Robbies OLD TOM all grain....

[danielzieba]

brewed old tom on sunday morning. got an OG of 1065. I made 35 litres (to fit in the hambelton bard supercask)

On Monday evening i decided the OG was not high enough so i boiled up a kilo of white sugar (in about a pint and half of water) and added it to the FV.

Unfortunatly, I did not check the gravity once i had added the sugar.

anyways....

ive just checked it now (thursday evening) and it is 1037 or 1038.

Does this sound ok? t had a good 2.5 inch yeast cake on top. I have roused it a couple of times this evening....its a Wyeast...dont know which. got it off a mate...

is this a decent dropping rate? does the higher the OG mean the longer it will take to ferment? Im quite happy with this drop so far. especially as i added a kilo extra of sugar.

what would the gravity have been increased to. 1075?

ps. am I the youngest all grain brewer. I am a mere 23 years old...been doing All grain for about 2 years now!

dan

[MightyMouth]

I would be interested to hear how this turns out. I like the odd bottle of Old Tom and wouldn't mind making a small batch. I would probably resist the urge to add sugar to beer to make it stronger though.

[sib67]

1 kilo of sugar in 36 litres (35 + your pint and a half ish of water) should raise the gravity by about 11 points, so you are correct in assuming that this will be equivalent to an OG of about 1.075ish.

Your hop utilisation should be slightly greater than expected as you were boiling in a lower gravity wort than planned.

Was this GW's recipe? He has the OG down as 1.080.

I think you could well be the youngest AG brewer on here - wish I had been doing AG in my 20's

[danielzieba]

i used the graham wheeler recipe in his new book.

i added slightly more hops than the recipe asked for.

but stupidly. didnt put more malt in. to be honest i didnt plan on brewing 34 litres. I was goign to do 25 for a king keg but as i had a lot of sparge liquor left i thought i may as well fill the supercask. my beer always goes really quick when my mates coem round!

i never brewed kits. i went straight to all grain. got an older mate who does All grain so he showed me how its done. i built all my gear myself. tesco kettles etc etc etc

[sib67]

I would be interested to hear how this turns out. I like the odd bottle of Old Tom and wouldn't mind making a small batch. I would probably resist the urge to add sugar to beer to make it stronger though.

GW has 595g of sugar in his 25l recipe, which would equate to 833g in 35l. Would have been best to add it to the boil though, rather than the FV on day 2.

[sib67]

I'm sure it will turn out fine.

[sib67]

i used the graham wheeler recipe in his new book.

Did you add the sugar called for in the recipe, and then add more sugar on day 2?

[danielzieba]

i added the 595g and then the 1k on day 2

[sib67]

i added the 595g and then the 1k on day 2

Ah, in that case I agree with MightyMouth then, I would have resisted the urge to do that.

[MightyMouth]

I would be interested to hear how this turns out. I like the odd bottle of Old Tom and wouldn't mind making a small batch. I would probably resist the urge to add sugar to beer to make it stronger though.

GW has 595g of sugar in his 25l recipe, which would equate to 833g in 35l. Would have been best to add it to the boil though, rather than the FV on day 2.

I assumed the OP had up-scaled the ingredients on the brew day but his efficiency suffered so he added sugar to compensate. This means the beer will be thinner and dryer than expected. I would prefer to maintain as much of the correct taste and mouthfeel rather than gain the ABV.

[danielzieba]

yes that is correct. i added the sugar to compensate for the low OG.

my efficency is usually 80 - 85% but this time it was a bit low