Gail Porter

[softlad]

How much grain are you using ? 4.5kg of grain half fills the H&G MT (roughly). I doubt you'll use twice this for your porter so would say there wont be a problem.

I would definatly advise that you modify your hop strainer as suggested on here. I used mine for the second AG yesterday and it worked really well. I angled the tube that connects the tap to the strainer to one side and this seemed to help with pouring off the wort (maybe this is bollox and it was just the hops didnt clog as much this time).

I'm dropping the gauze on top of my grain (rightly or wrongly) so as not to disturb the grain bed with the sparge water

[Robdog]

Well the hop strainer thats come with my boiler isnt the one with holes in its like the strainer in my mash tun. Do you suggest i add some more slits to the one in the boiler?

5765g of grain is what i need so hopefully ill be ok as i may adapt the recipe to 23ltr brew length yet i dont know.

[softlad]

You'll be fine with that amount of grain.

The holes that you see in the images on here are the holes that have been put in as the modification. 3mm hole between each slit seems to be the norm. Its a lot easier to drill if you first centre-punch the point whare you want the hole with a nail, otherwise you will be chasing the drill bit around the pipe surface

[Robdog]

You'll be fine with that amount of grain.

The holes that you see in the images on here are the holes that have been put in as the modification. 3mm hole between each slit seems to be the norm. Its a lot easier to drill if you first centre-punch the point whare you want the hole with a nail, otherwise you will be chasing the drill bit around the pipe surface

Do you suggest i add extra holes to the mash tun strainer also?

Ive also been thinking about this mash tun, i know my grain bill will just about fill over half of the tun but im worried as im batch sparging it ownt be big enough.

Ive adapted the recipe to 23 ltrs and i need to mash with 13.25ltrs then add another 9.3 ltrs for the first batch. Hopefully im just worrying over nothing as alot of people use the H & G tun. Im just a bit concerned as i thought it woujld be bigger plus its got 2ltrs of dead space.

[spearmint-wino]

Good to see Gail is still getting out (I'm honoured you're brewing my recipe for your 1st AG )

You are right in thinking that the final hop addition is once you switch the boil off - throw it in then leave it for 20mins or so then switch on the cooler. S-04 shouldn't be a problem with this recipe either as it leaves a little body in the beer and also is a little 'tasty', which will add to the overall flavour.

Good luck with your first AG, remember to relax and enjoy it!

Oh yeah, and remember to aerate your wort before pitching the yeast like I didn't on my 1st AG...

<-- Oooh, 1000 posts!

[Robdog]

Good to see Gail is still getting out (I'm honoured you're brewing my recipe for your 1st AG )

You are right in thinking that the final hop addition is once you switch the boil off - throw it in then leave it for 20mins or so then switch on the cooler. S-04 shouldn't be a problem with this recipe either as it leaves a little body in the beer and also is a little 'tasty', which will add to the overall flavour.

Good luck with your first AG, remember to relax and enjoy it!

Oh yeah, and remember to aerate your wort before pitching the yeast like I didn't on my 1st AG...

<-- Oooh, 1000 posts!

Cheers Spearmint. Ive got the choice of Nottingham or S04 as i bought some more yeast with my grain order. Would you still suggest SO4?

Also im gogin to do a 23 ltr batch and i want to make sure ive got my maths right lol, ive divided the 25 ltry recipe by 25 then multiplyed that by 23 which i think should give me the right quantaties.

[softlad]

Do you suggest i add extra holes to the mash tun strainer also?

The MT works fine for me with just the slits in the pipe. I may be way off the mark here but I'd imagine that the wort would be a bit gritty if you added holes to the strainer.

[adm]

Agreed. There's no need to modify the H&G mash tun manifold. It works well. It's only the hop strainer that needs a bit of love and attention.

Don't worry about the size of the mash tun either - there's plenty of room to batch sparge that grain bill. It will be fairly full by the time you've mashed and topped up, but that's no problem.

[Robdog]

Thanks again lads ill drill the holes later. Am i right in thinking if im batch sparging i dont need the metal plate with loads of holes in i got with my mash tun?

Almost ready to go now just need to work out what connection thing i need for my immersion chiller.

[softlad]

I use the mesh and drop it on top of the grain before I sparge so as not to disturb the grain bed. I'm not sure if that was its intended use but it seems to work for me

[Robdog]

I pressumed it was for fly sparging to evenly distribute the water as ive seen people use foil with loads of holes in for the same purpose. Maybe im wrong though.

[Robdog]

Ive just added a few holes to my hop strainer, take a look at my handy work, i hope i havent added to many holes Theres is 12 x 3.2mm holes.

[Parva]

That'll be just fine. Regarding the mesh, I don't bother using mine whilst I'm batch sparging but you could if you wanted to. Probably helps avoid stirring the bed up when re-adding the first runnings but as I said, I haven't used it and not had any problems so entirely upto you.

[yashicamat]

I use the mesh in mine and all works fine, so I just use it. I also made about 10x as many holes as you in my hop strainer with no problems really. I do get a little bit of trub through, but I live with that so I can get enough of a flow rate going to siphon out the last of the wort from the boiler.