Brew Day What Have Ya Got - 2023

[Hoppy81]

22 minutes ago, kmar92 said:

Wow, what happened when it did boil? Hopefully it was not a flood.

It was a controlled boil haha, no overflow.

[RDT2]

Brew day two days ago had my first crack at making a Belgian Dubbel all went well made some Belgian candy as well which was cool! I put in the hop spider during the boil which worked well. Next time will try to make it darker but didn’t want to push my luck with burning it! Belgian candy syrup is so expensive from the shop. Made a starter with WLP Belgian strong and harvested some for another brew! Pretty excited about this one! Made it to 14 litres so will put some in a small keg and bottle the rest to age! Should be around the 7% mark. Recipe is based off David Heaths recipe but scaled down!

IMG_6381.heic IMG_6382.heic IMG_6383.heic IMG_6385.heic

[stquinto]

Looks like it’ll be a blinder

[stquinto]

Big brew day today. A double batch of Duvel, followed by a 25l batch of Black Sheep Ale. 6 hours in and I’m halfway through the BSA mash….

Used the popcorn machine to make torrified wheat

[Classic Brewing Co]

Barrel Makers Pale Ale AG on the to do list in a day or two, recipe calls for only 20gm POR for 60-minute boil, but I am thinking I will do a mixture of POR & Eclipse as I want a hoppy beer.

 

[Classic Brewing Co]

5 hours ago, Classic Brewing Co said:

Barrel Makers Pale Ale AG on the to do list in a day or two, recipe calls for only 20gm POR for 60-minute boil, but I am thinking I will do a mixture of POR & Eclipse as I want a hoppy beer.

 

@Shamus O'Sean I have a question for you  re: mash temperature with the above grain bill, the owner of the brew shop suggested 66c x 1 hour, given that it is mostly Coopers Pilsner Malt, would you agree with that?

I have been mashing at mainly 68c, & my settings on Brewzilla are set at that, do you think it would make a difference?

Also I  wouldn't have thought 1 hop addition,  in this case 20gm POR x 60 minutes would suffice for a Pale Ale.

Thanking you I'm anticipation. 

Cheers Phil  

[Greenyinthewestofsydney]

On 10/14/2023 at 9:08 PM, RDT2 said:

Brew day two days ago had my first crack at making a Belgian Dubbel all went well made some Belgian candy as well which was cool! I put in the hop spider during the boil which worked well. Next time will try to make it darker but didn’t want to push my luck with burning it! Belgian candy syrup is so expensive from the shop. Made a starter with WLP Belgian strong and harvested some for another brew! Pretty excited about this one! Made it to 14 litres so will put some in a small keg and bottle the rest to age! Should be around the 7% mark. Recipe is based off David Heaths recipe but scaled down!

IMG_6381.heic 1.45 MB · 2 downloads IMG_6382.heic 1.11 MB · 3 downloads IMG_6383.heic 1010.86 kB · 3 downloads IMG_6385.heic 1.44 MB · 1 download

My opinion here mate but after doing 2 or 3 candi sugar/inverted sugar batches and the pain of getting baking trays and stuff I read about just leaving it as a syrup instead. Just don't let it go to hard crack. Cut the gas and pour in some water. I pour in 200ml for 500gm and 400ml for 1kg of sugar. Keeps it a nice easy to pour consistency.

[RDT2]

4 hours ago, Greenyinthewestofsydney said:

My opinion here mate but after doing 2 or 3 candi sugar/inverted sugar batches and the pain of getting baking trays and stuff I read about just leaving it as a syrup instead. Just don't let it go to hard crack. Cut the gas and pour in some water. I pour in 200ml for 500gm and 400ml for 1kg of sugar. Keeps it a nice easy to pour consistency.

Cheers mate I just chucked it into my hop spider and dissolved ok without burning etc

[Shamus O'Sean]

10 hours ago, Classic Brewing Co said:

@Shamus O'Sean I have a question for you  re: mash temperature with the above grain bill, the owner of the brew shop suggested 66c x 1 hour, given that it is mostly Coopers Pilsner Malt, would you agree with that?

I have been mashing at mainly 68c, & my settings on Brewzilla are set at that, do you think it would make a difference?

Also I  wouldn't have thought 1 hop addition,  in this case 20gm POR x 60 minutes would suffice for a Pale Ale.

Thanking you I'm anticipation. 

Cheers Phil  

Hi Phil

When I saw the recipe you posted, I wondered how you were going with Brewfather.  It will give you a good guide to the answers you seek.  I chucked your recipe into Brewfather.  Now I know what I am doing with it, but it took me just under 10 minutes.

You could do either 66°C or 68°C as your mash temperature.  The difference would be minimal.  

