Brew Day!! Watcha' got, eh!? 2015

[Canadian Eh!L]

Brew Day!! yesterday.

 

Lusty's Mosaic Amber Ale

 

 

A few things of note for this one. This brew I used a 2:1 ratio of RO to tap water to get my annoyingly high HCO3 levels down to something a little more manageable. I also have ended my experiment with No-chilling and used my immersion chiller for the first time now that it's not freezing here in the GWN anymore. It worked well at chilling the 10 gallons down to 23C in about 15mins.

 

The day wasn't with mishap, though. It would seem that I forgot to tighten the hose clamps on my immersion chill and it leaked (sprayed) 5-10 extra litres of water into the kettle. Not a total fail, though. I managed to come away with 1.046 OG instead of the intended 1.052. Oh well!

[Beerlust]

Hi Chad.

 

I just wanted to wish you well with the ferment of the brew. I know you were aiming for higher, but don't sweat your OG being lower. The 1.046 you quoted is exactly the OG of my first brewing of this recipe. With the 1318 yeast, mine attenuated to around 1.013, leaving a beer of approx. 4.4% ABV in the keg. Depending on your attenuation, trust me when I say, it won't lack for flavour & drinks beautifully at that level.

 

What did you think of the Mosaic hops?

 

I'm guessing you had a good whiff each time you threw some into the boil?

 

Cheers,

 

Lusty.

[Canadian Eh!L]

I just wanted to wish you well with the ferment of the brew. I know you were aiming for higher' date=' but don't sweat your OG being lower. The 1.046 you quoted is exactly the OG of my first brewing of this recipe. With the 1318 yeast, mine attenuated to around 1.013, leaving a beer of approx. 4.4% ABV in the keg. Depending on your attenuation, trust me when I say, it won't lack for flavour & drinks beautifully at that level.

 

What did you think of the Mosaic hops? [img']unsure[/img]

 

I'm guessing you had a good whiff each time you threw some into the boil?

 

Hey Lusty,

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I kinda' thought your OG on the original recipe was around the mid 40's SG judging by your posted ABV%. I'm not too stressed about that part. What bothers me is the dilution of the hoppiness. I hope it is still present enough to be balanced.

[newbrew1525229361]

hello all,

 

today i tasted my mexican cerveza after been in the bottle for 10 days - it seems under carbonated even with 2 carbonation drops in the 750 ml bottle.

 

Will it improve if i let it stay longer in the bottle? the beer is completely clear with a nice head, and tastes really good - but what could cause the undercarbonation?

 

appreciate your comments/advice

[568ml]

Nothing because I have reached peak home brew. No more space for the full bottles and no more empty bottles. Along with the beer that I got brewed needs a week to two weeks to condition fully.

 

I know that it is not much work brewing, about three hours every fortnight. But at least a full FV feels a bit like I'm doing something with my hobby. E.g checking at the temp, see the little yeasties moving about in the FV and looking at the bobbles bobbling, instead of sitting around twiddling thumbs.

[Otto Von Blotto]

Just give it more time in the bottle, newbrew. That's most likely all that's causing it and/or the temperature the bottles are stored at.

 

 

Nothing because I have reached peak home brew. No more space for the full bottles and no more empty bottles. Along with the beer that I got brewed needs a week to two weeks to condition fully.

 

I know that it is not much work brewing' date=' about three hours every fortnight. But at least a full FV feels a bit like I'm doing something with my hobby. E.g checking at the temp, see the little yeasties moving about in the FV and looking at the bobbles bobbling, instead of sitting around twiddling thumbs. [/quote']

 

That novelty wears off after a while, or at least it did for me. Now I just chuck the FV in the brew fridge and forget it for a week. I check it once or twice after pitching yeast just to make sure it's started but after that it's left alone. Its temp is displayed on the controller on top of the fridge, but it only fluctuates 0.3C anyway.

