School Night Brew – 30/30 Experiment

It was a Thursday afternoon and I was watching the clock gradually run down on the day at work.  I was having an afternoon cup of tea and chatting to the MWB lads on messenger.  We decided on the spur of the moment to try a 30/30, quick stove top brew on a school night, just to see how quickly and fuss-free a brew day (ok, night) could be.

I’ve been fancying doing a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale style brew, so quickly Googled a recipe to see what the basic make-up of it was.  It uses Cascade and Perle hops.  I knew I had plenty of Cascade, but I didn’t have any Perle, so Googled substitutions.  The first result I saw said Northern Brewer, as I knew I had plenty of that, I went with that.  The grist on the recipe I saw was 2R pale ale and Crystal 40.  Based on that, I fired up BeerSmith and set about building a recipe.

I have loads of Maris Otter, so went for that as a base malt.  I swapped the Crystal 40 for Crystal Rye (150EBC) and some CaraPils, just because I fancied trying the Rye and I always use a bit of CaraPils.  I’m not trying to create an exact clone after all.  The recipe was pretty much ‘middle-for-diddle’ on the BeerSmith “sliders” for an APA style, so that was good enough for me.  For the hopping, I went for Magnum to bitter to almost all the IBUs I was looking for, allowing late additions to make up the rest.  The Northern Brewer that was in place of the Perle, going in late, followed by some Cascade a minute before I switch off the gas and a bit more Cascade once its cooled a bit.

Once I got in from work, I filled up a bucket with my water and stuck in half a crushed Campden tablet.  I wasn’t being too precise; that’s the whole point of this experiment, so filled the 12l pan I’d use to boil and another 5l pan… so 17-ish litres of water in the bucket.  I stuck that back in the garage until I needed it and got back on with the daily business of getting the kids their tea, sorting out the dishes, a bit of housework… that sort of thing.  At 19:30 I stuck about 15 litres into the two pots and turned on the gas to start them heating up, while I went and got the kids ready for bed.

With the kids in bed, I went out to the garage to get into my grain stores.  I was sure I still had some crushed Maris Otter from before I started crushing my own, but I was wrong.  Out came the mill and I set about crushing a couple of keys of malt.  The CaraPils and Crystal Rye were already crushed, so it was just the base malt I needed to mill.  All in all, it was about 10 minutes to weigh out, crush my grain and sweep up the inevitable mess.

I chucked a kettle of water into my smaller sized cool box to preheat it, then once I’d emptied it out again, I lined it with my mashing bag.  The water was just hitting strike temperature, so I doughed in with the water from the bigger pot… there was about 10l in there.  The mash temperature was a degree over at 66.5°C, but I wasn’t too concerned.  I tucked it up for its half hour mash and had a bit of a tidy up.

Half an hour later, I put my big rubber gloves on, whipped out the mash bag and squeezed it like it owed me money.!  The wort went into the big pot; the gas went on and the bag went back in the cool box.  The 5l of strike water left in the other pot, now heated up to about 83°C was emptied in the cool box, over the grains and I set about it with the whisk again to give it a good mix.  Lid on and I gave it 5 minutes or so before squeezing the bejeesus out of it again to get as much out as possible.  There was a bit too much to fit in the big pot, so I put the extra into the little pot and turned the gas on under that one too.  I could just top up the main pot again late once it reduces a bit.

With the pots on the gas, I went off to the garage and rooted about in my hops for the ones I was after and weighed them out.  I was the only one up and about in the house, so I just lined them up in the order I was adding them.  I’d normally have them marked up with what they were and when I was adding it, but this is about ad-hoc and simple, so lined up will do tonight.

Eventually it came to the boil… damn, I miss that big gas burner that I use outside.!  I added my hops as prescribed at the appropriate times… I also added a pinch of Irish Moss with 10 minutes to go as well, but forgot to add that to the recipe. I didn’t measure it, I just used a… bit.?!  Half an hour later and the short boil is done.  I topped up the big pot with the wort from the little pot and it was back up to almost full… excellent.

The pot went into a bath of cold water and I made myself a cup of tea… well deserved. Once it had cooled a bit, I added some more Cascade as a whirlpool/steep addition.  Amazingly, it had cooled to 24°C in half an hour, so I rehydrated my yeast and tipped the wort into a clean fermenter, gave it a good whisking to aerate it and pitched the yeast.

Off to the fermenting fridge with the fermenter, Inkbird set to 19°C, job done and its only 22:45.

I’m really, very happy with how it went.  We’re talking under three hours from starting the whole thing, to the brew being in the fridge with the yeast pitched.  The proof of the pudding will obviously be in the final product, but the 30/30 method seems like a great way to make beer.  With a little more preparation and planning, I reckon I could get the time down even further.  If the grain was crushed the day prior and the water put on to heat while still sorting “life things” out, we’d have been ready to go even sooner.  Also, if I made some sort of hop spider for the pot, it would have saved a few minutes when I was transferring to the fermenter, as with this batch, I just chucked the hops directly into the wort and then strained the whole lot through a bag afterwards.  All things to think about before the next 30/30 experiment.

I got about 11 litres of wort into the fermenter, so after the losses to yeast and trub, that should still get me a crate of 20 x 500ml bottles of delicious 5% American Pale Ale, all made in the time I would have spent sitting, watching the telly and messing around on my phone… not a bad deal eh?