Poochops GF brew No 3 - brewdog Jet Black Heart

[Poochops]

Well the last of my brews from the 20kg of Maris otter and many many bags of speciality grains I bought not so long ago. The first three BIAB brews convinced me to buy the GF, which I'm happy to say i felt familiar enough with today to put some photos together. I timed it as well just to see how long it actually takes when I pull my finger out.

So I started at 11.25 this morning, filled her up with 18.5 litres of water out of the hot tap and switched it on to heat up, then started weighing out the grains in the recipe.

11.40 The water reached temperature in 15 minutes, faster than it took to weigh out the grain and hops

11.45 mash in. I used 2litres more than liquor than the recipe as with all the oats I didn't want it too thick, anyhow it mashed in lovely

11.50 start mash. Put the top plate on and set her away. I was also concerned that recirculating might pull the grainbed down so I set the valve to keep it nice and gentle, it didn't miss a beat the display on the timer works via Bluetooth with the app and lets you know the duration and counts down each stage.

12.45 the thing beeps and tells you to get the sparge water heated. I used 2 litres less liquor than the recipe to account for the thinner mash

1.05 This was a 75 minute mash, it beeps to let you know it's heating up for the mash out, took about 15 minutes to get to 75 degrees.
1.20 mashout timer kicks in for ten minutes, I got the sparge water into place on top an upside down stock pot.

 

[Poochops]

1.35 lifted the grain tube and let it drain some, then I started the sparge water running down a pipe onto the top plate. Nice and gentle like. I should've switched the heater on to boil right here but I forgot! Stuck it on 10 minutes into the sparge. Total liquor used 31 litres.

2.00 sparge complete. Tesco bag for life fits lovely onto the grain tube, tip it up and hey presto no mess or fuss, straight in the bin! So good, I took a photo:whistle:

2.07 27 litres after sparging and the boil has started and in go the first hops. I used 20g of magnum, the hops in the recipe would never hit 25 IBUs never mind 45.
In went the lactose as well.

While the boil was going I cleaned the grain tube and all the pipes and bits and pieces, had a bit of a tidy up and got the cooler ready to sterilise.

2.52 protofloc in and chiller on with the wort recirculating back into the boiler.
I added 20g sorachi ace at 10 mins and another 20g at 5 mins. The 10 mins is adding the last 15 IBUs to the bittering as well as flavour, and the 5 mins to the aroma. Again a lot more than the recipe which states 6.3g in total!

3.07 the boil has finished. 24 litres left in the boiler which isn't enough for my 23 litres in the FV. I add a litre of boiling water to make 25 and give it a good whirlpool while I get the chiller set up.

The chiller is bloody brilliant! The wort going into the FV is 22 degrees and it takes no time while I have a coffee.

3.35 23 litres in the FV at 22 degree. I make that 4 hours and ten minutes, not bad with a 75 minutes sparge.

Clean up was a case of draining the boiler and removing the hops to a bag, I took it outside and hosed it out a few times then half filled it and added 3 scoops of oxy. I heated and recirculated, reaching 60 degrees, did two cold rinses and it was all put away by 4.20pm. Time for a pint!

 

[Ajhutch]

Great looking beer, and a really good post. A big part of me (my wallet) wishes you hadn't made the GF sound so good though....!

 

[Pawlo7671]

Good post and pics. Which image hosting site are you using ?

 

[Poochops]

The pics I put on postimage.org took them on the phone in portrait and thought I'd have to reorientate them but the worked straight off the bat.

 

[BarleyLegal]

Great post! You may have inspired my next brew, Jet Black Heart is delicious!

I've only tried one stout on the Grainfather before, this recipe: http://www.brewstore.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/midnight-stout.pdf

The brew went well but it only attenuated down to 1.022 (Expected FG 1.012). I mashed at 67°C which may have been too high, but not unusual for a stout. Interesting that Jet Blck Heart is mashed at 65°C, I suppose the body of the beer comes from the oats and the lactose. Did you hit target OG?

Good tips with the extra mash water. Did you take the initial volumes from the Grainfather calculator? Also good tip with the extra hops :thumb: I find the DIY Dog recipes a good starting point, but not always spot-on.

