Paggered Gadgie (British IPA)

[mashani]

That basically means "Tired Man" in old Northumbrian dialect. Because I'm making it low enough OG that I can drink it after a long bike ride.

2.5 Gallon batch:

The mash is on, and I'll update with real OG when done but it should be in the 1.054ish area, and this will not ferment out very dry, which is intended. It's English, not 'Merican.

Mash @154:

1.75# Maris Otter
1/4# Torrified Wheat
4oz 55L British Crystal
1.5oz British Chocolate Malt

Will add to this as a late addition during the boil:

2# Maris Otter LME

1/2oz Styrian Goldings @60 (4.6%)
1/2oz Kent Goldings @60 (4.5%)
1/4oz Styrian Goldings @15
3/4oz East Kent Goldings @15
1/4oz Styrian Goldings @3
3/4oz East Kent Goldings (dry hop)

Got some Wyeast Ringwood I'm tossing into this. This yeast is a PITA, what I wanted was West Yorkshire, but they were out. This is the next best thing. I'm going to have some cool days followed by some warm days, so I should be able to get good primary and then get it warm to help it finish and clean it up. Should end up around 55 IBUs. 11ish SRM. FG will be a bit higher then normal, likely around 1.016 or so, due to yeast choice. But I chose it for a reason (real English ale flavors), plus I'm looking at this beer as sustenance after long fall bike rides... more calories = good.

[mashani]

I screwed up something - either I weighed the Maris otter grain or the LME wrong or I got better utilization then I expected. But it ended up with 1.057. Oh well. It will still be good beer, and extra calories are ok with me.

I guess I should post a warning too. I will do a diacetyl rest for this beer, as in raise it up to 75 for 3 days or more after primary is completed. Even so, I will likely end up with a little bit of it as part of the flavor profile, at least early on - it will slowly reduce with age in the bottles too. This yeast makes wonderful complex stone fruit and other esters too. For both reasons, it is why the amount of crystal is light compared to many English beers.. But that's one of the traits/tradeoffs of this yeast. A small to very small amount of diacetyl is ok and normal here, and would only bother a diacetyl super taster. A very small amount ends up mixing with the crystal and enhancing the caramel/tasting like "toffee" which is nice. But more then a small amount would suck for just about anyone, and you will also get this weird slick mouth feel if you have that much. But if you were to use this yeast, be aware that you can easily make a diacetyl bomb with it. And that it's a PITA and needs regular rousing to finish, and increasing temps help too, both to get it to finish and to reduce diacetyl. Oh and it's also a true top cropper, so it can get messy (use a blowoff, or give it lots of head space).

[MadBrewer]

3 extra gravity points...sounds like you hit the 1.054 OG area just fine. Maybe just slightly more boil off or tad higher effeciency.

[mashani]

I wasn't clear - I actually ended up with more volume, not less, I'm actually above 2.5 gallons in the fermenter. Closer to 2.6... so by volume it's actually more like 5-6 points higher then I expected.

I do my PMs like this as BIAB oven mashes (this was basically my version of what folks call SMEBIAB around here or however you spell that acronym), and generally have a good idea on my efficiency doing it. If I just "t-bag sparge" like I did with this one, if anything I will often come out a point or two lower, not 5-6 higher... so it just surprised me that's all.

[mashani]

Well, I went to check on this... unzipped my insulated fermenting bag... and found it full of beer. My first ever spigot failure.

So this batch is history. I have not lost a batch in years and years.

Try again another day.

[BigPapaG]

Sorry for your loss my friend.

[Pudge]

Aw,no!!

Reading the thread and thinking how nice the beer sounded only to get to the sad ending.

[Beer-lord]

That would really piss me off. Sorry for your loss.

[Dawg LB Steve]

Sorry to hear that, even the good Italian spigots fail, sounds like you had a good run with spigots though.

[BlackDuck]

Man...that sucks.

[Kealia]

Oh,man. That's no way to start the week.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[mashani]

Thanks all.

I replaced the spigot with a spare and leak tested it. Didn't want to try to re-create this more complex recipe today, it would have been too much work.

So now I know that even the good old locking spigots eventually go bad. I'll just need to remember to order some from e-bay every year and swap them out. I dunno, might be my fault - maybe I bashed it with a frozen water bottle when I was swapping them out.

So I brewed up a super fast and easy 2.5 gallon batch to keep the pipeline going while I consider re-doing this recipe. I just threw 3# Wheat DME and did a 15 minute boil of 1/2oz of 7.2% French Armais I had left over from another batch. Chucked in some WB-06 I had that's kind of old, so it's probably like half a pack as far as viability. OG 1.044. About 10 IBUs. Not very exciting, but should be an easy to drink simple wheat beer for after long fall bike rides.

I might do it again as a full 5 gallon batch later. The beer in my bag actually tasted really good for 10 day old wort. Maybe I should have tried to save some of it and drank it flat and young like a real old school brit. But I'm sure it would have gotten nasty in a matter of days, that bag was by no means sanitized, had cats and dogs faces in it when I was changing water bottles, etc.

[Pudge]

The only true infected beer I've had was due to an unsantized spigot on a 6 gallon bottling bucket. I ran sanitizer through it, but nasties still hid in the cracks and corners. The only way i knew for sure that was my infection point was it was clearly visible a couple weeks after cleaning and putting away my equipment. Obviously, i didnt break that spigot down and clean it properly. I swore off spigots at the point. Not that they're evil. It is just one less place for me to display my incompetence.

[mashani]

I look at it as you gotta sanatize something regardless, be it your auto-siphon, tubing, spigot, or whatever.

I don't think I've gotten any infections from my spigots, but I'm pretty paranoid about such stuff since I have brett in my air. I soak my equipment in PBW or Oxyclean, and run the full batch through the spigots. I mix up the sanitizer in my fermenter and fill up my various bowls, trays, etc. that hold all the brew utensils and yeast packages etc. from it through the spigots.. If I have an open fermenter when I'm bottling, I'll mix up sanitizer and run that through the spigots into the bottles too. I make sure to open and close the spigots many times and twist/turn them every which way while draining. I disassemble the spigots completely every few batches and soak them disassembled. They always seem to be clean anyways, but I keep doing it because I know the one time I don't, some crud will have gotten stuck in there. The locking spigots come apart pretty easily so it's not a hassle. If I have a brett batch I disassemble always. I bleach bomb everything after brett, then I rinse, dry, and re-sanitize before fermenting of course.

The only infection I ever get is my Brett, because it's just a bastard, floats around in my air and falls down onto/into things (like cool wort in a pot before it gets transferred to the fermenter) and I can't get it out of my environment without burning down my house or moving. But I don't typically get repeat infections in the same fermenter. My infections are all just environmental and always very much subtle/secondary. But this is why you see me do all the lid on hop stands, lid on late in the boil and doing no-chill with the lid on, or ice baths with it on vs. using my chiller in the summer etc. crap. But it's getting to the point in the year where that stuff goes dormant so I'm probably good and clean until late May/June at this point. I never get any other kind of infection. It's just that I live in a Brett micro climate. (moral of the story - don't get Brett into your ductwork). I just learned to like the pineapple and hay I get once in a while.