Posts Tagged ‘copper’
AG#67 – Amber Motueka
Posted on: November 6, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Amber Motueka – I should really be brewing for a Twitter #BlackIPAoff beer swap with @Broadfordbrewer & @BrotherLogic but I decided to use up the end of a sack of Lager Malt and use some of the wonderful Motueka hops I have stashed in the Hop-Freezer. Motueka works rather well as a dry-hop so I’ll be using up the remainder of the bag once initial fermentation has died down.
This will ‘hopefully’ be a nice Amber coloured Hoppy IPA-like beer with a nice malt presence and a firm smooth bitterness. 🙂
Fermentables:
Vienna Malt (Weyermann) – 40%
Lager Malt – 37.2%
Wheat Malt – 16%
Cara Aroma (Weyermann) – 3.7%
Cara Munich Type III (Wey – 3%
Hops:
Motueka (B Saaz) – 13.8 % @ 60 mins – 20g (FWH)
Magnum – 14.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g (FWH)
Motueka (B Saaz) – 13.8 % @ 15 mins – 20g
Motueka (B Saaz) – 13.8 % @ 0 mins – 40g
Dry Hops:
Motueka (B Saaz) – 20g (or whatever is left from the 100g packet)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.049
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.8% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 55 EBU (Utilisation set to 25%)
Colour: 39 EBC
Mash: 60mins @ 66c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale US-05
Liquor Treatment: Burton Pale Ale using the Graham Wheeler treatment calculator
HLT temperature:
Some of the malts:
Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate) being weighed out:
First Wort Hops and a small Sodium Chloride (Salt) addition in the Copper:
Flameout hops and half a Protafloc tab, it ran off pretty clear so 1/2 is all you really need for 5 gallons:
Hops steeped for 20-30mins with an occasional stir:
Target of 1049, near enough:
Wort dropping from copper into fermenting vessel, given a good thrash with a paddle and dry sprinkled the yeast:
A wide shot of running to fermenter, the all important clock in the background:
A no fuss brewday, everything works, hit gravity, yeast pitched, put to bed in the fermentation fridge for the first time!
Safale us-05 has a temperature range of 15-24c so I’ve set the cooling to come on at 24c and left the heating turned off so it can increase in temperature naturally.
*12 Nov ’11 FGÂ 1012 reached, loose Dry Hopped with 20g of Motueka and set the fermentation fridge to cool to 17c.
*Bottled 18th Nov ’11 with 75g white sugar, tasting nice, nothing over-powering just nice.
*23rd Nov ’11 – About 1 week bottled taster, fruity with sweet malty bits, good mid-to-light-amber colour (Just been eating chocolate so maybe not the best pallet cleanser), maybe not the IPA-esque beer I was after but tasty, bitterness is smooth and pallet-coating. This beer would make a very nice Belgian ale with the appropriate yeast.
*1st Dec ’11 – now its had a bit more time in the bottle its drying out and the bitterness is coming through, its a lovely smooth bitterness. I’m happy with the results.
*17th Jan ’12 – This is a bloody good beer now 🙂
AG#55 – Imperial Smoked Porter
Posted on: May 15, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Imperial Smoked Porter – This is serving a couple of purposes; First is a Trial run of a big beer in my newly finished False bottom Mash tun; Second is using up some odd bags of malt and some older hops I had in the freezer and some other part bags of hops.
