The ingredients from my ingredient shopping arrived really quickly - I placed the order on Thursday at 17:30 and they arrived on Saturday. Impressive work from The Homebrew Company!

I put together the workflow below and printed it out so I’d have something to follow along with on brew day. It really helped pinpoint things to focus on and times when I’d be able to prepare the next step while waiting for target temperatures.

I had a setback in preparing for brew day, however, as I managed to drop my hydrometer and sample tube - the only two glass pieces of brewing paraphernalia! Needless to say, both of them shattered. Thankfully, I was able to borrow a hydrometer off my friend Diarmaid. I used a tall pint glass as a sample tube, but ended up having a lot of wasted liquid while doing so, I’ll have to be conservative about checking my specific gravity until I source a new one.

I tweaked the recipe slightly according to the style guidance from Brewer’s Friend, which should hopefully compensate for my extra dark barley.

A bad thing happened A bad thing happened

Other than that, the brew went off without a hitch! Looking forward to the taste test already!

O.G. Reading: 1.044 @ 20 degrees C (this thankfully matches the anticipated value!)

Brew Workflow

Day before Brew

  1. Test hose and chiller attachment
  2. Clean with standard detergent:
  • kettle
  • kettle element
  • kettle tap
  • chiller
  • stirring paddle
  • thermometer
  • fermenter
  • fermenter tap
  • airlock
  1. Borrow hydrometer to replace broken one!

Brew Day

1. Steeping Specialty Grains

  1. Bring 2L of water to 67 degrees Celsius
  2. Weigh and put specialty grains in straining bag while waiting
  3. Steep specialty grains for 30 mins in 67 degree water 10 minutes from end of steeping, bring another 2L of water to 80 degrees
  4. Add water from steeped grains to kettle
  5. Put straining bag in colander
  6. Pour 80 degree water through colander to add grain washings to kettle

2. Weigh Ingredients

  • Caramel Crystal Malt 82 EBC - 160g
  • Caramel Crystal Malt 240 EBC - 160g
  • Roasted Barley 800 EBC - 100g
  • Hops East Kent Goldings - 35g

Seal unused grain and hops in plastic food bags & store hops in freezer

3. Adding to the Kettle

  1. Add 10L of bottled water to kettle
  2. Add malt extract to kettle slowly while stirring
  3. Bring volume in kettle to 25L with water Attach thermometer to kettle

4. Boiling

  1. Switch on kettle
  2. Weigh hops while waiting for boil
  3. Bring to a boil
  4. Watch out for boilover in the first 10 mins
  5. Once a rolling vigorous boil is reached, add hops loose
  6. Continue boil for 60 mins (sanitise equipment and set up chiller now)
  7. Add whirlfloc tablet 15 mins from end of boil

5. During Boil, Sanitise Using VWP

  • Fermenter & lid
  • Airlock
  • Scissors
  • Fermenter tap

6. Cooling

  1. Connect hose to tap
  2. Connect hose to each end of chiller with hose repair attachment
  3. Run short hose length from output to drain
  4. Immerse chiller in wort five mins from end of boil
  5. When boil complete, turn on tap
  6. Swirl chiller every few mins to ensure wort is circulating well
  7. Chill until wort reaches 20 degrees
  8. Remove thermometer (so we can use for O.G. temp recording)

7. Transfer to Fermenter & Pitch Yeast

  1. Transfer wort to fermenter through tap
  2. Take sample for Original Gravity reading and allow to settle
  3. Pitch yeast
  4. Seal fermenter
  5. Move fermenter to final position
  6. Fill airlock and add to fermenter

8. Cleaning

Clean kettle and equipment