10 brews in and trying to find my method

[JimmyMac81]

Hello all, I've been watching the forum for a couple of months now and have seen some great advice, so thought I would pop my head up and say hello.

I caught the home brew bug in a big way at New Year, and have tried a few different things - all grain one gallon batches, kit brews, extract and partial mash, but I want to come up with something that works for me with limited kitchen and flat space. I was thinking about knocking a few different methods together to see if it will work, so I wanted to see what people on here think first. I want to do a nice 5 gallon batch but I only have kitchen hobs so can't be boiling up a huge pot, and I don't have a wort chiller to cool it down afterwards. I was thinking about using a couple of 10l pots - one with just water and DME to boil for 60 minutes with all the various hop additions, and the other to steep some specialty grains that don't need a full mash. Then the plan is to put the contents of both into a 5 gallon container, top it up with water and seal it off to do a no chill, then put it in the fermenter the next day. Does that sound like it would work, or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance, and hope to carry on learning more on here...

 

[Drunkula]

That definitely will work. I've done it and I'll be doing it again. I've also frozen bottles of water, cut them open and poured the hot wort onto them and three of them in a 23 litre brew gets it right down there in temperature. Brulosophy did an experiment with creating a concentrated wort and diluting it and it didn't create a significant difference.

You are good to go.

Forgot to say that hop utilisation is less with concentrated wort so you add more - 10% as a rule of thumb, but you could try fiddling with brewing software.

 

[JimmyMac81]

Perfect! I did ty the frozen bottle route (although I used tupperware boxes to chill 2 l "bricks" and dropped them in, but it bought it down to about 40C, and as I have a stainless steel fermenter, it then took about 12 hours before it was actually cool enough to pitch! No chill seems like the most fool proof way to get it right, and minimal faffing. I was concerned that the hops might need to go in both batches, but I really couldn't think of a good reason why it wouldn't all just mix together in the cube - so thanks for setting me on the right path...

 

[GerritT]

Plan looks solid! But why not empty both pots into the fermenter once you have the temps down to 80º-ish, let it cool overnight, and pitch? Saves a step, saves cleaning, etc.

 

[JimmyMac81]

That's actually what I did last time, but I was under the impression you want to have the no chill container completely empty of air if you're going to leave it 12 hours or so - the idea with the way I was thinking of is to be able to make sure there are absolutely no nasties in there before I get it actually into the fermenter?

 

[An Ankoù]

Why not knock up your beers double strength in one 10 litre pot (15 would be much better if you could get one) and cool it in the kitchen sink before pouring it into the fermenter and adding the rest of the water which was boiled and cooled down from the previous day?

 

[JimmyMac81]

Why not knock up your beers double strength in one 10 litre pot (15 would be much better if you could get one) and cool it in the kitchen sink before pouring it into the fermenter and adding the rest of the water which was boiled and cooled down from the previous day?

I did try that but the wort was really thick and prone to boiling over - this way I can keep better control over both of the different pots, especially as the grains wouldn't need a proper mash for me to have to look after the temperature constantly - as I understand it, the specialty grains only need to steep for half an hour or so and the temp range is more forgiving - is that correct?

 

[An Ankoù]

Yes. You're right about the speciality grains; they can be steeped as they don't need to convert starch.

Even so, you've inspired me to put my money where my mouth is and I'm doing a 10 litre batch of mild "concentrate", which I'm going to dilute to 23 litres length, even as we speak. I'll let you know how it turns out.

It's an FG mash and so I didn't get any boiling over. Perhaps the secret is to make sure every drop of you extract is dissolved before the boil starts.

 

[Clint]

Boiling loads of water or wort is awkward if not impossible without the right tools for the job. As your space is limited I'd be tempted to stick to top end kits...Young's are very good and try a few pimped one can kits with some dry or liquid malt,steeped grains,yeast changes and dry hops. Also...do you like cider? Supermarket apple juice makes great cider and it's dead easy to do.

 

[Drunkula]

I was under the impression you want to have the no chill container completely empty of air if you're going to leave it 12 hours or so

Mostly that's done so that you don't get much expansion when you rock the cube to sanitise it with the hot wort. With air in it you get a lot of expansion - I had a baaad experience using a pressure barrel as a no-chill cube. With the heat and hot air the punt at the bottom softened and prolapsed out something ghastly and I had to let out some pressure and stand on the thing to get it to de-prolapse. Then later once it cooled it dimpled the top of the barrel in which caused a hairline fracture. The barrel is really old but I managed to plastic weld the split and it's back in the game as a barrel again.

A few people on here, including me have just used a fermenter with an airlock or cling flim and no-chill like that. No bad experiences doing that so far. I also throw a tea towel over the airlock. Not as good as a fully enclosed cube but you do what you gotta do. You'll soon learn the levels of murder you can get away with.

 

[Drunkula]

Boiling loads of water or wort is awkward if not impossible without the right tools for the job. As your space is limited I'd be tempted to stick to top end kits

Cliiiiint - stop treading on dreams! I've heard you can go biab all grain with a old curtain and a belly full of get-up-and-go.

