Ag#2 - Missed All My Targets <sigh>

[baggybill]

Inspired by yesterdays post from mirsultankhan (thanks!), todays brew, AG#2 for me, was a 'Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Ale' (page 118, Graham Wheeler book) for 12L as only have a 16L stock pot atm.

Batch Size (L): 12
2666g Marris Otter
470g Crystal Malt

16g Fuggles - 60 min
13.5g East Kent Goldings - 60-min
10g Fuggles - 10 min

Total Liquer (L): 18
Mash Liquer (L): 7.8

OG: 1057, FG: 1012, ABV: 5.91, IBU: 31.22

Actual results were this:





No way I'm buying a big pot and making big batches until I get better at the smaller stuff. I still feel it's a lot of work/effort for not a lot of beer though but... walk before you can run and all that...

Anyway...

Missed my IBU by a fair bit. There's no alpha % figures in the book plus I got the wrong 'goldings'. I could probably have balanced this a bit closer if I had used BrewMate before I did my brew - lesson learned! Can I possibly catch up a bit dry hopping with something? I have no clue at this time...

Missed my OG by a fair bit, blame my grain crush, wasn't happy with it at all. Way too many 'whole' husks visible in the crush despite being put through twice. Corona (copy) mill but plates are not lined up properly. Top plates touch and there's a gap at the bottom - way poor quality tool.
Grains at top get destroyed, grains at bottom pass through :cry:

It was a 50th b'day present, don't wanna complain etc. Efficency came out at ~64% in BrewMate :-o

I have two choices here. Buy an expensive roller mill of my choice or, knowing my efficency figure now, adjust grain bill (cheap!) to suit. I prefer to crush my own... it's an amazing feeling starting from absolute scratch with whole grain.

Missed my ABV by a fair bit. No issues with this at all, I would have been happy to hit recipe guidlines but to be honest, I would be happy with anything 4%+. Quality over ABV for me.

Time for some pictures, would appreciate feed back on the grain crush image.

Fresh grain from Mr Malt Miller, few weeks old, stored in my garage, unopened:





My mill plus a wooden rig I made up and a last minute Tupperware shield I had to improvise this morning (grain shoots out everywhere!):





The 'milled' grain, spot all the whole husks :evil:





The mash is on! £10 quid 24L Asda coolbox, no taps or nothing, easy to lift and pour:





Mash over, draining the bag, £2 quid Wilko stainless steel strainer, perfect fit and strong:





Boil on, needed two pots to start with (down to one after 30 mins). I won't go into detail about setting my hop sock on fire :





Chill time. Down to 52' degrees in 10 minutes, down to 27' degrees in 30 minutes:





The results are in, will admit, was disappointed, dunk sparged the grain bag to death in 75' degree water in a fv (bolied when mash was on and pots free'd up), got a really nice coloured wort from it and thought it would compensate for my crappy crush :pray::





Breath my babies... getting some air in the wort for the Saf 05:





All said and done, I had a brilliant day today, I like cooking and brewing at this level, for me, is really enjoyable.

Still, like cooking, maybe not as much as product sampling

Hope this post is of use to some other AG BIAB noobs out there. Cheers everyone :

 

[Tony1951]

Excellent account. Pity about the mill problem. I'm not sure how the stones are located in the mill, but I suppose the fixed grinder/stone is the one that is out of line. It is a simple machine and it must be possible to fix that alignment. My mill - not a Corona, has the fixed stone slotted in on two pins which locate in holes in the plate so it cant rotate, but it is possible to fit it cockeyed. Can you take yours oyt and see if it has jyst been assembled wrongly. From memory, mine has a couple of pegs which engage in some holes in the fixed plate. I think you can fit that plate 90 degrees out and then it is crooked.

 

[MyQul]

Can take a few goes till you learn your kit and get better efficiency - took me 3 or 4 goes before I was getting better than about 60%. Couple of things.

You might benefit from some sort of sparge to increase efficency.

-BYOBRA has the AA% of the hops GW uses in a table at the back.
- As I understand it most(if not all) goldings hops are interchangeable, they're basically the same hop grown in different places

 

[rodabod]

Great documentation. 65% is fine! You can probably do better next time, but I wouldn't be disappointed.

I'm yet to grind my own grain, but I do own a Mazzer professional coffee grinder which I wonder if it may be suitable.

 

[ManseMasher]

http://www.hopunion.com/aroma-wheel/?aroma=Citrus

Alpha and beta for pretty much any hop......

 

[brisboy]

With your dry hopping you could look at doing a hop tea if you're looking for a little more bitterness.

 

[rodabod]

Also worth remembering that the brew calculator is only an estimate. I've read elsewhere that IBU ratings for commercial brews are often way off when actually measured. See how it tastes once it's fermented.

 

[Tony1951]

On the grinding problem -

I found a couple of videos that show how the Corona Mill is put together. I am sure you will be able to correct that problem, depending on how the grinding plate is fastened to the auger. It's not made the same way as my mill, but it is a dead simple machine so you are almost bound to be able to re-align the plate that is giving the problem. One of the videos looks at a cheaper copy of the Corona and the guy is talking about filing rough bits of the casting and correcting faulty assembly - that's the second video. The first one shows better how the Corona is put together though so that might be useful to look at too.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3IZb5EBgCM[/ame]


[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71TJqeP0o1M[/ame]

 

[Cwrw666]

"No way I'm buying a big pot and making big batches until I get better at the smaller stuff. I still feel it's a lot of work/effort for not a lot of beer though but... walk before you can run and all that..."
I started off with AG after buying a 30L electric boiler. It works ok but with hindsight I wish I'd got myself a 60L stockpot instead and used a gas burner. I'm getting 23L brews but for exactly the same effort I could be doing 46L brews!

 

[Covrich]

I made a thread about the corna grain mill, they are a bit shoddy in design but actually when setup right they work really well.

Nice idea about the grain shield because I made such a bloody mess when I milled my grain.

Like everyone else says your efficiency will improve, you just got to look and work on a few processes, I think the grain mill will certainly boost things you could run it through again to get a finer grain.. I did with my pre crushed kit and efficiencies shot through the roof.

 

[MyQul]

Couple of ways I boosted my efficiency.

- Give the mash a good stir about halfway through.

- Either squeeze the bag like it owes you money or do a really long lauter. For the long lauter just put a colender in the bottom of a bucket or something then put the grain bag in there and leave it for about half an hour. You'd be surprised at the amount of runnings that come out. Boil these running in a seperate pot before adding to the main boil or the runnings take your M/B off the boil and that throws your hop addition timings out. This one really boosted my efficiency into the 80%'s

 

[baggybill]

Thanks for all the great advice folks. I think there's a lot of information and tips here that will definitely help me take my next AG up a notch or two. Practise makes perfect :thumb:

 

[lukehgriffiths]

Seems everything is pretty neat there... dunno if anyone else can answer but does BIAB yeild less than other mash methods? If so that might explain the lower efficiencies. Also since it is so hot out did you temp check the hydrometer reading? I presume you did but if not that may account for a slightly lower reading as hotter wort is less dense.

Also IBU come from boiling hops (bittering) while dry hopping is for aroma.

Luke