I’m not expecting the stated bitterness from my hops – http://www.wellhopped.co.uk/Product.htm so I’m going semi-worst case scenario and adjusting AA for age and storage.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70.2%
Caramalt – 8.2%
Peat Smoked Malt, medium – 4.2%
Amber Malt – 3.9%
Oat Malt – 3.5%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 2.3%
Crystal Wheat Malt – 2.4%
Chocolate Wheat Malt – 1.8%
Flaked Wheat – 1.6%
Chocolate Malt – 1.5%
Flaked Rye 0 EBC – 0.5%
Hops:
Bobek – 3.7 % @ 75 mins – 124g (FWH)
Admiral – 12 % @ 75 mins – 19g (FWH)
Herkules – 15.8 % @ 75 mins – 35g (FWH)
Brewers Gold – 9.1 % @ 10 mins – 68g
Cascade – 5.5 % @ 0 mins – 29g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Saaz – 3.8 % @ 0 mins – 33g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Simcoe – 12.9 % @ 0 mins – 20g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.076
Final Gravity: 1.021
Alcohol Content: 7.2% ABV
Total Liquor: 36.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 20.5 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % (I collected 32L @ 1055 so hit efficiency but had too much liquor)
Bitterness: 121 EBU (I’m not expecting this as the bittering hops were fairly old so subtracting 30% from the AA will be more like 90EBU)
Colour: 140 EBC
Mashed for 90mins @ 66c
Boil for 75mins
Liquor treatment as per GW calc for General Purpose
Bigger bucket than normal with 8.5kg of malts:
New mash tun full of hot liquor:
Initial Mash a little high, cooled with cold liquor to 66c:
Tidy brewsheet (version 3, other two are scibbly works in progress) along with late hops:
Quite a heap of first Wort Hops in the copper along with the common salt addition:
What lies beneath, mash leftovers under the mash screen:
10 min hops going in:
Break material clumping in the copper:
Looks near as damn it to me (Showing 72 +2 divisions in the meniscus = 1076), not bad for a first outing of the new Mash Tun:
I had 3.7 Litres in the new mash tun to just cover the false bottom, the first sparge top-up was a little over 3 litres so I didn’t top-up and subtracted the difference from the Second batch sparge. This was to take into account the liquor under the screen, I ended up with 32 Litres in the copper which i thought too much but by the end of the 75min boil I was at my predicted gravity so I must have worked things out right!
Thoughts on the False bottom:
The mash ran off very well and after a few jugs of recirculating it was also very clear.
After stirring the second sparge and running off I came back to the mash tun to find it had run a load of malt particles into the copper as the last of the mash drained out. I’ll have to keep an eye on it next time to stop this just as it starts to show bits coming through, or have a go a Fly sparging so as to not actually disturb the Mash bed and hopefully limit the amount of malt particles coming through.
New cleaning game, poking bits of malt out of the perforated stainless!
16th May ’11
The usual, Stout+S-04 ferment 🙂 :
*Bottled 25th May ’11 with 71g of White sugar and a tiny sprinkle of Nottingham yeast into each bottle as a bit of a safety precaution as it had dropped very bright. Finished at 1016-1018 so about 7.7% ABV.
*4th JUne ’11 Taster bottle, tasting good the Peat Smoked malt works well with the Strength of this beer, Bitterness just right so I’m glad I adjusted the hop Alpha acids for my older hops.
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Yesterday I took the short trip over to Elland Brewery, West Yorkshire to meet Gordon the head-brewer for a proper chat after our first brief initial meeting at work (Saltaire Brewery). Elland use the same original Thwaites brewery yeast as we do at Saltaire.
The Mash Tun & Fermenters:
Gordon’s enthusiasm and excitement for brewing beer is very obvious and I thoroughly enjoyed a good few hours of nattering with him, tasting a few from their retained samples, and looking round their 10 Barrel Brew House.
My personal favourite sample was his Brewers Reserve which he’d dry hopped with New Zealand Motueka hops (Though not available in the shops, this was just an experiment) yummy stuff.
Gordon tells me that the plant originally came from one of the Firkin Brew-Pubs, with its all wood cladding and copper-domed boil kettle. He has a lot more technical know-how than myself with his Chemistry background, and is really got a handle on the entire brewing process with accurate process measurement and documentation and good practice procedure.
Gordon and the guys from Elland are not doing too shabby with their recent SIBA awards for the 1872 Porter, getting the 2010 Winter Gold and the 2011 National Gold. You’ve gotta love a full complex dark beer!