 

That said, I still love brewing. In fact, I probably enjoy it more now than I did when I first started, because I have all my processes worked out now, and can just sit back and relax instead of worrying about whether the temp is right or the brew is fermenting or whatever other things newbies worry about. I only brew all grain these days and brew days often go all day, with a few beers had and maybe a mate or two over as well. The actual process of creating the wort from scratch is what I love most about it. The rest of it takes care of itself.

 

Cheers

 

Kelsey

[newbrew1525229361]

ok thanks Otto von Blotto - will give it more time and try to be patient

 

by the way - the temp at which the bottles are stored is 22C = 71F

[Beerlust]

...What bothers me is the dilution of the hoppiness. I hope it is still present enough to be balanced.

It shouldn't cause any issues with the hoppiness of the beer' date=' provided you still only ferment [b']21[/b] litres. The only thing that has been affected is a slight dilution of malt character resulting from the 5 litres of water added post boil reducing your expected SG of 1.052 down to 1.046.

 

Extract & kit based brewers (like myself), generally produce a CBW (Concentrated Brew Wort) of high gravity from a combination of our reduced volume boils & pure extract additions added directly into the FV, then dilute that down with water to obtain our starting Original Gravity. You've simply done the same thing here Chad, but with a much larger boil volume to start with.

 

The outcome of a hop schedule is always structured & balanced against the eventual ferment volume.

 

Cheers & good luck with the brew,

 

Lusty.

[peekaboo_jones]

Easter Sunday I put down:

 

O'l Brown Dog (similar) - 23L

1.7kg Coopers Dark ale can

1.7kg Amber liquid malt extract

500g light dry malt

300g caramalt

200g crystal wheat

25g Citra - 10min boil

25g Citra - flameout steep

** 50g Amarillo - dry hop ** unsure how long to hop for and what day # (was thinking day 4 for 3 days then remove but open to suggestions)

Fresh packet of US-05

OG = 1058

 

English Bitter - 21L

1.7kg Coopers English Bitter

1kg light dry malt

150g Caramalt

100g Chocolate Malt

200g Carapils

Coopers kit yeast

OG = 1048

 

I'm unsure of hops for the English Bitter, I only have the following:

Santinam, Palisade, Perle, Kohatu, Amarillo, Cascade & Citra.

 

**Maybe 25g Palisade and 25 Perle/Santinam? or just Palisade/nothing?

 

All grains were cold steeped for 24 hours, first time for this as I previously did hot stove steeps but trying to cut down overall time.

Didn't get it done much quicker overall but this step was. I wish I had a gas stove, it would be much easier and could feel more confident leaving steeping whilst cleaning/preparing the other bits. My electric sucks, requires so much time to monitor.

[Otto Von Blotto]

...What bothers me is the dilution of the hoppiness. I hope it is still present enough to be balanced.

It shouldn't cause any issues with the hoppiness of the beer' date=' provided you still only ferment [b']21[/b] litres. The only thing that has been affected is a slight dilution of malt character resulting from the 5 litres of water added post boil reducing your expected SG of 1.052 down to 1.046.

 

Extract & kit based brewers (like myself), generally produce a CBW (Concentrated Brew Wort) of high gravity from a combination of our reduced volume boils & pure extract additions added directly into the FV, then dilute that down with water to obtain our starting Original Gravity. You've simply done the same thing here Chad, but with a much larger boil volume to start with.

 

The outcome of a hop schedule is always structured & balanced against the eventual ferment volume.

 

Cheers & good luck with the brew,

 

Lusty.

 

It would have diluted the hoppiness, but because as you point out it would have diluted the malt character as well, it shouldn't affect the overall beer too much I wouldn't think. It should still be balanced.

 

I agree that he's essentially done a big version of a partial, but the difference here is, the malt and hop schedule was designed for a smaller volume than was eventually ended up with, which would reduce the impact of all the ingredients slightly, rather than a concentrated wort being designed to be diluted later to a certain bigger volume to achieve the required OG, IBUs etc.

