stuff that's bothering me about my tenth brew so far

[Buzzing]

This 10th brew is my 3rd AG and my first in my new 50l Stainless Steel Keggle, and the brew that has pushed my total volume of beer brewed beyond 200 Litres.

I brewed a Bohemian Pilsner using the BIAG method.

The grainbill is as follows :

2.7kg Pale malt
2.2kg Pilsner malt
100g Wheat malt

I achieved a 1.051 SG, which according to the Beersmith print out I got with the AG Kit, is spot on if a 75% efficiency is assumed.

The thing that bothers me a bit is mainly the colour.

Now I know a Pilsner malt yields light brews to begin with and mixed with a Pale malt, a very light coloured brew is expected, but what I got was realy realy light.

Looking at the colour Font chart on the right hand side of the screen, this one is in the range of the last row, where the rest of my brews were in the 2nd last row.

How will this change colour during fermentation, and will this colour change during maturation ?

Hope this one doesn't end up a "thin" beer lacking good mouthfeel. I'm beginning to think I should have used a bit of crystal malt ?

 

[phettebs]

A true BoPils (ala Urquell) uses a triple decoction mash process and longer (2 hour) boil that give the wort its rich golden color. The color won't change during fermentation. I wouldn't worry about it. Let the yeast do its thing and then see what you think. You can adjust the recipe from there next time to make the beer you want to see.

 

[Buzzing]

I have no idea if this was adequate, but I stepped mashed like this :

20 min @ 40`C
40 min @ 60`C
60 min @ 70`C
8 min @ 75`C

The boil time was 1 hr, and at the end of the hr when I saw it was light in colour, all the hops were added so I didn't want to overboil them and end up with bitterness/aroma problems so was left with very little choice. The alc %, bitterness and aroma at least is on the mark.

The colour that I can see through the plastic portion of the tap of my fermenter shows that it might be one shade or so lighter than this Pale Lager pic I found :

It is ends up like that, I'd drink it ! :drink:
If it ends up too light in colour, I'll just have to drink it with the lights off ! :drink:


It just goes to show how important colour really is and it seems that the darker variants of the dark side of brewing is alot more forgiving than the lighter ones.

 

[phettebs]

I think you'll be just fine. Just make a note for next time. But yes, we do tend to drink with our eyes, right or wrong!

Do you have a HERMS or did you just use water infusions to reach your various rest temps? A true decoction will darken the wort because of Malliard reactions from boiling it along with the grain. It's not really necessary anymore but a lot of the German breweries still do it. Or claim to do it.

 

[Buzzing]

Still a 1.035 Mild Man here. What does HERMS stand for ?

This was a Brew In A Bag type set-up, so stepping the temps and rests are easy.

 

[Buzzing]

I bottled this brew after 3 weeks in the primary and tweaked the colour a wee-bit.

I normall make on a priming solution, as per batch priming, but instead use 15ml per planned bottle with the total amount of sugars for the specific CO2 percentage dissolved in the solution, and then dispense 15ml per bottle just before bottling from the primary using a foot-valve type arrangement.

This time, I used 50% DME and 50% brown sugar for my fermentables and whilst I got that to a boil in order to sanitize, I circulated the solution through a sieve holding a couple of grams of crystal malt. This made the priming solution a beautiful copper colour and after boiling. it was left to cool down.

Priming and bottling went ahead as per normal.

The last bit, that was less than a full bottle, I bottled in a see-through PET bottle and got about 220ml in it. I then used 7.5ml of priming solution (as the 15ml is for a 440ml Grolsch swing-top bottle) to prime it. This will become my sample to test when the carbonation is OK. Also, it allowed my to peek at the colour, and the addition of the copper priming solution definately adjusted the over-all colour with a shade or two from what it was and perhaps a little bit darker than the pic of the pale lager below.

Happy with the outcome of my colour-tweak experiment, now it's just the wait . . .