Brix
Cooling from boiling took 10mins & 44Litres of water to 33c, then 3mins more to 21c. The 44L was collected in the HLT @ 42c
Original Gravity was 1056 with hydrometer, 14.9 Brix with refractometer (1058, Bang on to recipe) 🙂
Started Run-off to FV at 12:00, taking it slowly probably took the best part of an hour.
The Wort & Hops were smelling lovely 🙂

*Bottled 17th Nov ’10 with 65g of Soft Brown Sugar Came down to FG 1020 ish, needs some age for the dark malts to meld into something lush 🙂


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