Mash tun to the front with valentine, Copper boiler behind with Fermenters to the left:
The Man himself with his FV’s:
Hopefully Gordon is enjoying my Home brewed beers I left with him, you can catch up on his Tweets @GJMcKiernan
Building a dual purpose Copper / Hot Liquor Tank from a 50 Litre Stainless Steel stock pot and two Backer kettle elements. The Stock Pot. The Elements.
The Tools and the Holes, 3mm Cobalt drill, allen key, 21mm Q-max cutter, adjustable spanner, 10mm HSS drill:
15mm Polycarbonate tube in the Brass push-fit (Bent Tap Connector), Copper pipe goes right through the drilled out Tank connector to connect the 15mm Ball valve & Hop Stopper:
White Plastic clip, drilled and tapped M10, Stainless Nuts, Washers, Threaded Rod:
Inside the vessel, sight tube on the left, and copper stub for connecting Hop Stopper, I’ll most likely swap the washers for some silicone baking sheet ones:
Sight Glass fitted with Tank connector and Brass Push-fit:
Ball Valve tap fitted:
Syphon effect extension with 8mm restriction at bottom:
Hop Strainer soldered and fitted, just needs a shed load of holes drilling in the bottom third of the 22mm pipe, made almost exactly the same as my own so you can tilt the boiler a little when its time to run off and you get a little bit more wort for your hard work. The End Cap just pulls off for cleaning and the Brass Compression elbow allows you to get a Cask Tap cleaning brush right inside to clean too:
Left to right – Element, 37.5mm Q-max cutter, pierced slug, Carbide Burr, Psudo-Dremel, Spanner & Allen key (My Q-max cutter is for cheap-ass kettle elements so i had to whizz round it with the Dremel to open the holes up and make a snug fit for the M40 threads on the element):
Fitted element:
Both elements fitted, I decided to fit them at 90 degrees:
After fitting I wired up the plugs on the Element leads, and filled the vessel full of water to check for leaks. No leaks found so I emptied out and did a boil test with both elements which was good for cleaning the pipework out, I gave the element sockets a wiggle and one almost popped off.
So I’ve decided to get the KM8 bearing nuts to secure them instead, I’ve also sanded down the original plastic cowls which helps but one of them still feels a bit dodgy so I’d prefer it not to fail when having 45-50 Litres of boiling wort in it… so Bearing Nuts it will be!
Once its all secure I will do another boil test and give the copper pipework another good flush through.
Last piece of the puzzle… all that is needed is a good boiling to clean out the copper pipework and also clean off the IC I’m making.
www.bearingboys.co.uk/KM8_Bearing_Locking_Nut
AG#41 – London Porterish
Posted on: November 6, 2010
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
London Porterish – This is a bit of a user-upper / Christmas gift / Christmas beer / a beer I only recently tasted at a beer fest and thought was amazing (Fullers London Porter). So this recipe is based around the one in the Graham Wheeler book, though a touch of Wheat malt added for head and the mix of Crystal malts is using up odd ends of malt. Hops are Sovereign which I have never used before.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 3990g – 70%
Brown Malt –Â 625g – 11%
Crystal Malt – 340g – 6%
Wheat Malt – 285g – 5%
Chocolate Malt – 225g – 4%
Crystal Rye Malt – 170g – 3%
Crystal Malt, Dark – 57g – 1%
Hops:
Sovereign @ 60 mins – 56g
Sovereign @ 10 mins – 19g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.058
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 5.6% ABV
Total Liquor: 34 Litres
Mash Liquor: 13.7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 33 EBU
Colour: 144 EBC
60min Mash @ 68c
60min Boil
Cooled to 21c before pitching yeast
Mash treated with General Profile in the GW water treatment calc
3g of common Salt added to copper at the end of the boil
Updates on my Twitter-T.watter page – https://twitter.com/pdtnc
Malts, Temp & Salt additions:
The three tier:
Waste of time checking pH as usual:
Mash efficiency 95.3%!:
First runnings being recycled, FWH & old yeast ready in copper:
10min hop addition:
StarSan-ing everything that will touch sterile clean wort:
My Mash was on at 8.05am
The Boil started at 10.30am
I collected 30litres @ 13.5 Brix
Cooling from boiling took 10mins & 44Litres of water to 33c, then 3mins more to 21c. The 44L was collected in the HLT @ 42c
Original Gravity was 1056 with hydrometer, 14.9 Brix with refractometer (1058, Bang on to recipe) 🙂
Started Run-off to FV at 12:00, taking it slowly probably took the best part of an hour.
