Coffee, Stout and efficiency

Queue a windy chilly day in the Manawatu and an early start to brew day!

Two brews this time, a stout and an Epic Pale Ale clone.

This was a little different than last weekend, different venue for a start and this time, there was a chilly bin mash tun in use. Shady was a little concerned about his efficiency with it, so I took along my trusted bag.

Mash in was a success, bag was first, managed to hit 66 on the button, threw all the grains in and gave her a good stir up. The recipe called for 480g of roasted barley, I ended up throwing in 500g instead. The hit of roast came pretty quick from the barley, smelt like a black coffee, exactly what I like in a stout.

An hour later and a couple of degrees lower than 66, sparge time! We recirculated the wort through the bag and then 1 litre a at a time, sparged the grains in the bag - slow process, but I managed to get the target of 26L in the kettle.

52g of East Kent Goldings after the hot break, broke, and that was me set, an hour boil, no more additions. Simple beer really.

Shady had his Pale Ale clone all set and ready to rock in the mash tun, double sparge, 90min boil and a boat load of Cascade!

Brew house was smelling awesome, queue a couple of guests, chocolate chip bikkies and steak n mushroom pies (cheers to Shady's ladies) and the beer was brewed, cooled and in the fermenters.

I calculated the efficiency of my BIAB setup to be 83%, based on 24L of 1.052 wort post boil, 2 litre loss. That's the second brew that's been so high. Pretty happy with such a high efficiency, do I really need to move to a proper all grain setup, or should I just stay with BIAB? At the moment, BIAB is where its at for me, albeit with some changes to my pots - taps/valves and sight glasses would be good additions!

I also threw more hops at the Pale Ale and have now got it in my ghetto cold crash "system". I was looking at putting it in my beer fridge, but alas, the bucket is to big to fit, so here's my ghetto setup - fermenter, water, ice.

Couple of days in there and I'll bottle it up. Tasted another sample before I threw in another 29g of Motukea and wow, it's still a magic beer! Can't wait for it to get in the bottle and condition!

Next up - Cider!

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Ninja edit

Check out the Mystery German, 8 days since the last photo!!!