As you can see this isn’t Todd’s ESB. This months kit from homebrewhappyhour.com is Todd’s ESB. Last time I brewed this, I enjoy it but not really a lot of other do. So this time, since I can’t really change up the grain bill unless I add something I’m going to mess around with the hop schedule to give it more of a darker IPA flavor, maybe 8). Check out the original recipe and the modified one.

As I normally do I collected the water the night before add in the salts and also milled the grains in preparation for tomorrow morning brew day.

@6:08 started to add in the grains as the water was at 152F(66.6C). @6:40, 30 minutes into the mash, I stopped the pump and gave the grain bed a good stir about 2/3 of the way down. Just making sure we get the best #’s out of the conversion. @7:03 turned the Anvil up to 168F(75.5C) to mash out. @7:22 pulled the grain basket and let the wort drain out. While draining I cleaned up some items that I’m not using any more. I’m not sure if anyone else does this, once the wort really slows down, I pull the basket and put it at an angle to help drain out more wort. @7:40 pulled the grains all together and cleaned up the malt pipe and dumped the grains. Pulled a wort sample of 1.043sg and had 6.5 gallons(24.6L) of wort. @7:52 pulled my typical 2 cups of hot break as the wort hits 200F(93.3C).

@8:03 the boil started and I added in the 60 minute addition. 15 minutes left in the boil add in the wort chiller and then 10 minutes left added in the yeast nutrient and Irish moss. Pulled a wort sample 2 minutes before the boil was complete and got a specific gravity of 1.049 sg and 6 gallons (22.7L). Cooled down the wort to 156F(68.8C) as I went to far but oh well, @9:06 tossed in the 2 oz(56.6g) of hops and let it stand there for 10 mins. Started the chilling again after the 10 minutes. Only running about 1/2 throttle on the chilling to help save some water. Lets see how long it takes to chill down to pitching temperature which I’m shooting for around 78F(25.5C) as by the time I transfer its down to 70F(21C). I’m pulling a sample to use in an experiment before transferring to the fermentor. Pulled the sample and transfered over to the fermentor. While transferring I had my air pump running pumping air into the wort through a HEPA filter. Pitched yeast and put my air lock setup on. Added a few ice blocks to the side of the fermentor to drop the temperature.