Bootleg Bill's Brown Ale - The Alpha and the Omega

Today's brew was both the end of an era (being the last partial mash I'll probably do, unless something inparticular tickles me) and the beginning of a new one, having finally gotten a mash tun. At last! No more faffing around trying to cook grains on the stove at a precise temperature, desperately fiddling with the knobs and slaving away until the only knob you want to fiddle with is your own. Nuh uh, dawg... just fill the mash tun with water of the correct temperature (using a combination of boiled and tap), dump grains and come back later!

At this stage in the game, I would have been happy with a raggedy-ass ghetto-looking Mash Tun. This is Linwood, after all. But as the guy who built it for me - my Stepfather Bill - laid down an awesome PVC-pipe and Aquairium Glue-having feat of engineering worthy of Da Vinci, I thought it fitting to name the next beer after him. Ladies and gentlemen... Bootleg Bill's Brown Ale.

Well, it was originally going to be Bootleg Bill's Brown Porter, but - although I'm partial to Boundary Road Brew's Jack The Sipper - I don't really know enough about Porters to say if it's bona-fide. I'd sure hate for online trolls here to be all like "Well, um, technically..." in their wheezy, pre-pubescent voices. So Brown Ale it is, because goddamn it, that's a sufficiently big umbrella. Anyways, here's the ingredient list of what I got jiggy with today...

1 x 1.7kg can Mangrove Jack's Tyneside Brown Ale (LME)
2kg Marris Otter Pale Malt
0.5kg Biscuit Malt
0.5kg Chocolate Malt
500g Demerara Sugar
350ml Belgian Candi Sugar
1oz Goldings (East Kent) Hops (60 Mins)
1oz Goldings (East Kent) Hops (15 Mins)
1 x Cinnamon Quill (15 Mins)
1 heaped tsp Irish Moss

Despite a little dead space in the bottom (that I'm probably going to fix using polystyrene foam as ramps), the Mash Tun worked awesomely well for mashing the grains! Sure, it was a bit of trial, error and a small pain in the ass to get an appropriate level of water to the ideal temperature of 66C, but I got there in the end. I threw in the grain, mixed it around a bit, shut the lid tight then went off to do some household chores.

An hour or so later, I came back, opened the tap and filled the stockpot with glorious, glorious wort! I heated a little extra water to 75C to do a little bit of a sparge, but nothing too heavy-duty. After about 15 minutes, I had all the wort (sans-grain) I needed and it was off to the stove.

By the time the wort was on the stove (with all the loss of heat and all), it was about 60C, so not too far to boil. On the way there, I threw in the Malt Extract, Demerara Sugar and Candi Sugar, twirling my mustache evilly in the knowledge that this shit is gonna kick like a mule. A really surly British mule with a Cockney accent.

As always, the boil went totally by the book, the additions went bang on schedule and I even through in a Cinnamon Quill (just for shits and giggles) that I had left over from the previous lot of Apple Cider I'd made. After it was boiled for an hour, it was off to the Car-Hole and into the bucket of icy water, where it sat until later in the evening.

When the wort was sufficiently cooled, I poured it through a sieve into the fermenter I'd previously sanitized. After a pre-fermentation reading (1.056, adjusted for temperature!), I threw in the yeast starter I'd made the night before, rocked it back and forth and sealed it up. We'll see what tomorrow brings for it as I take to the unenviable task of cleaning up all my shit.

But can you believe this is my sixth batch? I can't. Although it may take a while to explore the studio space of the Mash Tun (so to speak), nothing went wrong with this batch. At least to the best of my knowledge. I'm cautiously optimistic. But as I say, it's the end of an era. It's going to be weird, not using those cans of Liquid Malt Extract any more. But on the other hand, it may be incredibly liberating. I've got no idea what the hell I'm going to brew next, but I've got an inclination to try a SMaSH (Single Malt and Single Hop) brew, just to get the technique down and really get a feel for a grain and hop that floats my particular boat.

If you're reading this really small tagline hoping to find something pithy or humourous, you're in for a world of disappointment. I think you'll find this tagline was nothing more than a cruel, horrible lie.