2nd All Grain Brew Day (BIAB) - American Pale Ale

[BrewzLee]

2nd All Grain Brew Day (BIAB) - HBC American Pale Ale

I brewed my second AG batch on 17/01/16 which was an American Pale Ale kit from HBC. This kit was part of their partial extract range but I substituted the malt extract for 5.2kg of BestMalz Pale Malt.

The kit comes with:

- Grain - Crystal Malt
- Hops - listed on the website as being Magnum and Cascade. These were supplied as 60 minute, 15 minute, 0 minute additions.
- Yeast - Safale - US-05
- Whirlfloc tablet​

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Process:

Fired up my Peco boiler at 13:31 and heated 26l of water (treated with ½ a campden tablet) to 71.5 ºC in with the mash bag in place.

Mashed in at 14:20 at 71.5 ºC stirring the grain to prevent dough balls but the grain dropped the temperature below the 67 ºC that I was aiming for so I had to fire the boiler back up for a couple of minutes until it reached the 67 ºC target. I then insulated the boiler with towels and a sleeping bag and the temp remained stable only losing 1 degree over the 60 min. mash time.

While I was waiting for the mash I heated up 6 litres of water to 80 ºC for the sparge.

After the 60 min. mash was finished I lifted the bag out of the boiler and placed it on a cake stand rested on top of the boiler to drain. Once it had drained I squeezed the bag to strain out the remainder of the wort before pouring enough of the sparge water over the bag and through the grains to bring the volume of water in the boiler up to 27l.

At this stage I had a slight problem as I was due to go out for dinner and would not have enough time to complete the 60 min boil, cool and transfer to the FV. So after a quick search on Google I decided to heat the wort to 78 ºC to halt any enzymatic activity and left it with a lid on for around an hour and a half while I went out. I’m not sure if this was the correct thing to do?

When I got back I fired up the boiler and waited until it reached a rolling boil.

I added the hops at 60min and then the wort chiller, protofloc and next hop addition at 15 mins.

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At 0 mins (end of the boil) I switched off the boiler and cooled to 77 ºC and added the 0 min addition which I stirred in and left to steep for 30 mins. This was a different method to the last brew I did where I added the 0 min addition at the same time as I switched off the boiler. I tried this technique as I had seen it mentioned a few times, again I’m not sure if this is the correct thing to do?

After the steep I chilled the wort to 22 ºC and transferred it to the FV. The hop strainer was positioned 2” or so off the bottom of the boiler and worked much better than on my last brew day where I had it sat along the bottom.
I ended up with 16.5l in the FV at 1.062 which I topped up to 21l which gave me an OG of 1.048. My efficiency seems to have been around 64% I think having run the numbers through beersmith. This is much lower than the 71% I achieved last time but I had mashed for 90 minutes then.

I think I will need to add more water during the boil to compensate for boil off allowing me to hopefully end up with the target volume of 23l in the FV.

I pitched the yeast at 21ºC and this has been fermenting away for the last week and a half. Hopefully this will be bottled on Sun/Mon.

 

[cheapbrew]

nice write up, you'll soon have the amount to add sussed :thumb:
my first brew I needed to top up, so for the 2nd brew I added the amount I topped up in the first to sparge and still needed 1/2 litre, so I added this for 3rd brew and ended up with almost a litre too much! but I did use much less of a vigorous boil, the next one I'll get it spot on

 

[DanST]

I like your idea of adding your own base grain to the kit.

I quite fancy a few of these but don't want loads of crushed grain hanging around and don't want to spend a fortune on postage. I can get base malt fresh locally so this would be ideal and limit any wastage.

 

[JapanBrew]

Great. Just be careful not to squeeze the grain bag. You could release tanings and unwanted flavors. Let it naturally drain. At the same time pouring a little sparge water over it.
As you get deaper in AG, try different mash temps. I always look at 67 degrees as the "upper" level. I like dry beers so I usually mash at 65 even as low as 63 then pick it up towards the 30 min. mark. You get different sugars from that. Play around and get the feel for your tastes.

 

[brisboy]

Pretty sure tannins are only affected by temperature so squeezing should have no effect on them.



Agree on mash temps. I think generally I've been mashing too high and could do with drying things out with a more fermentable wort. Love that in ag brewing there is so many little things to learn. You don't have to get it all right to make good beer but there's always something else you can do to make it better.

 

[cheapbrew]

I think you need to heat to over 80C to release excess tannin, squeezing it is not going to do that.

 

[BrewzLee]

Thanks for the advice!

I bought a 25kg sack of pale malt and a selection of the extract kits to try before I start trying to formulate my own recipes. Buying the extract kits from HBC means that you get the grains and the hops weighed out and most of their kits just require you to add the pale malt to the kit for AG brewing so I've found them excellent for me as a beginner.

I have mashed at 67ºC on both of my brews because that was the suggested temp on the supplied recipe/instruction sheet but I am a fan of dry beers so will definitely try different mash temps as suggested.

I'm only 2 AG brews in but I already have a selection of brews lined up. I'm picking up a lot of tips and ideas from this forum and from reading books and I am really looking forward to designing my own recipes.

Thanks again. :)