Brewday: Boxshed Snow Drop

Blimey, the Boxshed is finally brewing again!

It’s been quite some time but this first brewday of 2010 will be a premium pale ale with plenty of hops, just how we like it.

Quite exciting really, so there’ll be more updates later, and hopefully a beer or two to fuel the brewer in the cold old shed…

It was really difficult to get a brew on after such a long hiatus and such a disappointment last time out. There was also Christmas and all those snow days to contend with between brews, which made it seem even longer (and the Boxshed colder and less inviting). Remember back when you were small and you spent the whole summer holidays riding bikes, climbing trees and making mud pies only to discover when back in school in September that you couldn’t even remember how to hold a pen? Well it’s a bit like that. Only with snowballs not mud pies. And a brewer’s paddle not a pencil.

But look, it really is happening – here’s the evidence! More updates on the actual recipe another day.

*Late night update : Sheer volume of pellet hops blocked up the hopstopper. We dropped a few litres short to avoid recirculating the fine hop powder, but still took enough for a couple of cornies in two FVs at 1.047

Nearly 10 kilos of malt in this one

Took some doughing in – we really must invest in a much stronger spoon

A cool-ish, long mash. Stupidly we’ve been reading about amylase in BYO…

First runnings the very definition of ‘turgid’

Plenty of returns. I even used a watering can flower later on

Start filling copper

Plenty of life left in the grain bed for two further rounds of batch sparging

We’ve got a huge bore on the tap for the little HLT these days

Whooooooosh!

Dough it all up again

These are the bittering hops – Northdown and Target – which we’re staging.

Slowly filling after first batch

Liquor readying for final batch

A different picture in the MT after mash and a batch

Room for another 25 litres in there?

First element on, final batch cooking, first beer cracked open

64 litres-ish

First bittering hops in

Rolling boil on two elements. We’ll lose a lot of volume, but should gain a really good hot break

Second bittering hops in

More of the same

Aroma hops and steep hops weighed out. All pellets, unusually

Aroma hops in 15 minutes from the end along with Protofloc auxilliary finings

Faithful old chiller in. No Therminator for Christmas 😦

First steeping hops in

Even more hops to steep – the aim is a golden ale with a satifying hop kick

Goldschläger in the sight tube! Plus weird reflections of people and bikes.