#BrewDay a continuously Hopped co-brew with @skylarkbrew

Today has been an enjoyable Brewday, a Very enjoyable brew day with Peter aka @bubblingbuckets or more lately @skylarkbrew

Peter had an idea to do a continuously hopped brew much like the Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA So after a brief discussion we settled on Cascade, Citra and Columbus hops and a minimal malt bill of just Maris Otter Pale and torrified wheat. Wednesday afternoon saw me getting the starter underway using White Labs California Ale yeast WLP001. We had to have a huge 3.8 L starter, It’s the first time I produced a batch bigger than 5 Gallons and this in itself caused a minor hiccup, the round bottom of the demijohn meant the Flea wouldn’t work ! So once the final volume was achieved I split it, As you can see By Friday evening the Stir plate one got a bit Lively !

Trying to escape.... — Trying to escape….

Saturday, Bright and early, BrewDay..HLT on a a timer ready to Rock and Roll, We weighed out the grist got the Liquor into the mash tun and started to dough in. We had anticipated a small problem the mash tun was going to be 1.6L too Small, but this was a bigger problem the 45L igloo can’t be utilised to it’s full capacity, so in a stroke of Genius we decided to use the slow cooker for an extra mini mash…

Feeling Quite pleased with ourselves we were quickly brought down to earth with a bump ! When we got back to the Shedquaters I noticed the HLT wasn’t maintaining Temperature for the recirculating Mash ! Disaster the Element had gone.! Water was quickly transferred to the Boiler and the gas lit.! back to recirculating but the mash had dropped to 63˚c so a climb back up to 68.5˚c caused a delay.. and then another delay whilst we rose it to 75˚c for mash out. We did a hybrid batch and Fly sparge and then it was time for the experiment, A continuous hopping ! No not bouncing around the shedquarters on one Leg !