This afternoon it struck me that, if I got a move on, I could get my first homebrew of the year underway before I had to go out in the early evening. I’ve been reducing both my mash and boil times down, which helps make the time from start to end on the first day of a batch go more quickly. You still have to do a bit more than just add the two times together, such as how long it takes to bring the wort from the mashing temperature to a rolling boil, but it certainly helps and doesn’t seem to harm the results with the reductions I’ve made so far.

My chosen recipe was Graham Wheeler’s one for Burton Bridge Top Dog Stout, so a strong, dark beer. I’ve followed it a couple of times before (Bitter Dog Stout in 2017 and Black Dog Stout in 2019) but I have to confess that, apart from the timings, this is the first time I’ve actually followed the recipe proportions without making various ingredient additions and substitutions. I’m going to call this one Brown Dog Stout in honour of the chocolate lab that Jane takes for walks on Mondays to help a friend.

It is now sitting in my plastic jerry can to cool down overnight. Tomorrow morning, I’ll see if I managed to hit the suggested gravity (I undershot on the previous two but I’ve made a few tweaks to my process which might help) and get it fermenting.