The Wort & Hops were smelling lovely 🙂
*Bottled 17th Nov ’10 with 65g of Soft Brown Sugar Came down to FG 1020 ish, needs some age for the dark malts to meld into something lush 🙂
AG#37 – Nelson Brucker
Posted on: September 12, 2010
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
I’ve been pondering on this one for a while, I think this is going to make a good combo of Hops… with hopefully a slightly spicy edge from the Crystal Rye and some good maltiness. Thats the plan at least!
Nelson Brucker
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 2740g – 75% (Actually 3650g as I weighed the total grain amount rather than the Pale malt!)
Crystal Rye Malt – 365g – 10%
Munich Malt – 365g – 10%
Torrefied Wheat – 180g – 5%
Hops:
Hallertauer Hersbrucker @ 60 mins 15g
Nelson Sauvin @ 60 mins 15g
Hallertauer Hersbrucker @ 15 mins 40g
Nelson Sauvin @ 15 mins 20g
Nelson Sauvin @ 0 mins 20g
Hallertauer Hersbrucker @ 0 mins 30g
Final Volume: 23 Litres – I’ve been going against my half batches a bit lately 
Original Gravity: 1.040 – (Actually 1.050 due to Pale malt mess up!)
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV – (Actually 5%)
Total Liquor: 32 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.1 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 85 % – I’m starting out at 85% now rather than 75% (Actual Efficiency was 86.2%)
Bitterness: 42 EBU – (Actually 39 as I added 5 mins to boil to compensate a little)
Colour: 28 EBC – (Actually 30EBC, though it does look a nice colour)
Today’s malts:
Weighing out the salts:
Boring Mash shot:
Our hops today are…:
First runnings going into the copper with First Wort hops:
Copper about Half full, collected a total of 30L @ 10.2Brix = 1.039, 108% Mash Efficiency??!! I think I must have weighed something wrong?! Maybe an extra kilo of Pale if it looks like its going to be a 5.1% after the boil:
Weirdly I managed to hit 1040!:
Quite like this colour, its Beer coloured:
Pitched Safale US-05 at 22-23c
The post boil gravity was 1043 according to the Refractometer’s 11.2brix which should make the 4% beer I was aiming for if it finishes at 1012! (I’m a little confused about all this, should I really stick to 75% mash efficiency in my recipe software?)
1043 – 1012 x 0.129=3.999% ABV
*Bottled 22nd Sept ’10 with 75g White Sugar
AG#32 – Kurgan’s Candy
Posted on: July 24, 2010
Kurgan’s Candy – This uses the Candy Sugar I made the other day to make a fairly strong Belgian Ale with some Duvel yeast cultured up from a bottle to a 1 Litre starter.
Fermentables:
Wheat Malt 2000g 42.5%
Lager Malt 2000g 42.5%
Sugar,Belgian Candy Light 250g 5.3%
Muscovardo Candy Light 250g 5.3%
Torrefied Wheat 200g 4.3%
Hops:
Bobek @ 60 mins 52g (Start of Boil)
Saaz @ 10 mins 36g
Final Volume: 15 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.067
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 7.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 25.9 Litres
Mash Liquor: 10.5 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 28 EBU
Colour: 50 EBC – Roughly speaking!
Mash will be 90mins, Boil will be 60mins, Mash Temp will be 68c.