It was meant to be a 40 litre batch; adding another 5 litres has effectively turned it into a 45 litre batch. The hop schedule was designed for 40 litres of wort, not 45 litres. Even if he only ferments 40 litres (or 30 or 20 or 10 litres), it will still retain the characteristics of the unintended dilution of the original 40 litres of finished wort.

 

Cheers

 

Kelsey

 

[Otto Von Blotto]

Didn't get it done much quicker overall but this step was. I wish I had a gas stove' date=' it would be much easier and could feel more confident leaving steeping whilst cleaning/preparing the other bits. My electric sucks, requires so much time to monitor.[/quote']

 

You don't need to monitor the temperatures like a hawk when steeping specialty grains, assuming that's what you're referring to there. All you need to do is heat it to 70C and dump in the grains, pop the lid on and leave them there for half an hour or whatever. Specialty grains don't need to be mashed, so monitoring the temperature isn't imperative like it is if you are mashing base malts and other malts that need mashing.

[Beerlust]

I agree that he's essentially done a big version of a partial' date=' but the difference here is, the malt and hop schedule was designed for a smaller volume than was eventually ended up with, which would reduce the impact of all the ingredients slightly, rather than a concentrated wort being designed to be diluted later to a certain bigger volume to achieve the required OG, IBUs etc.

It was meant to be a 40 litre batch; adding another 5 litres has effectively turned it into a 45 litre batch. The hop schedule was designed for 40 litres of wort, not 45 litres. Even if he only ferments 40 litres (or 30 or 20 or 10 litres), it will still retain the characteristics of the unintended dilution of the original 40 litres of finished wort.[/quote']

Chad has already increased the hopping levels from my base 21 litre recipe to produce a wort of similar numbers @ 40 litres. Provided Chad doesn't ferment the increased volume of 45 litres & still only ferments 40 litres, he'll lose nothing from the hop additions. Whether you boil your hops in 10 litres of wort or 40 litres of wort, Tinseth IBU calculation remains the same. Only when you begin to alter final ferment volume & not adjust hopping levels accordingly, does this begin to diminish the impact of the hops.

 

Cheers,

 

Lusty.

[Otto Von Blotto]

I disagree in this instance. Calculating hop additions to achieve a certain IBU number in 40 litres of wort, which is then diluted to 45 litres, is obviously going to affect the IBUs. You can't just somehow separate the offending 5 litres of water from the wort and remove it and send the wort back to its original state, unless it was re boiled, and that would probably negatively affect things anyway. What has effectively happened is that regardless of how much is fermented, the batch size has increased by 5 litres, diluting the effect of all ingredients somewhat. If 5 litres is discarded, it's actually 5 litres of the 1046 SG wort being discarded. It's a bit like making a kit brew, they're all designed to have a certain level of bitterness in 23 litres, but this level changes depending on the volume.

 

Case in point, my pils recipe works out at 40IBU and OG 1049 in 25 litres. If I change nothing about it except increase the batch size by 5 litres, which is the same as Chad's accidental adding of 5 litres of water, it drops the IBUs to 34, as well as the OG by about 8 points. If I was to ferment 10 litres of it, it would still be 34IBU and OG 1041 or whatever.

 

When you make your concentrated worts, the IBU's would be WAY higher than they end up when it is eventually diluted with water in the FV, in much the same way as hopped kits are designed.

 

In saying all that though, this dilution effect shouldn't put the beer out of balance at the end of the day.

[Beerlust]

Hi again Kelsey.

 

In your brewing software/calculator, "Batch size" = Ferment volume. That is the amount of wort you plan to ferment. Provided Chad still only ferments 40 of the 45 litres he's ended up with, his hopping influence will not be affected.

 

Sure Chad has 45 litres of wort now, but that doesn't necessarily mean he has to ferment that volume.

 

I really can't clarify it any more than that.

 

Cheers,

 

Lusty.

[antiphile]

Sorry, my Horny One.

