Experimenting with the Grainfather and some extract (20150903-CoopersDarkAleMod)

I decided to use up some old ingredients that were lying around and attempted to use the Grainfather for an extract recipe.

I had a tin of Coopers Dark Ale, some US05 yeast, some Goldings pellets, 250g of light DME and a pack of Brew Enhancer 2.

I boiled up 10 litres of water in the GF and added the dark ale extract and the DME. I then boiled 15g of the pellets for 30 minutes and 10g for the last 5 (using muslin bags). I added 10 litres of cold water and used the chiller to cool the mix down to 18-19C. I then mixed in the Brew enhancer.

I ended up with 15.5 litres and on OG of 1048 so I lost 4.5 litres. Pitched the yeast at around 18C.

The Beersmith numbers looked like this, but the IBU will be wrong because I didn't boil the hops in the whole fermentables (enhancer was omitted).

I rehydrated the yeast (which I have not done before).

It took about 3 hours with all the cleaning and the fact that the heater kept cutting out and I had to reset it. So I may as well have just done it in a pan or gone all grain.

Reference: 20150903-CoopersDarkAleMod.