Well, after much planning and deliberation (read: about 10 minutes of each, coupled with having the laptop open during the process!) I finally took the plunge and did my first extract brew on Saturday.
I used a modified version of the Cotleigh Tawney recipe in GW's book for a 10-litre brew length, as I only have a 10 litre (well, 13-ish litres total, 10 to 'max fill' line) boiler and was also too tight to open two cans of LME. This way I can also get more experimenting done!
The ingredients measured out in advance. This is very organised for me. (note that the organisation backfired as I ended up changing the quantities mid-way through the brew!)
Four litres of (Tesco Value) water in boiler, raise to 70 C, crystal malt in grain bag and steep for 30 mins. As the boiler's stainless, it lost temperature very quickly so needed to be switched back on for a bit two or three times over the course of the steep to maintain a temperature of between 60 and 70 C.
Top up to six litres of water in the boiler, heat back up, add the LME. Sticky stuff! Bring up to the boil. Forgot to put some hot water on to soak the can in (to loosen up the LME), but it worked fine. Not too precise on the weighing front, as it was pretty gloopy.
Whilst waiting, I played about with some beer calculator software and realised that as I was only going to be boiling six litres instead of the planned 10, I needed more hops to get the same bitterness. So added another 5g of both Challenger and Fuggles.
Water gets up to the boil, hops added in muslin bag. SO MUCH FOAM, threatening to boil over constantly. Only way to beat it was to switch on and off (at the wall as I've bypassed the simmerstat on my boiler) constantly. Not great.
Noticed that stiring as it came up to the boil helped to reduce the foam, and also blowing on the top reduced it too. One near-hyperventilation later, had the masterstroke idea of pulling the fan out of the loft and aiming that over the top of the pot. Success! (although, of course, having the fan on meant that the layer of steam over the boil was constantly being blown away, so won't have helped the loss-to-evaporation side of things).
Boil boil boil boil. The foaming settled down after about 20 mins which meant I could switch the fan off. However by this point I think that I'd already lost a fair amount to evaporation. Bugger. Oh well, can't be helped. I slowly added about another litre to the pot to bring up the volume somewhat (was still worried about hop utilisation).
Boiled for an hour. The recipe calls for post-boil hops, but as I was planning on crash-cooling I was worried that they wouldn't be steeped for long enough to have a noticable effect. Popped 'em in the boil in the last five minutes, using yet another muslin bag. (note to self, leave the bittering hop bag open next time, so I can just put the aroma hops in this at the end).
Off the heat, added four litres of water which had been chilling in the freezer since I started the brew. They weren't solid but were the consistency of a Slush Puppy. Then another two litres of room-temp water to bring the volume up to 10 litres (meaning that I lost about 3 litres during the course of the boil
).Adding the frozen water worked well, bringing the temp down to about 30 C in a couple of minutes. Excellent.
Racked out of the boiler tap, from a height of about 4 feet, through a muslin-bag-lined sieve into FV. The FV was on the floor and the tap was quite 'spurty' ensuring good aeration of the wort.
Aerated wort vigourously until my arm got tired.
In the meanwhile I'd rehydrated a packet of Coopers yeast I had left over from a kit I'd done. This was the first time I'd rehydrated yeast - when doing kits I usually just sprinkle on the top - but it seemed to work very well. Once the temperature of the wort was down to under 30 C, pitched yeast, popped lid on, carried upstairs to ferment on the bathroom shelf.
Measured OG - 1040, which is within two points of what my recipe called for - I was very surprised at this, given the huge losses to evaporation and my less-than-precise weighing of the LME.
Fermentation went off like a rocket with a healthy layer of krausen on top. Smells lovely, can't wait to taste!
Now - my questions....
I'd very much like to scale this up to doing a full 23 litre brew. With my problems with boil-over, I'm loathe to actually have more than 5/6 litres for the duration of the boil, and with 2+ kg of LME in that volume, I'm going to get really bad hop utilisation. Any ideas how I can get round this? I was thinking of perhaps using 1kg LME in the boil, then making up to the requisite amount with DME later once it goes into the FV. Sounds plausible?
(alternatively I'd get a decent-sized boiler, but am keen on making use of my present one for the time being...)
Alternatively, how can I reduce the initial foam on boiling? The boiler's a 10-litre Burco, so tall and thin. As I said before, the 'aim a fan at it' method works but I suspect this contributed to the higher-than-expected loss to evaporation.
Next - how should I 'recycle' my muslin bags? It's a pain to wash all the little bits of hops etc out by hand - I'd bung 'em in the washing machine but I'm thinking any soap powder residue would taint the beer. Or can I just get them mostly washed out (under the hot tap etc), wring and dry, and reuse? I'm worried any residual hop seeds etc would go off and impart an undesirable flavour.
Of course I could just throw 'em out and use new but I'm tight like that!
Anyway, had a very enjoyable brewday. Assuming this turns out nice, I'm sold on extract brewing. The missus didn't like the smell of hops pervading the house but as long as I brew when she's out, she should be happy