 

With my reading of it, I have to agree with the Blotter. Yiu're right that usually post boil volume minus deadspace is what normally goes into the fermenter and is known as Batch size or knockout. But if water is added post boil, sometimes referred to as fementer volume top-up, all of the wort will be be a diluted version of the calculated/estimated OG and IBU.

 

However, the difference may be pretty small with both of those only 11% lower theoretically. It should still be quite a lovely beer.

 

Cheers

Phil

[LunaticSoup]

Just put together a Nut Brown Ale, very close to the coopers recipe page.

 

1 can Coopers Dark Ale

1.5kg Light LME

250g Dark Crystal

Nottingham yeast

23L

 

Cheers.

[Otto Von Blotto]

Hi again Kelsey.

In your brewing software/calculator' date=' "Batch size" = Ferment volume. That is the amount of wort you plan to ferment.

[/quote']

 

Agreed. However, I also create a malt bill and hop schedule designed to give a certain SG and IBU value for that amount of wort. If I make that amount of wort, and then dump more water in after the boil, it will reduce the SG and IBU numbers in exactly the same way as increasing the overall batch size but not increasing the amounts of each ingredient to compensate for it will do. If Chad had used the same amount of ingredients, i.e. not scaling them up, from your 21 litre batch in his 40 litre batch it would be nothing like the same wort. It's the same principle behind making a small concentrated wort with the intent to dilute it later, and it disproves your whole argument that dilution doesn't affect hoppiness. How can adding water dilute one thing and not another? The simple answer is, it can't.

 

Let's take these concentrated worts for instance. These numbers are to illustrate a point, they aren't necessarily accurate.

You make up a concentrated wort of 10 litres, which has an SG of 1100 and IBU of 100. You then dilute this with 15 litres of water, which gives 25L into the FV and brings the SG down to 1050 and the IBU down to 50, which was the target for the recipe. If you then go and ferment only 10 litres of it, it won't revert back to the original SG and IBU just because you took 15L of the wort away. You're just fermenting 10 litres of diluted wort.

 

So I ask, why or how is this any different in Chad's situation? The only difference there is that there is a much larger volume of wort and much smaller volume of water, but the dilution effect still exists, albeit a much smaller effect. Even if he ferments a 40 litre volume, the added water has affected the entire wort and this 40 litres will still be of a lesser SG (as he said) and IBU number than it would have been if the 5 litres of water wasn't put in there.

 

Cheers

 

Kelsey

 

 

 

 

[Beerlust]

Just home from my shift @ work & all night long whenever I've had a spare minute this has been bugging me!

 

It took me a while to think differently than I had been & when I did it all made sense. I don't know what possessed me to jump on the train of thought I did regarding the diluted wort & believing the hop influence wouldn't be affected. I really don't!

 

I think sometimes you can get on a system of thought & then your mind starts to play tricks on you to keep you there! Maybe the combination of a friend passing away last week, a pet being put down yesterday & just feeling a bit run down maybe didn't have my thinking cap in the best of order.

 

What I'm trying to say is Kelsey & Phil are right & I was...Linky.

 

Thanks for your patience Kelsey, my apologies for the ramble. It's probably a good thing I have most of my brewing techniques down pat now, that way I don't have to think too much!

 

Cheers & good brewing,

 

Lusty.

[Canadian Eh!L]

Wow! Thanks guys for all the feed back on my brew day. When I first created this thread It was meant for going discussions about our trials and tribulations on brew day. Thanks for all your input.

 

Just one more thing I need to know, though. Is my Mosaic Amber Ale going to be OK or should I just dump it now and move on?

[antiphile]

Whoa, CanCanMan, them's farting words (forgive my North American accent please). You no dumpy.Don't sweat it, it'll be a fine beer. It won't be exactly the same as the original Colonel Sanders recipe, but it will still be finger lickin' good.

[Otto Von Blotto]

All good Lusty, we all do that at times I think. I knew you'd come around eventually. Sorry to hear about those unfortunate events though.