• 66°C  FG  1.010  ABV 5.3%
• 68°C  FG  1.011  ABV 5.1%

20g PoR should get you around 20 IBU.  Still around a lighter Pale Ale range.  You could add say 20g extra PoR with 5 minutes to go in the boil for another 5-10 IBU.  If you are hunting an American Pale Ale, you will need 30-50 IBU so 20g PoR at 60, 15 and 5 minutes.

I would be happy with recipe just as per the recipe sheet.  Happy brewing.

[Classic Brewing Co]

14 minutes ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

Hi Phil

When I saw the recipe you posted, I wondered how you were going with Brewfather.  It will give you a good guide to the answers you seek.  I chucked your recipe into Brewfather.  Now I know what I am doing with it, but it took me just under 10 minutes.

You could do either 66°C or 68°C as your mash temperature.  The difference would be minimal.  

• 66°C  FG  1.010  ABV 5.3%
• 68°C  FG  1.011  ABV 5.1%

20g PoR should get you around 20 IBU.  Still around a lighter Pale Ale range.  You could add say 20g extra PoR with 5 minutes to go in the boil for another 5-10 IBU.  If you are hunting an American Pale Ale, you will need 30-50 IBU so 20g PoR at 60, 15 and 5 minutes.

I would be happy with recipe just as per the recipe sheet.  Happy brewing.

Great, Shamus Thank You.

I am still struggling with BrewFather, not so much the program or the technology, just the order of input to determine a full recipe if that makes sense.

Each time I have entered data it looks right but the figures don't make sense & I have ended up with too much sparge water.

The last 4 or 5 recipes I have done manually have mainly been Pale/IPA/XPA & I have pretty much followed this format manually.

For this new recipe I will mash at 66c & I will follow your advice with the 2nd late hop addition.

Thank you so much for your reply & help.

Cheers

Phil.

[Aussiekraut]

A variation of my Helles mashing away in the new BrewZilla. This machine is a strange beast. Of the mash temp drops to hysteresis temp, in this case 62.7 and the heater kicks in, the temp in the display runs up to 76C in about 20 seconds and then drops down to the correct temp again over the next minute or so. Anybody seen this behavior with a Gen 4? It surely isn’t heating up to the temp, only the temperature sensor goes bonkers.

[Shamus O'Sean]

I brewed a Hazy Pale Ale yesterday.  It was a brew to get rid of a few bags of hops I have had in the freezer for a while.  Hopefully it turns out okay because I only picked the hops for what I had rather than because they are a classic combination.

I did my usual 30 litre batch made up of 22 litres of concentrated wort, that I dilute with 8 litres of water in the fermenter. 

However, this was my first batch where I had corrected both my boil off rate (2.2 L/hr from 3 L/hr) and grain absorption rate (0.95 L/kg from 0.8 L/kg).  Previously, my volumes and gravities during my brewing process were a bit off.  However, the final volume and Original Gravity usually worked out pretty much as expected.  Therefore, I did not really have a reason to change anything.  Plus I did not know what variables were causing the issues.  

I recently put some of my brewing data into a spreadsheet, to see if I could find any issues/patterns.  The main thing I noticed was my boil off rate was always less than 3 L/hr.  So I took an average of the last 10 brews and found it was 2.2 L/hr.  Although 3 L/hr is the default for the Grainfather G30, I run mine at the end of a long extension lead.  I figure the lead is dropping the power marginally.  Although it is enough power to get to the boil, it is not as powerful as being plugged directly into the wall socket.

The other variable I got some data on was the grain absorption rate.  My recent Party-Gyle brew helped me adjust this item.  Using the mash volume volume and the total volume I drained out of the malt pipe, plus the weight of grains, I calculated a revised grain absorption rate of 0.95 L/kg.  Again 0.8 L/kg is the default.  However, maybe I crush my grains a little bit finer than "standard", so they absorb more liquid.

Not overly surprisingly my brew values were very close to the calculated amounts in BrewFather.  It is likely that the previous variables cancelled each other out somewhat so the final volume and OG were still pretty close.  It does make you feel more confident when your mid-brew measurements are closer to the calculated values. 

