Hoping to create a gently spiced porter style beer for Christmas.

Grains – Pale malt, crystal, wheat, and a good dose of roast barley.

Loads of challenger hops for bittering, and some styrian goldings for aroma

Malts are still pretty cold despite bringing them in from the garage 3 hours ago… so upping the mashing liquor temperature to compensate.

Mashing in – looks a bit ‘mocha’… So, that’s it all tucked up in the insulated mash tun, so time for me to head to bed and let the grains steep in the hot water while I get some much needed kip 😀

First runnings are suitably dark

mmmmm – black gold

Jugging the wort into the boiler, and onto a load of Challenger hops

Start of the boil, all the hops are floating, but at least I’ve avoided the dreaded foam up – boil over 😀

After 15 minutes of boiling, the hop bed has broken up and the hops are circulating freely in the rolling boil

boil complete and got the chiller running 😎

Last few pics :

running the wort into the fermenter along with a little mixed spice and some fresh grated nutmeg

Gave the wort a damned good stir, pitched the yeast and chucked in a cinnamon stick

OG is 11 points higher than target… Brew has been a bit too efficient – if I liquor back to the target OG I’ll have a very full fermenter… :hmm:

ended up liquoring back by 4 litres to get an OG of 1045 – nice compromise between target OG and fermenter volume