My tale starts on Saturday the 24 of March. I returned home from two pints of Vienna Lager and a Cheese Steak Pizza, in the Porterhouse North, with my Better Half and my daughter.

Soon after arriving home, a misunderstanding about what is happening when and who has to be where, on what day, is cleared up and I ended up with an unexpected free Saturday. There is only one thing to do with such a day. Brew beer!

Not resting idle, I set out to prepare everything for the morning. I poured my brew water and my sparge water, (and an extra bit, just in case) into a variety of containers and left them to sit over night, to allow the chlorine to escape. I got out all of my equipment, ready for the next day and I toasted up a kilo of pale malt, to try something new.

I took one kilo of crushed pale malt, mixed it with one litre of water and put it in the oven at 200C.

After the first half hour I gave it a stir, as there was a crust forming. By the second hour I was stirring it every fifteen minutes.

It spent a total of three hours in the oven, at 200C. By the end, it was like a very dark brown, flapjack; only huge and with caramelised, sides and burned bits on the corners.

The whole lot went into the mash tun the next day.

The recipe was a complete impulse. This is seat of the pants brewing here!

First of all, I decided that any impulsive beer recipe, has to be, at least a little bigger than session strength and five kilos of pale malt came out. I started looking at some darker malts, but decided to let the Giant Flapjack Malt stand on it's own. In the end I threw 500g of flaked wheat in too, because I had that and some flaked rye and I had to use at least one of them.

So the grist ended up as:

5Kg Crushed Pale Malt
1Kg Giant Flapjack Malt
500g Flaked Wheat

Doughing in took a bit longer than normal, as I had a lot of malt in the mash tun and the Giant Flapjack Malt was a little harder to break up than normal malt. Not that it was any real trouble, mind.

I mashed it in the low 60's for 20 minutes then raised the temperature to 68 and held it for an hour.

I sparged about 30 litres, but I had to split the wort up into two vessels, because my 25-litre boiler is just a little too small.

About 7 litres of wort went into my 15-litre stockpot and went on the boil in the kitchen. It came to the boil a full 30 minutes before the main boil did.

I let the 7 litres of wort stay boiling for the further 70 minutes; it took to complete the main boil.

By the time the boil was finished, it had reduced to about 4 litres of wort, which I added to the following boil, at 0 minutes.

23 litres of wort boiled down to ~20 litres, over 70 minutes with the following hop additions:

60 Minutes:    Pacific Gem (15% AA) 10g.
                      East Kent Goldings (5.6% AA) 10g.
15 Minutes:    Pacific Gem (15% AA) 10g.
                      East Kent Goldings (5.6% AA) 10g.
                      Fuggles (4.8% AA) 10g.
5 Minutes:      Fuggles (4.8% AA) 5g.
                      Pacific Gem (15% AA) 10g.
                      East Kent Goldings (5.6% AA) 10g.
O Minutes:
                     Pacific Gem (15% AA) 10g.

I trusted this beer to a vibrant colony of Danstar Windsor at 18C. I subscribe to the Belgian cool pitch idea, but Windsor is a bit flaky under 18C, I find.

A day later there is a healthy top crop. I let it be.

I hope to make this article one of a series, on my adventures in brewing, so I will keep you updated on how this beer is progressing, in further entries.