 

It's probably a good thing I have most of my brewing techniques down pat now' date=' that way I don't have to think too much!

[/quote']

This is definitely a good place to be, I've pretty much got to the same point now. It's a good feeling to know you can just do a brew day and know exactly what's required at each step.

[ben 10]

Viking Beer time... with a few adjustments to suit my palate. Increased bitterness. May dry hop with some berries if I don't get enough from the boil.

 

Recipe: Pillage Pale

Brewer: Grumpy

 

Recipe Specifications

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

 

Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l

Estimated OG: 1.059 SG

Estimated Color: 29.4 EBC

Estimated IBU: 34.8 IBUs

 

Ingredients:

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

6.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent 1 -

4.00 kg Pale Malt (Barrett Burston) (3.9 EBC) Grain 2 67.2 %

1.00 kg Smoked Malt (Weyermann) (3.9 EBC) Grain 3 16.8 %

0.50 kg Rye Malt (Weyermann) (5.9 EBC) Grain 4 8.4 %

0.20 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L (59.1 EBC) Grain 5 3.4 %

0.10 kg Caraaroma (Weyermann) (350.7 EBC) Grain 6 1.7 %

0.10 kg Chocolate Rye (Weyermann) (482.6 EBC) Grain 7 1.7 %

0.05 kg Roasted Malt (Joe White) (1199.7 EBC) Grain 8 0.8 %

30.00 g Northern Brewer [5.85 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 9 16.7 IBUs

30.00 g Juniper Berries (Boil 20.0 mins) Spice 10 -

4.00 g Brewbrite (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 11 -

100.00 g Northern Brewer [5.85 %] - Steep/Whirlpo Hop 12 16.9 IBUs

 

 

[Otto Von Blotto]

I have a question about brewing salts. Do they go into the water before the grains or after the grains? Logic says to put them in first so they can be mixed into the water before the grain goes in but never actually seen any instruction on this.

[Canadian Eh!L]

Viking Beer time... with a few adjustments to suit my palate. Increased bitterness. May dry hop with some berries if I don't get enough from the boil.

 

Recipe: Pillage Pale

Brewer: Grumpy

 

Recipe Specifications

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

 

Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l

Estimated OG: 1.059 SG

Estimated Color: 29.4 EBC

Estimated IBU: 44.6 IBUs

 

Ingredients:

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

6.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent 1 -

4.00 kg Pale Malt (Barrett Burston) (3.9 EBC) Grain 2 67.2 %

1.00 kg Smoked Malt (Weyermann) (3.9 EBC) Grain 3 16.8 %

0.50 kg Rye Malt (Weyermann) (5.9 EBC) Grain 4 8.4 %

0.20 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L (59.1 EBC) Grain 5 3.4 %

0.10 kg Caraaroma (Weyermann) (350.7 EBC) Grain 6 1.7 %

0.10 kg Chocolate Rye (Weyermann) (482.6 EBC) Grain 7 1.7 %

0.05 kg Roasted Malt (Joe White) (1199.7 EBC) Grain 8 0.8 %

30.00 g Northern Brewer [5.85 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 9 16.7 IBUs

30.00 g Juniper Berries (Boil 20.0 mins) Spice 10 -

4.00 g Brewbrite (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 11 -

100.00 g Northern Brewer [5.85 %] - Steep/Whirlpo Hop 12 27.9 IBUs

 

 

Wow! It looks awesome' date=' Ben!![img']w00t[/img]. I've brewed my Viking ale with a split 20/10min Juniper Berries. It might be a benefit and add some complexities to your brew.

 

What's the choice of yeast?

 

Huge Dry hop!

[ben 10]

 

Wow! It looks awesome' date=' Ben!![img']w00t[/img].

 

Whirlpool hop at the end there...

Going to use MJ's British Ale.

And for the berries I may very well dry hop. Made some gin a while by soaking the berries in homemade vodka and it came out well.