 

[Clint]

I'm not...some might be thinking that the only way to brew great beer is to only do AG...boil 30 odd litres etc...the op says he lives in a flat with limited space and resources....I'd do what I said...

 

[matt76]

Even so, you've inspired me to put my money where my mouth is and I'm doing a 10 litre batch of mild "concentrate", which I'm going to dilute to 23 gallons length, even as we speak. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I've done it. Twice. Recently

See here and here

Still a tad early to say for sure if it works as neither is ready for drinking yet, but I'm pretty confident the method is sound enough. I brew 11-12L batches and this is the way i would scale up production without the need for a load of new gear.

To expand on what @Drunkula said, i think the trick is to multiply the IBUs from the hops, not just the mass of the hops because the utilisation is lower.

So if you dilute from 10L to 15L (factor of 1.5) you need to add enough hops to give you 1.5x your target IBUs you want in your final 15L. Since the utilisation is lower when the wort gravity is higher that means you'll need more than 1.5x the mass of hops to get 1.5x the IBUs.

But in practice, Drunkula's 10% extra how is probably not too wide of the mark (it's just my personal preference that i like to calculate these things precisely )

 

[Richie_asg1]

Once you are finished there is also another side of the problem - where to put all that lovely beer to cold condition. I have this problem. There are bottles of course, but I was thinking of where to put a fridge for the keg.
Then I thought about mini kegs!

Just an option for you.

 

[An Ankoù]

I've done it. Twice. Recently

See here and here

Still a tad early to say for sure if it works as neither is ready for drinking yet, but I'm pretty confident the method is sound enough. I brew 11-12L batches and this is the way i would scale up production without the need for a load of new gear.

To expand on what @Drunkula said, i think the trick is to multiply the IBUs from the hops, not just the mass of the hops because the utilisation is lower.

So if you dilute from 10L to 15L (factor of 1.5) you need to add enough hops to give you 1.5x your target IBUs you want in your final 15L. Since the utilisation is lower when the wort gravity is higher that means you'll need more than 1.5x the mass of hops to get 1.5x the IBUs.

But in practice, Drunkula's 10% extra how is probably not too wide of the mark (it's just my personal preference that i like to calculate these things precisely )

See my quote, above. Scaling up to 23 gallons is a bit optimistic, 23 litres would be more like it.
Brewer's friend takes this into consideration: enter 13 litres boil volume and 23 litres final volume and it's all done for you.

 

[matt76]

See my quote, above. Scaling up to 23 gallons is a bit optimistic, 23 litres would be more like it.
Brewer's friend takes this into consideration: enter 13 litres boil volume and 23 litres final volume and it's all done for you.

I think it's on you now to try diluting it up to 23 gallons - please do report back! :p

Yes you're right about BF Someone else mentioned that the other day and I'd not realised it up until then. I'm sure there was something in the numbers output i thought was a bit suss, though having just looked it seems right enough to me (pretty sure I'm not going to taste a difference of 1-2IBU! ). Oh the plus side it seems consistent with my hands calcs so at least i must have understood the general gist of it

 

[An Ankoù]

Did the deed this morning. Made a mild with target OG for 23 litres of 1036. Got 10.75 litres after boil with OG of 1064. Diluted and stuck a pound of sugar in to make up the difference. Overshot and now have OG of 1039. Ah well, I'll have to find my slide rule before I try this again.
Point is it works well, but there isn't sufficient capacity for a full sparge- last runnings were still sweet. Still, it works!

 

[JimmyMac81]

Once you are finished there is also another side of the problem - where to put all that lovely beer to cold condition. I have this problem. There are bottles of course, but I was thinking of where to put a fridge for the keg.
Then I thought about mini kegs!

Just an option for you.

That's my next problem! It's finally getting a bit warmer so I don't have the option of leaving outside to condition any more (I have a balcony I've been leaving it out on while it's been colder)... a nice problem to have though

 

[JimmyMac81]

Boiling loads of water or wort is awkward if not impossible without the right tools for the job. As your space is limited I'd be tempted to stick to top end kits...Young's are very good and try a few pimped one can kits with some dry or liquid malt,steeped grains,yeast changes and dry hops. Also...do you like cider? Supermarket apple juice makes great cider and it's dead easy to do.

I have tried a couple of kits but they just tasted a bit stale to me - plus I like to experiment so I don't really want to be stuck with a recipe I have no control over! This is why I thought this method will work as I don't need to worry about boiling up huge volumes. In any case, I've got my 25l plastic cube now, and am just waiting for my last batch to finish fermenting so I can bottle up and give this a crack!

 

[JimmyMac81]

Did the deed this morning. Made a mild with target OG for 23 litres of 1036. Got 10.75 litres after boil with OG of 1064. Diluted and stuck a pound of sugar in to make up the difference. Overshot and now have OG of 1039. Ah well, I'll have to find my slide rule before I try this again.
Point is it works well, but there isn't sufficient capacity for a full sparge- last runnings were still sweet. Still, it works!

Glad to hear it works! I suppose trial and error is the best way to fine tune the details though...