Flander's Red - The Brewday

Thought I'd add a blog. You've probably seen this all before but thought I'd throw up some photos of how my brewday goes.

Recipe for anyone that's interested.

Rig set up, HLT filled (right-hand vessel), thermostat set.

Measuring out grain, trusty Briscoes scales.

Grain measured out, ready to crush.

Barley crusher with a Bunning's special motor. Takes about 2 minutes to crush the average grain bill, no more hand cranking!

Post-crush.

Measuring out the water adjustment salts on the heroin scale and adding to mash tun. I'm aiming for a water style similar to what is found in Flanders. By time the grain is measured, crushed, and the salts are measure out, the HLT is up to mash in temp. I pump the hot liquor from the HLT into the mash tun. At this point it's a few degrees higher than the mash-in temp to preheat the cooler to stop the chillibin from absorbing too much heat from the mash.

Once the water temp is at the mash-in temperature I dump the grains in and stir the shit out of it. After I've mashed in I fill my HLT with the sparge water and set the thermostat. I also fill my boil kettle with the water I'll use to mash out. Fifteen minutes before the end of the mash I fire up the kettle to get the mash out infusion water to 100C.

Mash out infusion has just been added. The mash will rest for 10 minutes to let the grain bed settle.

I then turn the pump on and recirculate slowly for about 5 minutes, by this time the wort is running almost crystal clear. The plastic plate helps stop the grain bed being disturbed.

After the recirculation I switch the outlets on the pump and run off into the kettle.

After the first runnings I switch hoses again to pump the hot liquor from the HLT into the mash tun to (batch) sparge. I then stir it again, let it rest 10 minutes and recirc for 5 for the same reason as above. Then runoff into the kettle.

Empty mash tun.

Full Kettle.

Once the kettle is full I add the salt additions to boil kettle to match the profile I'm aiming for, then stir again.

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I love this shit, hardly any foam at all, no worries about boilovers, is great for boiling starters in flasks too.

I run the 3 outside rings on a 4-ring burner to get to a boil, which takes about 20 minutes from the end of the sparge. As soon as it's at a hard boil I drop to the middle 2 rings of the burner only and start the timer, I usually use a 65 minute boil. Five minutes in at the 60 minute mark it's time for the first and only hop addition.

16g of Northern Brewer hops.

In they go.

With 15 minutes to go in the boil I put the whirlpool immersion chiller in to sanitise. I also hook up and start recirculating wort through the whirlpool attatchment. For this beer I'm also adding 2.3g of WYeast nutrient and 1.0g of koppafloc.
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At the end of the 65 minutes I cut the flame and hook up the chilling water. Using the whirpool I brought 22L of wort from boiling to 20C in about 10 minutes, ground water was approximately 15C.

Once at pitching temp I remove the chiller and give it a hell of a stir to whirlpool and to create a trub cone to make it easier to siphon off the wort. Unfortunately with my pot unless I'm using a lot of hops I don't get a very efficient cone. The wort is left to rest for about half an hour while I clean up and get a fermenter ready.

The wort is then pumped from the kettle to a sanitised fermenter.

The trub left behind in the kettle.

It's hard to tell from this photo but there's about 10mm of clear wort that's sitting on top of the trub.

One point shy of my target gravity, but I can deal with that haha.

I then dump all the left over trub from the kettle for a bit of wortmongering, ala Joking in his recent blog.

A bit over 20L into the fermenter.

The infamous Roeselare strains, similar to what is used in Rodenbach. Was smacked 3 days prior to brewing.

30g of Bourbon Barrell chunks, recipe originally called for French medium toast but I couldn't find any so went with these instead, I think the bourbon character imparted wouldn't be too much. If there's anything left of the chunk after brewing I may use them to try and inoculate another batch of beer.

Semi-sanitising chips in boiling water.

The fermenters home for the next few weeks. Sitting next to the Munich II/Simcoe SMaSH ale. Plan is to ferment for a week or two here at 21C. Once the bulk of fermentation is over I'll find a dark quiet corner and sit it on a heat pad at about 27C for the bugs to get to work. I'll keep everyone updated on this batch, it's my first sour, wish me luck!