Due to a change in personal circumstances I hadn’t brewed since October last year so I was quite excited when I finally had all of my equipment out of storage and into my new place and setup in an outhouse. Since my last brew I’d added a few new bits and pieces most notably a sparge water heater as I can’t really use my kitchen hobs to heat water and transfer to the outhouse. I’ve also upgraded the grain stopper and pump filter because I’d knocked the old style cap off a few times and have had issues with the filter clogging up before I’d started putting the hops in to muslin bags.
As I hadn’t used my Grainfather for quite some time I thought I’d keep the recipe nice and simple so I could concentrate on getting reacquainted with my equipment. I shouldn’t have worried, the simplicity of the Grainfather meant I could just turn it on and go through the process without even referring to the instructions.
The recipe I came up with is:
4.8kg pilsner malt
0.28kg Caramunich
25g Pligrim 60min
20g Citra 15min
20g Citra 5min
30g Citra flameout
30g Citra dry hop
WYeast London Ale Yeast which I’d made a 1l starter with the day before.
After 4.5 hours everything was done and the beer was sitting in my brew fridge. I hit an OG of 1.050, slightly higher the the 1.048 predicted by BeerSmith so the efficiency of the machine hasn’t got any worse while it’s been sitting idle.
It was my 12th GrainFather brew (I said a while ago that I’d do a 10 brew review but never got round to it) and I’m still incredibly impressed, so far the only problem I’ve had is the hot wort out tube splitting twice but everything else has been plain sailing. The sparge water heater certainly made things a little bit easier although I do need to get used to it as it took longer than expected to heat up the water which I suspect is down to the temperature of the water which came from an outside tap.
I’d forgot how much I enjoy the brewing process (except cleaning up!). This was a couple of weeks ago so it’s fermented now and in bottles (I still hate that process!) so I’m looking forward to trying one soon. Next up is a Mikkeller Green Gold clone.
Northern Code Monkey 