For my first All Grain Brew of the year I am making up the version of Fullers London Pride as per the recipe in Graham Wheeler's book "Brew Your Own British Real Ale" (2009 Edition). The recipe uses 3750g of Pale Malt, 370g of Crystal Malt and four types of hops to give a smooth, full flavoured beer with a target OG of 1040 and an ABV of 3.9%. Target, Challenger and Northdown Hops are used as the main boil hops, with Goldings as the late addition hops.
As I live in a VERY hard water area, I always treat my brewing water, so last night before I left the shop, I brought 25 litres of tap water to the boil, added 10g of Gypsum and boiled it for 30 minutes to drive off all the chlorine. This morning when I arrived at 07.00hrs, I racked off the softened water, leaving the sediment behind, rinsed the boiler, added 1g of Epsom Salts and returned 15ltrs of it to the boiler to heat up to mashing temperature. While it was heating, I weighed out the grains and mixed them together.
By 07.45 I had the water at 80°C and added 10.3ltrs to my picnic box mash tun to pre-heat it. I left it for 10-15 minutes with the lid off to let it cool down to 72°C. While it was doing this, I put the rest of the treated water into my boiler, topped it up to 25ltrs with value bottled water and started to bring it up to 80°C. As soon as the mash water was at 72°C, I started to mix in the grain. By 08.15 I was ready to put the lid on and leave it for 90 minutes to mash.
I brew at the office on Sundays and the only way I can justify this to Sam is if i go home whilst the mash is taking place and make her a full Sunday breakfast, so this is what i did.
By the time I returned at 09.30, the sparge water in the boiler had reached the correct temperature. At 09.45 I started to sparge it through and continued until I had collected 25ltrs which were then transferred to the boiler and brought up to the boil before the main boil hops were added and the wort boiled for 90 minutes. Late boil Goldings hops were added 15 minutes before the end of the boil, together with Irish moss to aid the hot break.
The boil finished at 12.35 at which point I began to run cooling water through my immersion coil wort chiller to bring the wort down to yeast pitch temperature as quickly as possible. This took me 45 minutes, so I'm having a quick break before clearing up and going home.
