Friday - Brew Day

Decided to make a mild style beer this time. I done my best but I still made idiotic mistakes. I was undecided as to whether or not to fess up to even more mistakes after all who wants to admit that they are a bit of a plonker. However, my blog blurb does say that I would post the 'successes and maybe failures'. So here goes. Can you guess which part(s) was unintended?


Started off by dissolving 1720 grams of light dried malt extract in 10 litres of 40C water and put this in the boiler. I then topped up the boiler with another 7 litres of previously boiled cooled water. Turned on the boiler and waited for the magic to happen. Ten minutes later I realised that I had not connected the hop strainer to the inside of the boiler. Keep Calm And Carry On. So I emptied the boiler into a spare fermenting bucket, affixed the errant hop strainer and started to pour the wort back into the boiler. Curses and damnation I had left the tap in the open position and wort was pouring all over the floor. Quickly I closed the tap. All was not lost only about half a litre needed to be wiped up. After that it was all down hill. Added the first lot of hops when the wort came to the boil. Added 170 grams of caster sugar after 45 minutes. The second batch of hops and the Irish moss went in after 80 minutes. Although the Irish moss was not strictly necessary as this brew will be quite dark. After 90 minutes switched the boiler off and allowed the wort to settle for an hour. Transferred the wort to the fermenting vessel and topped up to 23 litres with the rest of the previously boiled cooled water. I am waiting now for the wort to cool to below 30C so the yeast can be pitched. It will then go into the fermenting cupboard for about 7 to 10 days until the the final gravity is about 1.008. With an original gravity of 1.034 this should give an ABV close to 3.5%.