Australian Pale Ale Brew Day

View from the brewery... the perfect morning to brew beer

False bottom... the liquor pushes down through the grain and the pressure forces it up and out the outlet.

Gravity fed system... Mash tun at front, full of grain and water, with hot liquor tank (hot water for sparging) at back.

Mashing In... the hot water and crushed grain form a porridge like mixture.

The Mash... once the water settles we're left with a very thick mixture

Here you can see the husks of the grain that are split rather than shattered and act as a filter as the sparge water pours through and drains the fermentable sugars out.

Mash temperature... we're aiming for 66c and are about spot on!

First runnings... these are incredibly sweet and full of the richest malt sugars. We'll recirculate them back through to get them nice and clear.

First runnings (grant)... The first runnings dispense into a "grant" that can be used to recirculate them back through the mash.

Gravity fed system... full action shot, I can sense your excitement!

Vorlauf (close up)... it is just a fancy German word for recirculation. The cake container tray is used to ensure the grain bed isn't disturbed.

Vorlauf... here you can see the beer flowing out of the grant and onto the mash.

More vorlauf... we're now running straight into the kettle as the mash is running very clear.

Clear runnings... the mash has been filtered and we're now getting a nice clear running, free of grainy husks. Your wort is clear enough when a handsome brewer can be seen reflected in the runnings.

Sparging... this upside down sprinkler is distributing 78c water evenly across the mash bed so that we can extract as much of the sugars as possible from the mash without disturbing it.

Sparging (again)... another view of this satisfying extraction of malt sweetness.

Gas burner... the burner is on and the wort in the kettle starts heating up to the boil.

Spent grain... while we are waiting for the wort to reach the boil, we can add this spent grain to the compost.

Spent grain (close)... or you could make bread with it (just don't expect your kids to eat it).

False bottom (post mash)... it's almost post-coital, isn't it? Job done, satisfaction almost guaranteed.

Vigorous boil... meanwhile, across at the kettle, we've got a good boil going and the first hops can go in.

Hop additions... two more hop additions weighed out to go in with 15min to go (on right, also with 'Koppafloc' finings) and as we turn the flame off (at left).

Immersion chiller... this copper coil goes into the boil with 15min to go, just as we're adding the finings and 15min hop addition. As the flame goes off we'll run cold water in, cool the beer, and collect hot water coming out.

Clean up.... the hot liquor tank enables us to collect the hot water coming out for cleaning up. We get so much that we could bathe the kids in the mash tun if we were really trying to get bang for our buck.