Hi guys - hopefully this is all good!
I made a 20 litre cube of the weetbix/all-bran recipe for my first expedition into brewing to distil - I used branflakes instead of all-bran because they were available in a bulk bag for heaps cheaper than I could get all-bran. It turns out that there's a heap of sugar in them though, so I started out with a gravity of 1.100 which is a fair bit more than the recipe suggested!
It took ~4 weeks to finish at 29C (had an aquarium heater in there) but finished dry to taste, and the hydrometer now shows pretty much 1.00. That was using bakers yeast and is heaps more than I expected it to convert. It spent 10 days in the fridge to clear, and I siphoned it into another cube last night, and it's ready to run today.
A couple of things - 4 weeks is heaps longer than the recipe advertised - is that purely because it was 1.1 to start, or does it suggest something about our tap water (I boiled the heck out of it before starting to get rid of all the chlorine)?
Also, I'm planning to make another batch, but what I saw in the bottom after siphoning out the wash wasn't what I expected. Does this look right to you?
If it looks right - I just reload with water, sugar, epsom salts and a cup each of weetbix and bran on top of what's already in there and call it second generation?
Thanks,
Tu