• VARIABLE               RECIPE      BATCH
• Pre-Boil Volume      27.88         27.80
• Pre-Boil Gravity       1.061        1.064
• Post-Boil Volume     26.04        25.80
• Post-Boil Gravity      1.068        1.069
• Original Gravity       1.050        1.050
• Boil off L/hr              2.2             2.4
• Fermenter Volume    22              22.2  (before top-up)
• Fermenter Top-up       8                 8
• Total Fermenter Vol  30              30.4  (not sure what happened here, shouldn't it be 30.2?)
• Predicted ABV           5.1%
• Mash Efficiency          84%          87%
• Brewhouse Efficiency 76%          78%
• IBU                              19
• BU:GU Ratio               0.38          0.37
• EBC                              7

INGREDIENTS

• 2.4kg Coopers Ale Malt (38%)
• 2.4kg Gladfield German Pilsner (38%)
• 1kg Coopers Wheat Malt (16%)
• 500g Quick Oats (8%)
• 14g Vic Secret 50 minute boil (16 IBU)
• 10g each: Cascade, Centennial & Simcoe 20 minute hopstand at 80°C (3 IBU)
• 44g Simcoe, 37g Vic Secret, 32g Centennial & 31g Cascade - Dry hop
• Lallemand Verdant IPA yeast

Boil additions

Starting transfer to the fermenter

Half way through the transfer

Tucked away in the fermentation fridge at 20°C

[Aussiekraut]

21 hours ago, Aussiekraut said:

A variation of my Helles mashing away in the new BrewZilla. This machine is a strange beast. Of the mash temp drops to hysteresis temp, in this case 62.7 and the heater kicks in, the temp in the display runs up to 76C in about 20 seconds and then drops down to the correct temp again over the next minute or so. Anybody seen this behavior with a Gen 4? It surely isn’t heating up to the temp, only the temperature sensor goes bonkers.
 

Ok, I think I have an explanation for the odd behaviour and also learnt a valuable lesson. After the mash-out, when I tried to lift out the malt tube with the grain, it was VERY heavy. Turns out, I had about 15cm of liquid on top of the top plate, which explains the excess weight. The plate had clogged up with plenty of gunk floating around and pretty much stopped the flow of liquid through the grain bed. As a result, I had very little liquid below, which heated up a helluva lot faster than it would have and thus, while the heater switched off when needed, the temperature just kept climbing. So, note to self, don't use the top plate and stir the grain every now and then.

I also messed up with the water. For some reason, I not only used 1l less mash water as I had planned, I also used 3l less sparge water. Don't ask me why. I haven't got the slightest clue what made me do this and after 2 test runs with only water, I had a boil-off of 3l, I seem to have had closer to 5l. Part of this is possibly that while the program finishes at the end of the boil, it doesn't turn off the system, so it was keeping the temp up @100C, while I was whirlpooling, leading to another 20 minutes of boil, adding a litre to the boil-off. This meant all in all, I ended up with 5l less wort than planned. Because I have plenty of reserve planned in, I still managed to fill the cube though, although OG will be skewed. Pre-boil SG was spot on but I guess only because I already was some litres down. The mash certainly wasn't particularly efficient.

It'll take me a while to get used to the new system, that's for sure. On a positive note, I may be able to squeeze in another brew day during the week as I blew 2 kegs over the weekend and thus have room for new beer  

[ben 10]

Recipe: beach side saison
Brewer: Grumpy
Style: Saison


Recipe Specifications
--------------------------

Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 L   
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 8.9 EBC
Estimated IBU: 31.1 IBUs


Ingredients:
------------
Amt              Name                                             Type          #          %/IBU         Volume        
3.00 kg          Pale Malt, Ale (Barrett Burston) (5.9 EBC)       Grain         1          60.0 %        1.96 L        
2.00 kg          Wheat Malt (Barrett Burston) (3.0 EBC)           Grain         2          40.0 %        1.30 L        
20.00 g          Sorachi Ace [11.70 %] - Boil 60.0 min            Hop           3          31.1 IBUs     -             
1.0 pkg          Yeast                                            Yeast         4          -             -             

Edited October 25, 2023 by do not consume

[RDT2]

13 minutes ago, do not consume said:

Recipe: beach side saison
Brewer: Grumpy
Style: Saison


Recipe Specifications
--------------------------

Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 L   
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 8.9 EBC
Estimated IBU: 31.1 IBUs


Ingredients:
------------
Amt              Name                                             Type          #          %/IBU         Volume        
3.00 kg          Pale Malt, Ale (Barrett Burston) (5.9 EBC)       Grain         1          60.0 %        1.96 L        
2.00 kg          Wheat Malt (Barrett Burston) (3.0 EBC)           Grain         2          40.0 %        1.30 L        
20.00 g          Sorachi Ace [11.70 %] - Boil 60.0 min            Hop           3          31.1 IBUs     -             
1.0 pkg          Yeast                                            Yeast         4          -             -             

Your back! What yeast you going to use?

[ben 10]

7 minutes ago, RDT2 said:

Your back! What yeast you going to use?

MJ French Saison

[ben 10]

Second brew...

