Probably Due To Network Congestion

Robust Wheat Porter – The Pancake Day of Homebrews! I’m using up a load of bag-ends, so my base malts (Lager & Wheat) are now totally depleted.
I’m not too fussed if its something odd-ball, it should hopefully be entertaining and I can start from fresh malts for subsequent brews.

Fermentables:
Wheat Malt – 44.9%
Lager Malt – 26.6%
Munich Malt – 5.9%
Jaggery (Cane) – 5.5%
Brown Malt – 3.7%
Chocolate Malt – 3.7%
Rauch Malt (Weyermann) – 3.2%
Amber Malt – 2.6%
Peat Smoked Medium – 1.8%
Munich Type II (Weyermann) – 1.4%
Roasted Barley – 0.7%
Oat Husks – 3% (This works out at 103%, added after calculating recipe)

Hops:
Bobek – 4.5 % @ 60 mins – 408g
Saaz – 4.15 % @ 0 mins – 48g

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.077
Final Gravity: 1.016
Alcohol Content: 8.1% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 70 %
Bitterness: 181 EBU – (This is going to be bogus, the hops are old and like confetti)
Colour: 148 EBC
Mash: 90mins @ 67°c
Yeast: Safale US-05 skimmed from last weeks brew before I dry hopped it
Liquor Treatment: General Purpose copied from AG#55

The Malts, I added a few Oat Husks as a precaution:

408g of Bobek Hops in the copper:

Recirculating the first few jugs from the mash tun until it runs clear:

Jaggery Goor, or Unrefined Cane sugar:

In go the late Saaz hops:

Quite a lot of spent hops left in the copper:

I ended up with 1079 so liquored back 0.54L to 1077, I feel a few things worked in my favor to get the right OG and 21.46Litres:

1. Predicted Mash efficiency be set low.
2. The 3.7L bellow the Mash Tun’s false bottom which I usually deduct from the first sparge.
3. 80c second (technically first) sparge, I normally go for 78°c, and 15min rest before running off.

All cleaned up and yeast pitched, I expect it to kick off quite soon and spew all over the kitchen floor, the fermentation fridge is still full of Brown Ceas which I just dry hopped.

*25th Mar ’13 – The fresh yeast has taken off well, still in the bucket… just!

*31st Mar ’13 – Gravity at 1018 so this has been pretty fast at fermenting, and it tastes rather good with quite a bit of smoke and the Brown/Amber/Choc malts definitely playing their parts, bitterness is coming through but not overly 🙂

*7th Apr ’13 – Gravity at 1018 still so chilling it down before bottling sometime next week.

*Bottled 10th Apr ’13 – with 76g White Sugar, tastes bloody good too 🙂