Today's brew was a user upper brew and the
ingredients I had lent itself to a Marzen / Oktoberfest so seeing as I'm a couple of months early, (and I also don't have a cave to lager it in) I'm going to call it:
AG#23 Januarzen - User Upper Brew
Brewfather: Link here
Märzen
6.2% / 13.7 °P
All Grain
BrewZilla 35L - 11LitreBatch
70% efficiency
Batch Volume:
12 L
Boil Time:
40 min
Mash Water:
17.46 L
Total Water:
17.46 L
Boil Volume:
15.21 L
Pre-Boil Gravity:
1050
Vitals
Original Gravity:
1056
Final Gravity:
1009
IBU (Tinseth):
19
BU/GU:
0.34
Colour:
31 EBC
Mash
Temperature —
65 °C —
720 min
Malts (3.18 kg)
1.42 kg (44.7%) — Crisp Dark Munich Malt — Grain — 44 EBC
900 g (28.3%) — Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner — Grain — 4 EBC
500 g (15.7%) — Weyermann Dark Wheat Malt — Grain — 13.8 EBC
360 g (11.3%) — Simpsons Aromatic Malt — Grain — 60 EBC
Hops (28 g)
8 g (13 IBU) — Northern Brewer 9.5% — Boil —
40 min
12 g (3 IBU) — Hersbrucker 2.75% — Boil —
15 min
8 g (3 IBU) — Saaz 3.4% 3.4% — Boil —
15 min
Miscs
5.5 ml — CRS/AMS —
Mash
1 g — Canning Salt (NaCl) —
Mash
1 items — Protafloc —
Boil —
15 min
2 g — Yeast Nutrients —
Boil —
10 min
Yeast
60 billion cells — Fermentis
W-34/70 Saflager Lager 83%
2.1 L starter
206 g DME / 252 g LME
100 billion cells overbuild: 0.6 L (29%)
Pitch Amount: 1.5 L
348 billion yeast cells
1.54 million cells / ml / °P
Fermentation
Primary —
16 °C —
14 days
Notes / thoughts / musings
Ingredients - A couple of you suggested ditching the brown sugar that I was originally going to put in this one. It turns out that I had more grain than my electronic inventory thought I had, so I was easily able to use the grain up and get more bang for my buck without the need for sugar. I think I was also able to increase my batch by half a litre or so.
Mashing - I'm trying to speed up my brewdays, or split them so that it doesn't take up the whole day. I read
another thread on here that talks about overnight mashing, which I have not done before. So on Friday evening I started off a standard, single infusion mash off at 66c ish degrees, and when it finished, I wrapped the 'Zilla up in a sleeping bag and set it to 50-odd degrees c overnight.
Next morning I attempted to get the boil done, but it wasn't ready before I had to pop out, so it got up to 97c and by the time I got back had dropped to 76c. Standard boil then with boil additions and completed mid-morning. When I pumped the numbers in to Brewfather it was giving me an 82% BHE (up from <70%) with 1.5 litres more into the FV and an expected ABV of 6.3% up for 6.2%, so an interesting experiment. Let's hope it tastes ok.
Yeast - I overbuilt, what was supposed to be, 150bn cells when I brewed my
Peroni Gran Riserva clone back in October. After three months in the fridge, I ended up with about 20ml of compacted yeast slurry. Multiply this by the 3bn/ml that I've found cited on a couple of sites (which of course may be way off) and that's 60bn cells to pitch in a starter. Using Brewfather yeast calculator and accounting for another 100bn overbuild, I pitched the original 60ml into a 2.2L starter for a couple of days (it's actually still spinning but should be good to pitch tomorrow) I did have a
sulphury smell but further research leads me to believe that this is nothing out of the ordinary, and moreso for lager yeasts. Every day is a school day.
And on the yeast starter front, I was wondering whether I should cold crash and decant off the starter or just pitch it complete. Well,
Brulosophy to the rescue. It would appear that, on that evidence, just pitching the whole thing is not detectable. So I'm going to do that as it seems I dont need to cold crash and I will end up with even more beer! Result!
Edit: I'm also seeing reports on Brulosophy that W34/70 works well at ale temps, so I'm going to run this at 17c
Cheers