Recipe: Ella Saison
Style: Saison


Recipe Specifications
--------------------------

Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 L   
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 8.9 EBC
Estimated IBU: 33.2 IBUs

------------
Amt              Name                                             Type          #          %/IBU         Volume        
3.00 kg          Pale Malt, Ale (Barrett Burston) (5.9 EBC)       Grain         1          60.0 %        1.96 L        
2.00 kg          Wheat Malt (Barrett Burston) (3.0 EBC)           Grain         2          40.0 %        1.30 L        
10.00 g          Pride of Ringwood [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min      Hop           3          13.3 IBUs     -             
30.00 g          Ella [16.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool  20.0 min, 90.2 Hop           4          19.9 IBUs     -             
1.0 pkg          French Saison Ale (Mangrove Jack's #M29)         Yeast         5          -             -             



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Shamus O'Sean]

@do not consume, it would be great to see some brew day photos in your new set-up

[Cheap Charlie]

Today I'm having a go at a Duvel clone. It's a nice beer, but at over $150 a carton I can't afford it

This is inspired by @stquinto's clone recipe which is tweaked from the How to Brew like a Monk book. It's an interesting book for those that are curious. Unfortunately I couldn't get my hands on any Belgian ale yeast, so Voss Kveik will have to suffice. So, not exactly a Belgian Golden Ale, but whatever This is my adaptation of the recipe.

• 7kg pale malt
• 18% dextrose
• Styrian Goldings, Saaz
• 25l batch
• Voss Kveik

This will be brewed at room temperature, current ambbient temperatures here in Brissy are 15º-28º. I can't lager it either, as the brew fridge is in use for another lager, so it will be bottled and stored. Expected stats: OG 1.076 FG 1.011 IBU 23.5 EBC 9.3 ABV 8.5%

It will be an ale, but obviously absolutely nothing like the real Duvel

 

 

[ChairmanDrew]

Threw on a can of Cooper's "lager* today, 22l with 500ml hop tea, rakau 25g. BE2 for fermentables. Probably do 25g dry hop of moutere later. OG 1.035 (according to my not super accurate hydrometer).

 

[Brauhaus Fritz]

AG Brew Nr.4. Another German Classic, an “Alt” AG kit from Hop&Grain

[Otto Von Blotto]

Czech pilsner today, the club was playing ambrose today so I decided to brew instead. All went well except the grain bag had a couple of small tears in the bottom of it so I'll have to replace it before the next brew day. It didn't look like much if any of the grain actually escaped it but still, they're only likely to get bigger if I keep using it. 

[stquinto]

On 11/3/2023 at 12:17 AM, Cheap Charlie said:

Today I'm having a go at a Duvel clone. It's a nice beer, but at over $150 a carton I can't afford it

This is inspired by @stquinto's clone recipe which is tweaked from the How to Brew like a Monk book. It's an interesting book for those that are curious. Unfortunately I couldn't get my hands on any Belgian ale yeast, so Voss Kveik will have to suffice. So, not exactly a Belgian Golden Ale, but whatever This is my adaptation of the recipe.

• 7kg pale malt
• 18% dextrose
• Styrian Goldings, Saaz
• 25l batch
• Voss Kveik

This will be brewed at room temperature, current ambbient temperatures here in Brissy are 15º-28º. I can't lager it either, as the brew fridge is in use for another lager, so it will be bottled and stored. Expected stats: OG 1.076 FG 1.011 IBU 23.5 EBC 9.3 ABV 8.5%

It will be an ale, but obviously absolutely nothing like the real Duvel

 

 

Looking good 

Although I can go across the neighbouring France and get a six pack for about 10€ I still would like to prefect this brew.

I had a thread opened about the brew ending up a bit sweet, Mitch and AK suggested it was the taste of the alcohol , and to make sure to up the IBU a bit to compensate. I reckon it's a valid observation. I have toned the sweetness down with lactic acid as per their suggestion: it works pretty well but so far I've only done it in the glass, I wouldn't want to mess up a whole keg if I got the dosage wrong. 

Hope it works well for you, it is a lovely drop 

[stquinto]

This is my one, about 4 months in the keg. Looks beautiful (if I may be so presumptuous) but still had a lingering sweetness. A bit sickly after about 3 glasses, probably not a bad thing

I have a double batch cold crashing, I reckon I’ll dry hop afterwards. I tried lactic acid, it works fine, but I reckon it’s better on a per-glass basis

Edited November 4, 2023 by stquinto
Forgot the darned photos…

[Cheap Charlie]

11 hours ago, stquinto said:

I can go across the neighbouring France and get a six pack for about 10€

Here it costs $10 for a single 330ml bottle at the bottle shop! So I bought a couple to try and was not disappointed.

11 hours ago, stquinto said:

Hope it works well for you, it is a lovely drop

Cheers mate, I was a bit worried about chucking in a single packet of voss into a 1.070 brew, but this morning it is chugging along nicely. I will let it spend quite some time in the bottle to mature.

11 hours ago, stquinto said:

up the IBU

Mine is a bit low, but hey, first attempt at it. I will have to wait and see.