Another brew day, another minor disaster!

Well, clearly I've learnt nothing from my last brew day. I was saying something about preparation, right? So with that in mind I got up this morning all ready to brew an American Amber Ale (the one from How To Brew). This was supposed to be brew batch #2 and I've had the hops and flaked wheat ready since I started all grain brewing, but other recipes have got in the way and I haven't got round to actually making it. The recipe uses some hops I haven't had a go with yet, so I thought it a good one to have a crack at, to broaden my experience. Plus it sounds delicious! So I made some coffee and toast and got the boiler on.

Breakfast of 'champions'

I got the water treated with CRS and went to weigh out the grain, and that's when I hit the first problem - I didn't have the crystal malt I needed! Balls! Having paid attention to the hops and everything else, I assumed I'd got the grain. Never assume!

So a quick change of plan and I switched recipe to an English IPA and got the boiler back on again. Luckily I'd planned to do two brews this weekend, so I had a second recipe ready to go - with all the ingredients too! I got the mash temperature pretty quickly this time. Thinking ahead now, I keep back five litres in the hot liquor tank then add the grain. That way I've always got water spare to do temperature adjustments with.

So with the mash up and running I headed down to the local homebrew shop to get the crystal malt for the amber recipe. I shouldn't have bothered. I needed crystal 60 and crystal 120, all the shop had was "crystal malt"! No indication of colour at all. Great. So just one brew this weekend then!

I did manage to pack in a few other jobs while brewing this time though. I made this rather natty jacket for my boiler. Ok, so it's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it really made a difference. It's a foil backed camping mat, but the time to reach the boil was noticeably quicker and the boil was stronger too.

Heath Robinson would be proud!

I also transferred my American IPA #2 to a secondary fermenter and dry hopped it, while lautering today's brew. And most importantly of all, got finished at bang on 5pm to watch the rugby! Great work boys, all is not lost yet... Let's see how Ireland can do against England today now.

And here it is this morning, in garish water bath with blow-off  fitted just in case.

I'll be quite interested to see how this turns out, not least because it's the first time I've used dry yeast. It's S-04 which a lot of people seem to swear by. It's certainly cheaper than liquid yeast, so we'll see. Ideally I'd like to start harvesting my yeast and keeping cultures, but there's plenty of reading to be done before I attempt that. Probably...