0600 start for a double brew day. Have got 5.5 weeks until a party on the 8th of June which the beer is for.
This is a 4.5% Heineken clone and I’m making around 44 litres in 2 batches.
Mash
Below 2nd batch figures are in brackets.
- Lager malt - 4.65kg (4.46kg)
- Carahell malt - 0.12kg (0.22kg)
- Temp - 66
- Time - 45 mins with stirring at start (55 mins with stirring at end as it felt clumpy)..
The bottom rubber seal is coming off when I’m stirring the grains in the mash. 2nd batch I put the seal in before putting into grainfather and did from bottom and was careful it wasn’t twisted
Boil
1 hour (1 hour)
- Northern Brewer 12g at start
- Hallertauer 21g at start
- Protofloc at 15mins (did after cooling as had run out - thanks Andy)
- Hallertauer 8g at 10 min
1042 (1042) OG - which is perfect. At 23 litres. So will be 4.5%.
Cool and ferment
SafLager W-34/70 (SafLager S-23) yeast
Am fermenting both batches at 14 degrees in fridge. Lows are 8 degrees at night, but with fermentation and in a garage, I’m thinking this will be fine without the heater plugged in.
2 weeks - finsihed fermenting, and I took it to LBH. Carbed it up and it was good! Look reasonable too
Condition for 10 more days at 3 degrees and had to take out of fridge to make room for more lager to ferment.
Next time I need to put straight into kegs and purge, as there is a possibility I got oxygen sucked into the fermenting bucket when taking out the fridge.
Carbonation
4 days at 35 psi and 3 degrees - but not fully connected. Top up every day. Pressure dropping from 0 to 15 psi (maybe small leak)
