Barbro

We've done it. First brew was made December 1.

We began with Pale Ale:

Malts:
Pale Ale Malt (750 g)
Vienna (200 g)
CaraHell (50 g)

Hops:
Cascade 20 g 60 min
Cascade 10 g 30 min
Cascade 5 g 15 min
Cascade 5 g 5 min

1 kg malt into 4,2 liters water.

After reading 10 times through the recipe and gathering all the equipment needed (it took a while) we started the brew one night. We had calculated 3 hours for the whole process... it took 3 hours and 25 minutes. All went well until the sparge, we somehow managed to let the temp fall down to 55°C for some minutes. Hope it won't make the beer too dry. Next time we might skip the sparge.

We did the mashing for an hour, wrapping the pot in a sleeping bag. That way the heat dropped only two degrees in half an hour (from 67 to 65°C, after that reheating up to 67°C and keeping for another 30 min in the sleeping bag:

Boiled this for an hour, throwing the hops in according to recipe. Now we have a beautiful little gallon bottle fermenting like a madman in the cupboard. We'll give it two weeks until bottling day (ten days if we just can't wait). So we should have few bottles ready to uncap on Christmas Eve! Oh ho the joy!