Brew Day #2

Preparation 

Water - Prepared over previous two days

Basically filtered then boiled two batches of water, allowed to cool then drained from boiler all except the dregs. Full details of process here.

Ingredients - Checked in the days prior to brew

These were purchased from Brew UK.

Hops were vacuum packed 100g pellets. 

Malt was pre-milled in 1KG packages.

Gypsum and Epsom Salts as powders in plastic containers.

Yeast dry vacuum packed.

Hops and Yeast stored in fridge at 5C - good for yeast, unknown for hops.

Malt stored in garage at approx 16C - no idea of this is a good storage temp.

Recipe

Hop Back Summer Lightening Clone as published in the Graham Wheeler Book - Camra's Brew Your Own British Real Ale.

I have been encouraged by Steve's Beer and Bike blog where he details his brew day with this recipe. If your attempting this recipe, I encourage you to have a read. 

 

Recipe	Measure
Pale Malt (EBC 4 or less)	5.1Kg
Challenger Hops (start of Boil)	38g
Goldings Hops (Last 10 Min of Boil)	13g
Goldings Hops (End of Boil)	8g
Yeast	Danster - Nottingham Ale Yeast 11g packet
Mash Liquor	32 litres
Mash Temperature	68C
Mash Time	1 Hour 30 Minutes
Sparge Temperature	no sparge
Mash Efficiency (estimated)	65%
Boil Time	1 Hour 30 Minutes
Batch Volume	19 litres
Fermentation Temperature	18C
Expected OG	1049
Expected FG	1011
Expected ABV	5%
IBU's Bitterness	38
Colour EBC	5.8
Pre Boil Gravity	1051
Post Boil Gravity - Actual OG	1049
Actual FG	1013

 

Paperwork

We printed off a copy of the recipe and also these two Brew Day Sheets from the Brewers Friend Website:

All Grain Recipe Template

All Grain Brewing Checklist Procedure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process

Brought 28 liters up to 75C and added about 10 litres into mash tun to warm. 

Topped up boiler and brought to to 72C.

Dropped out most of water in mash tun.

Added 25 litres of 72C water to mash-tun. 

Waited until water came down to 68C. 

Added 5.1KG grist - salts added to full grain bill after weighing and mixed up.

Added further 8 litres of water at 72C to bring the total volume of water to 32litres.

Sealed mash tun as best we could leaving digital thermometer in place.

After 90 mins performed vorlauf using a steel pan

Drained about 20 litres of wort from mash tun into boiler and lifted it up to its position.

Switched on boiler. 

Used the steel pan to continue to retrieve wort from grain bed and add to boiler.

Took sample for hydrometer reading.

Boiled for 90 mins adding hops in bags at appropriate times.

Boil complete, added post boil hops and switched off boiler for 30 mins.

While post boil hops in progress, cleaned and sanitized plate chiller, pump, fermenter, airlock, silicone pipes and setup chiller.

Sanitized lid.

Started running wort through chiller cycling back into boiler. 

When wort reached 17C, ran off wort into fermenter.

Pitched yeast which had been hydrates for 20 mins in boiled water saved from first water batch.

Brewing Notes

Boiling was indoors due to the rain so lid was kept on a lot. Also we were aiming for a hot break to occur earlier and some extra volume of wort collected to be added to the main boil, but boiled separately.

How did we end up with more wort this time around?

We added all the water that we had. This was initially 23 litres between the markers that we have set up on the sight glass. Then we added water to take the total volume up to 31 litres. We actually wanted 32 litres to be the full volume for a batch no sparge. It is possoible that we didn’t achieve quite this level of water in the previous brew. However the boil off rater was greater last time.

In order to calculate the amount of post boil wort collected we need to test to see what the boiler can carry that isn’t able to eject through ball valve.

The total wort collected was just over the 26 litre line.

Lessons Learned

Make sure kit is cleaned and available prior to work

Print off and fill out brewing sheet day before

Start boiling as soon as water filtration into boiler starts

Transferring to secondary, it seems the final volume in the secondary is a lot lower than 19litres, maybe less by 3 litres. We don't have a good way at present of measuring how much wort ends up in the Brupacks 30 litre fermenter.