 

[Poochops]

Well here's the thing right, the recipe sheet states 45 ibu's and my hops schedule in the GF app worked out to just that, and as the flavour profile relies on the berry fruits of the sorachi, I added a good hit extra on the 5 min addition, I'm sure it'll turn out fine.
I did however just check the same hop schedule on brewers friend and it gave me 57ibu's which is a bit annoying haha. Then I looked on the brewdog retail site and it says the bottled version is 30 IBUs ffs! And in breweres friend the brewdog hop schedule from the recipe gives 25! God knows what's correct, I might be a little on the bitter side but hey ho! There's nothing I can do about it now.

It's supposed to have decadent full bodied richness and is an inky leviathan :lol: haha, that must be delivered by the wheat, oats and big pile of lactose added to the boil.

The grain bill was for 20 litres but I always overshoot so I worked on 23 and was still .005 over at 1.060. I've hit about 90%, give or take, 3 times now so next brew I'll reduce the base malt.

 

[BarleyLegal]

A hoppy stout is no bad thing, I'm sure it'll turn out grand.

I'm 9 brews down on the Grainfather now. For the first 3 brews I was blindly following recipes but massively overshooting the target OG. I now work on a 90% mash efficiency and scale back the grain bill accordingly, i'm pretty much always on target now or at least close enough!

Since most recipes are based on a 75% mash efficiency and i'm getting 90% I work out my scaling factor as 75/90 = 0.84

So if a recipe calls for 5kg pale malt I go 5 x 0.84 = 4.2kg.

Seems to work so far! I actually bought the micro pipework because a lot of my grain bills were coming in at <4kg total.

Anyway I'll be brewing Jet Black Heart in the near future :drink:

 

[Manxnorton]

Bloody great read pal.
Gets you motivated to do more brewing.
Tbh looking at the recipe builders programs and the IBU's and even the mash n sparge water I ignore now! Just by experience and the grains I use...most time hit on the exact volumes.
Mind took me (as well as others) to get the right volumes...under shot few times..over shot some times..
In all knowing my system either with small pipework or not, hasn't let me down.
Punk IPA in the next few days..still tinkering lol
the GF Is the dogs do dars!
Bri

 

[Sbond10]

Love the little book you've made of the recipes much easier than struggling through the actual book. Need to find a cheap printer.

Jet black heart is one of the few brewdog beers that I trually enjoy. Just annoying to buy 5g or scorchi axe

 

[Zephyr259]

Thanks for sharing the great brew day pics and timeline.

It's a brilliant beer, love the commercial version and I am sadly down to the last 2 bottles of my own brew, it was my first brew on the GF using the free kit I got from HBC. I had the same issue with the hops (used brewer's friend at the time), book says 47, hops give barely 20 then the website says 30... I adjusted it to 21g magnum at 60 then 9g sorachi at 15 for 30 IBUs as I figured 47 was a bit high.

Everyone loved it but you'd tell it apart from the BrewDog version, not quite as strong coffee flavours and not as bitter (maybe 47 is correct?) and no real hop flavour I could detect over all the dark malts. Mine also wasn't nearly as dark as the official version but that's not an issue. I've been told by the wife that I'm brewing it again, but might adjust the hops for more flavour. I originally thought it was a bit of a complicated recipe but now that I've done a bunch of reading on recipes it's not that bad, just split the crystal and roasted malts into two each for complexity and added some wheat, everything else is just what goes into a good (oatmeal milk) stout.

I look forward to hearing how yours turns out. Maybe I missed it but what yeast did you use? Wyeast 1056 as reccomended? I had to go with the WLP001 version as HBC doesn't stock Wyeast.

 

[Poochops]

Ah good to hear someone else has done it and see some feedback Zephyr and I'm glad it came out well. My Mrs enjoyed JBH on draught so I thought I'd give it a go, I do enjoy it myself too.
Interesting that you thought it needed more bitterness at 30, that's actually a bit of a relief as I'd not want mine to come over as too bitter ideally.

Now you saw in my previous post how the IBUs varied between brewers friend and the gf recipe calculators? Well I just inputted my hop schedule into the BF IBUs calculator, as opposed to into their recipe calculator and what do I get? 37 IBU! That's completely different to their recipe builder and that's using a similar wort boil gravity.
It's annoying me now! But on the other hand is more in line with where I would have expected it to be, both my magnum And sorachi were 11.1% aau's.

