Monday - New Brew Day

The transition from a Friday brew day to a Monday brew day proved to be successful. Well almost. The actual brewing went without any problems. However, I did forget to put in the Irish moss 10 minutes before the end of the boil. This should not prove to be much of a problem. The brew itself should be ruby coloured which hopefully should mean that any protein haze will not be noticeable.

I boiled about 20 litres of water on Sunday to provide about 15 litres of cold water for the Monday brew. On Monday I dissolved 2 kgs of light dried malt extract in 10 litres of water at 40C and added to the boiler. This was then topped up with 8 litres of water at 40C. To this mix I added 245 grams of crystal malt and 25 grams of black malt secured in a filter bag and suspended in the boiler so that it did not come into contact with the heating element. This was then brought to the boil when I added 22 grams of Target hops. The wort was then allowed to continuing boiling for 45 minutes when I added 310 grams of caster sugar. At least it should have been 310 grams but I spilled a few grams on the brewery floor. Anyway I then left this mixture to boil for a further 45 minutes making a total of 90 minutes boiling. I then switched the boiler off and allowed to cool to about 80C when I added 4 grams of Styrian Golding hops. A further hour then passed. After sterilising the fermenting vessel I ran off about 5 litres of the previously boiled and cooled water into the vessel and then ran off the wort from the boiler and topped up to 23 litres with about 10 litres of the cold water that was boiled the day before. At this point I realised that I had forgotten the Irish moss but decided that it probably didn't matter for this particular brew. The wort was then left for a few more hours to wait for the temperature of the wort to fall to below 30C. At about 26C I placed the fermenting vessel in the cupboard and added the re-hydrated yeast sealed the vessel and left overnight.

On Tuesday afternoon I checked the cupboard and saw that the new brew was bubbling away very nicely and chalked up another successful brew. Is this smug or what?