Hazelwoods Beer Improvement Project

[jayk34]

I occasionally listen to the bru lab podcast which is an offshoot of brulosophy where one on the brulosophy team speak to brewing scientists about particular areas of brewing science and current research. A lot of it goes over my head, but thought that the most recent might be of interest to you @Hazelwood Brewery . It's called Hot steep malt sensory with Evan Caine

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I occasionally listen to the bru lab podcast which is an offshoot of brulosophy where one on the brulosophy team speak to brewing scientists about particular areas of brewing science and current research. A lot of it goes over my head, but thought that the most recent might be of interest to you @Hazelwood Brewery . It's called Hot steep malt sensory with Evan Caine

Thanks, I’ll look into it. I’ve got everything I need to start this now just been a bit busy. I’ll get some results up soon.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

It took a bit longer to get started on this than planned but I have made a start and learned a thing or two even from my first attempt. So here we go…

First up a brief description and some pictures of what I did. I started by weighing out some grain (52g) and ground it to a flour. Then heated some RO water to 65C.

I then weighed out 50g of the flour and put it in a flask. To this I added 400ml of the heated water which I actually weighed out on scales as I poured it in (400g = 400ml). Then I shook the flask for a few seconds and let it stand for 15 minutes.

When the time was up I gave the flask one last vigorous shake and tipped the lot into a funnel lined with a No.6 coffee filter paper. Here is the fist lesson - I thought it might take 10 minutes, it doesn’t. Because the grain is ground to a flour it clogs the filter paper from the off and it actually took an hour to filter!

When I’d collected the wort I learned another lesson when I pulled out the filter paper - don’t! As I lifted the filter paper the seam across the bottom opened up and a big clump of the grain fell through the funnel into my filtered wort

I didn’t know how this might affect my evaluation so I filtered the wort a second time. At least this time round it filtered more quickly.

For my first attempt though I wanted to compare two Pilsner malts so I had to do this all again with the other malt. This time I removed the funnel from my sample before I lifted out the filter paper and it was as well I did because the bottom fell out of this filter paper too. I did filter my second malt again though just in case double-filtered wort is different to single-filtered wort.

This is the two samples, BestMalz Pilsner on the left, Weyermann Pilsner on the right. The first observation is that the colours are very similar but the Weyermann wort looks just a tad cleaner/brighter perhaps?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I meant to update this thread with my tasting feedback, better late than never…

I marked up the flavour wheel for each of the two Pilsner malts. In summary, I found the Weyermann malt to be more aromatic and more complex. The flavours were not dissimilar but Weyermann seemed to have a more biscuit quality, Bestmalz more honey.

I should caveat this by saying it’s the first time I’ve done it and I have a long way to go in educating my palate.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

A bit of a wild card this but I wondered if filtering beer might speed up conditioning (it should speed up the clearing at least).

To try this idea I bought a 1 micron keg-to-keg beer filter, pictured below. I’ll give it a go in the next few days and let you know how it goes.

I believe it will clear pretty much all of the debris causing haze but not all of the yeast, leaving some for carbonation. It will also not clear the smaller proteins that can form chill haze - shame. Might need to look for a finer filter