Anyway back to the brew, the flavour profile describes vanilla and berry fruits, and I thought there's no way with just 6.8g, hence I took matters into my own hands haha. I expect some hop flavour and aroma to break through with 20 and 20 late additions but we'll see. I can't wait to try it.
I used crossmyloof American pale ale yeast, it might attenuate a little high but again we'll see. Did you get the milky silkiness from the lactose?

 

[Zephyr259]

I wouldn't say it needs more than 30 IBU's but it's not as bitter as BD's version. Yeah IBU calculations are a massive pain, guest it's a case off stick with one and use it as a guide more than absolute values. It's hard to tell if the body came from the lactose or the wheat/oats, probably all 3. I didn't think of milk/cream when drinking it, but I don't with BD's either. Sometimes I wonder if my pallet isn't very sensitive, would make sense since my sense of smell isn't great.

 

[Poochops]

A hoppy stout is no bad thing, I'm sure it'll turn out grand.

I'm 9 brews down on the Grainfather now. For the first 3 brews I was blindly following recipes but massively overshooting the target OG. I now work on a 90% mash efficiency and scale back the grain bill accordingly, i'm pretty much always on target now or at least close enough!

Since most recipes are based on a 75% mash efficiency and i'm getting 90% I work out my scaling factor as 75/90 = 0.84

So if a recipe calls for 5kg pale malt I go 5 x 0.84 = 4.2kg.

Seems to work so far! I actually bought the micro pipework because a lot of my grain bills were coming in at <4kg total.

Anyway I'll be brewing Jet Black Heart in the near future :drink:

Thanks for this, it's really useful and I'll make sure next time to adjust the grain bill. I get annoyed when a brew comes out too strong now, ive got a garage bursting with loopy juice so I'm trying to brew normal strength beers lately. My GF efforts so far have all had to be diluted back I don't know why I didn't reduce the bill here but it looked light enough in the first place I guess grrrr :lol:

To be honest the GF recipe app I find pretty poor compared to Brewers friend or BeerSmith, I can input brewhouse efficiency but not mash as far as I can see, and it's not at all straightforward to adjust, certainly it's more awkward just to have a play about with. Brewhouse efficiency just confuses me, I'll have to do some reading!

 

[Poochops]

Bloody great read pal.
Gets you motivated to do more brewing.
Tbh looking at the recipe builders programs and the IBU's and even the mash n sparge water I ignore now! Just by experience and the grains I use...most time hit on the exact volumes.
Mind took me (as well as others) to get the right volumes...under shot few times..over shot some times..
In all knowing my system either with small pipework or not, hasn't let me down.
Punk IPA in the next few days..still tinkering lol
the GF Is the dogs do dars!
Bri

Thanks, yes I'm getting to understand these things slowly Bri, I've only done 3 Biab and 3 GF all grain brews and I'm learning a lot each time, I'm hoping my next brew will be just right, OG, volumes and IBUs I think I've got my eye in now!
Punk IPA is on my list, my problem right now is where to store it all, it's coming out my ears right now so no brews now till after our holiday early in September :whistle:

 

[Ajhutch]

I've seen a comment somewhere on here where someone had emailed Brewdog about their IBU calculations and hop weights. As I recall, the response was basically that their system gets much higher hop utilisation than a home brewer would, so its natural that you'd need to up the hop weight to get the same IBUs.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Clint]

...so equipment used can affect utilisation?

 

[Ajhutch]

...so equipment used can affect utilisation?

That's what I understand but I don't know the scientific background to it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Poochops]

Bottled this last night and pleased to say it tasted great in the trial jar and lo and behold the bitterness was just fine, perhaps a tad more that the commercial brew but fine nonetheless. It'll be interesting to see how it mellows in the bottle over the next month or so, I expect it'll be just ideal. Luscious chocolate notes, hint of fruitiness and really nice silken mouthfeel.
FG 1.024 so 5 points over the recipe, OG was 5 over as well so 4.7% abv. Blob on that! Bottled with 100g white sugar.

 

[foxy]

...so equipment used can affect utilisation?

Not equipment, but boil time for hop utilisation.