Sammy's British Brown Ale

Automatically generated specs are not correct. Original gravity is right on at 1.057, but final gravity was 1.014 not the 1.018 it shows above. ABV came out to 5.64%, not the 5.14 listed above.

This was my first All-Grain brewing. I added an additional pound of 2-row UK pale malt (10-lbs. instead of 9-lbs.) to the original recipe because I would be doing a batch sparge, which is not as efficient as an hour-long sparge. This raised the grain total by about 10%

I preheated my 10-gal. cooler mash tun and my 5-gal cooler HLT with 1 gallon each of boiling water. Drained the water out of the mash tun before starting the Mash.

Put in all 4 gallons of strike water heated up to 180°. Then did the dough-in and stirred everything well. Temp after mixing was a little high at 162° so I stirred in just a little less than half a gallon of our 45° well water. That brought the temp to 158° so I sealed up the mash tun and mashed for an hour.

After an hour in the mash I Vorlaufed until clear and then took a very small sample of the runnings on a saucer. When I put in a couple of drops of iodine to test for completeness of enzymatic action. Iodine diluted right out so knew it was OK to take the first runnings. Vorlaufed a little bit more just to be safe and then got 2¼ gallons of wort from that initial 4 gallons of strike water.

While waiting for the mash I had heated 4½-gallons of sparge water to 195°. I was looking for a boil volume of 6 to 6½-gallons so I added 3¾-gallons of Sparge water, pouring one gallon at a time, over the grain bed.

I stirred this up well and then Vourlaufed until clear. Then I took the second runnings into the boil kettle. Ended up with about 6¼-gallons in the boil kettle which was OK, but next time I will increase the sparge to get 6½-gallons in the boil kettle.

Turned on my burner and put the kettle on to boil! Had to keep taking it off and turning the flame down because it kept foaming up. Good news is I use an 11-gal. boil kettle, so it never boiled over. Finally got it to behave and it was boiling nicely 20-minutes after start.

Put in the 1-oz. Northern Brewer Hops and started the 60-minute boil. At 45-minutes I added the Irish Moss and inserted my copper wort cooler. At 2-minutes remaining I added the ½-oz. East Kent Goldings hops.

Took off the heat at 60-minutes, covered the wort and took inside to hook up wort cooler to sink. We have really cold water from our well (45°) and it only took 23-minutes to get the wort down to 70°. Took an Original Gravity reading at this point and it came out at 1.057 which was a little higher than the targeted 1.054.

I sanitized a whisk and a pair of scissors along with the Wyeast Smack Pack that I had activated the night before. I used my whisk to mix it in vigorously generating a lot of foam as I did so and then pitched the yeast. Think I might pitch first and then whisk next time to avoid pouring yeast on the foam of the wort.

Sealed up the primary fermentor with almost exactly 5-gallons in it (was hoping for 5½-gallons). Added the airlock and moved it over to a corner in my "Man-Grotto" (no door so it can't be a cave). The next day the airlock was bubbling constantly and vigorously. Temperature in the corner of the grotto stayed around 67°.

8-days later I racked it into my secondary fermenter so I was a day behind plan. Didn't quite get 5-gallons into the secondary (bummed) but there wasn't really that much trub in the primary. The beer was quite clear at this point.

11-days later I finally bottled it after taking the Final Gravity measurement. The Final Gravity was 1.014. Since OG was 1.057 that converts to an ABV of 5.646%

When bottling from the secondary fermentor, there was very little sediment in the bottom of the pail. Spilled too much beer while bottling, but ended up with 48 of the 12-oz. bottles. Will check in a week to see how the carbonization is going and adjust here when I do.