princess blonde
brewed: 11/03/13
bottled: 26/03/13
subsequent batch info: superseded by angry princess blonde
ingredients:
2.3kg weyermann premium pilsner
200gm simpsons maris otter
23gm hallertau (pellets, 4.7aa%, 60 mins)
6gm hallertau (pellets, 4.7aa%, 0 mins)
11.5gm lallemand danstar yeast - nottingham ale
218gm dextrose
0.5 tablet whirlfloc
process:
10L batch, single infusion, batch sparge, mash in 65C, 16C fermentation
OG: 1.044
FG: 1.008
%AbV: 4.83 (5.3% bottled)
ibu: 25.5
brewing notes:
well well well. what a brew day. what started off well got a bit ruckus toward the end. a few changes from my last brew day (aka doing EVERYTHING myself including, milling my own grain and selecting the grain bill etc). got some assistance from martin as normal but this time i wanted to try everything as best as i could by myself. made LOTS of errors and didn't hit my targets or volumes so i've got a list of things i'll be making sure of for next brew day:
* working out exact boiling setting and sticking to it
* milling the grain the same way/consistency every time
* getting no clumps in mash - i dumped all the grain in at once which created huge dough lumps
* using the stove top efficiently - keeping one boil temperature and using it for every brew (so as to learn my boil off volumes)
* getting a chiller and pitching at the right temp or no-chilling - pitched slightly higher today as the ice bath method is starting to become tiresome and slow
* testing and checking my thermometers/STC to make sure they are the correct temperature
all in all, it worked out okay, apart from my horribly low efficiency (60% according to brewmate software), which is why i added the dextrose. i'll see how she goes. fingers crossed. there are a bunch of new images and video also in the gallery of today's brew day.
tasting notes:
14/03/13 - first taste and gravity test today and holy crap notto is a fast yeast. already down to 1.016 so looking to work quite fast even fermenting at 16C. the taste is quite yeasty at the moment and there is very little hallertau flavour at all. hopefully this is just due to an unfinished ferment.
17/03/13 - have been anxiously taste-testing this one and at the moment i'm unfortunately not 100% happy with the taste, but i can't complain yet given it's not been fermenting for long. because my efficiency and ingredients weren't everything i wanted, i've made a second version that i've also uploaded to my planned brews page. it's there now in place of this one and i'll try this one in future to hopefully do it justice! still hopeful for version 1 but i'm happier with the second version's ingredients.
25/03/13 - crash chilled the brew today to 1.5C. am going to bottle this tomorrow and fingers crossed for a nice tasting beer. a bit on the strange side, but i think it has potential! fingers crossed.