chuffer
Landlord.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2016
- Messages
- 699
- Reaction score
- 196
....until Sat.....though I'd be lying if I said it went swimmingly!
Brew: American Pale, ABV 4.8%, 23L, IBU 35, OG 1.048, IBU/OG 0.73, EBC 14, Efficiency 75%
Recipe: 4.7kg Marris Otter, 235g Crystal, 15g Columbus at 70mins, 18g Centennial and 20g Cascade at 10mins, 20g Centennial and 30g Cascade at Flameout (<80oC), Mangrove Jacks M44 US West Coast Yeast
So, all went well treating the water the night before with campden tablet and some AMS. On brew day, heated up 13L of water to 79oC and added to the mash tun (a DIY 34QT Coleman Cooler jobby) to preheat. Think this was the first problem. Now I've read that subjecting these cooler to temps above 80oC can cause problems with leaching of toxins from plastic and so I made sure that the preheat water was below this. the trouble is the temp v quickly dropped to strike temp (71oC) so it was quickly time to add the grain (along with some DWB).
I was anticipating the dough in would result in a temp drop to around 66oC. but it dropped to around 61-62oC meaning I had to quickly boil up some water to add to the mash to raise to the correct temp. So I ended up with way more mash liquor in there than planned. Once 66oC was measured I sealed up, covered with a thermal jacket and left to mash. After about 40mins, I gave a stir and took a sample for a pH reading. Was chuffed to see that it was bob on at 5.2 (woot!) and that temp had only dropped to 65oC.
After another 30mins I checked temp and saw it had dropped to 63oC (so the cooler lost 3oC in 70mins - not sure if this is good/bad/normal?). Slowly took some first runnings and recirculated - all went fine here.
Now I thought I'd have a bash at a make-shift fly sparge (which I probably won't do again) which involved scooping a litre at a time of 82oC liquor into a funnel with a sprinkle fitting and then slowly opening the tun tap to collect into the FV.
The trouble with this method (and perhaps due to the necessity to keep the lid open during this process) the grain bed temp was not 76oC as hoped but was instead more like 67-68oC. I'm guessing the reduced temp has an undesirable effect on efficiency/enzymes?
Kept checking the SG of the runnings and stopped sparging when they reached 1.010-1.008 (by this point they very watery and didn't taste sweet anymore) but unfortunately I'd only collected around 5-5.5G wort (I was hoping for around 6-6.5G to allow for boil off volume reduction) and so had to top up the boiler with around a gallon of tap water (which will no doubt go some way to negating the effects of the careful water treatment I'd done earlier!!)
Boiled up the hops as per the schedule using the spider.
When time was up I cooled using my new homemade immersion chiller. There was an issue at the start when a leak appeared (so annoying as I'd even checked right at the start of the brew day with no issues - seems the hot water must have expanded joints etc) and so quickly had to find a screwdriver and tighten everything up again before continuing).
Took a gravity reading and got an O.G of 1.050 (the recipe expects 1.048) so pretty happy there.
After rehydrating the yeast and adding some boiled (and cooled) priming sugar solution there was no sign of life
not happy as my previous two yeasts had frothed like buggery after rehydrating/sugaring) - this was concerning but I pitched it anyway. As a back up I sprinkled a 6g packet of spare yeast that was spare as I'd substituted it in a previous extract kit brew). Not sure what bizarre effects there may be from combining a US Pale yeast with a UK Ale yeast but hey ho, I'd rather that than risk nothing happening.
It took a while to get going (compared to my last two) but I checked this morning and it was bubbling like crazy with a temp (probe in FV) of 23oC - my garage is around 17oC ATM....if it's still that warm later I may place the FV in a trug full of cold water.
For next time I think I'll change how I pre-heat the mash tun as the temp drop when doughing in was way more than expected. I also need to change my sparging method (or use higher sparge temp) to perhaps batch sparging to see if that's any better as I don't really want to be topping up boil volume if I can help it.
Brew: American Pale, ABV 4.8%, 23L, IBU 35, OG 1.048, IBU/OG 0.73, EBC 14, Efficiency 75%
Recipe: 4.7kg Marris Otter, 235g Crystal, 15g Columbus at 70mins, 18g Centennial and 20g Cascade at 10mins, 20g Centennial and 30g Cascade at Flameout (<80oC), Mangrove Jacks M44 US West Coast Yeast
So, all went well treating the water the night before with campden tablet and some AMS. On brew day, heated up 13L of water to 79oC and added to the mash tun (a DIY 34QT Coleman Cooler jobby) to preheat. Think this was the first problem. Now I've read that subjecting these cooler to temps above 80oC can cause problems with leaching of toxins from plastic and so I made sure that the preheat water was below this. the trouble is the temp v quickly dropped to strike temp (71oC) so it was quickly time to add the grain (along with some DWB).
I was anticipating the dough in would result in a temp drop to around 66oC. but it dropped to around 61-62oC meaning I had to quickly boil up some water to add to the mash to raise to the correct temp. So I ended up with way more mash liquor in there than planned. Once 66oC was measured I sealed up, covered with a thermal jacket and left to mash. After about 40mins, I gave a stir and took a sample for a pH reading. Was chuffed to see that it was bob on at 5.2 (woot!) and that temp had only dropped to 65oC.
After another 30mins I checked temp and saw it had dropped to 63oC (so the cooler lost 3oC in 70mins - not sure if this is good/bad/normal?). Slowly took some first runnings and recirculated - all went fine here.
Now I thought I'd have a bash at a make-shift fly sparge (which I probably won't do again) which involved scooping a litre at a time of 82oC liquor into a funnel with a sprinkle fitting and then slowly opening the tun tap to collect into the FV.
The trouble with this method (and perhaps due to the necessity to keep the lid open during this process) the grain bed temp was not 76oC as hoped but was instead more like 67-68oC. I'm guessing the reduced temp has an undesirable effect on efficiency/enzymes?
Kept checking the SG of the runnings and stopped sparging when they reached 1.010-1.008 (by this point they very watery and didn't taste sweet anymore) but unfortunately I'd only collected around 5-5.5G wort (I was hoping for around 6-6.5G to allow for boil off volume reduction) and so had to top up the boiler with around a gallon of tap water (which will no doubt go some way to negating the effects of the careful water treatment I'd done earlier!!)
Boiled up the hops as per the schedule using the spider.
When time was up I cooled using my new homemade immersion chiller. There was an issue at the start when a leak appeared (so annoying as I'd even checked right at the start of the brew day with no issues - seems the hot water must have expanded joints etc) and so quickly had to find a screwdriver and tighten everything up again before continuing).
Took a gravity reading and got an O.G of 1.050 (the recipe expects 1.048) so pretty happy there.
After rehydrating the yeast and adding some boiled (and cooled) priming sugar solution there was no sign of life
not happy as my previous two yeasts had frothed like buggery after rehydrating/sugaring) - this was concerning but I pitched it anyway. As a back up I sprinkled a 6g packet of spare yeast that was spare as I'd substituted it in a previous extract kit brew). Not sure what bizarre effects there may be from combining a US Pale yeast with a UK Ale yeast but hey ho, I'd rather that than risk nothing happening.It took a while to get going (compared to my last two) but I checked this morning and it was bubbling like crazy with a temp (probe in FV) of 23oC - my garage is around 17oC ATM....if it's still that warm later I may place the FV in a trug full of cold water.
For next time I think I'll change how I pre-heat the mash tun as the temp drop when doughing in was way more than expected. I also need to change my sparging method (or use higher sparge temp) to perhaps batch sparging to see if that's any better as I don't really want to be topping up boil volume if I can help it.