Yeast is cultured from a bottle of Duvel and is a 1 Litre Starter.
Lager malt, Wheat Malt, Torrefied Flaked Wheat, 1 Tsp Gypsum with thermometer stuck in it ready for the morning:
My home made Belgian (Yorkshire) Candy Sugar, LH dehydrated pee colour, RH 50/50 White Sugar & Light Muscovardo, both taken to Hard Crack:
The rest will follow tomorrow 
*Tomorrow comes, Mash was on at 7.55am
No Mash picture as its just a mash!
Big Bag of Bobek & Some Saaz Hops:
Just Waiting for the Mash, everything prepared. Old lager yeast to use as Yeast Nutrient in the boil, Half a Protafoc tablet, Scales, Thermometer, Refractometer, fully Tooled up!:
Refractometer conversion & Mash Efficiency:
End of Mash Temp, It started at 68c:
Light Straw coloured wort going into the copper:
Bobek going in at the start of boil:
I added the Lighter candy sugar after 15mins:
Then the Darker candy sugar after 30mins:
Recycling the IC coolng water to the HLT for later cleaning:
Saaz hops going in at 10mins left of boil:
OG 1061, supposed to be 1067 but I’m not bothered:
Light straw?:
Leftovers:
Some stuff going on – https://twitter.com/pdtnc
*This mornings Yeasty Head:
*Bottling update*
*Bottled 1st Aug ’10 with 60g of Light brown Sugar, tasting pretty good as a subtle Belgian.
*Tasted 5/9/10
Aroma:Â Subtle Pear drops & Banana
Taste:Â Spicy with more Pear Drops & some Sourness (possibly getting some of the Bobek & a bit of the Muscovardo in the finish)
Rather too easy drinking for a 7.5% 😉
AG#30 – Bobek 60 minute IPA
Posted on: July 4, 2010
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Kind of in the vein of the Dogfish 60min IPA, and I have a big bag of Bobek! 🙂
Bobek 60 Minute IPA
Fermentables:
Lager Malt 2.5 3280g 87.1%
Munich Malt 185g 5%
Caramalt 185g 5%
Wheat Malt 110g 3%
Hops:
Bobek @ 60 mins 10g (FWH)
Bobek @ 60 mins 10g
Bobek @ 55 mins 10g
Bobek @ 50 mins 10g
Bobek @ 45 mins 10g
Bobek @ 40 mins 10g
Bobek @ 35 mins 10g
Bobek @ 30 mins 10g
Bobek @ 25 mins 10g
Bobek @ 20 mins 10g
Bobek @ 15 mins 10g
Bobek @ 10 mins 10g
Bobek @ 5 mins 10g
Bobek @ 0 mins 10g (Flame Out Steep for about 5-10mins)
Bobek @ 0 mins 10g (80c Steep for 20mins)
Final Volume: 14 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol Content: 6% ABV
Total Liquor: 22.2 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.4 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 52 EBU
Colour: 9 EBC
Yeast is Nottingham.
Mash is 90mins @ 66c 1 Tsp Gypsum to mash.
Boil is 60mins.
The malt bill:
Strike Temp:
Mash Temp:
First Runnings:
FWH and old lager yeast for nutrient:
The finally complete-ish 3-Tier brewery:
Hop Soup, 150g of hops in a 14Litre brew length:
Lovely clear wort, nice and light, with my new refrectometer 16 brix which is apparently OG 1063 which is 3 points over my target:
Hops & Trub, ran off to FV very slowly to give chance for the hops to drain and I recken I got pretty close to my intended 14L:
Running to FV, Pitched 11g of Nottingham Yeast dry sprinkled then thrashed with a paddle:
I had a late start after calibrating my HLT, got the Mash on at 12.30 but the day has gone very smooth. The 3-Tier system has definitely helped and speeded up the cleaning down stages, I piped the IC waste water back up to the HLT and used that for cleaning everything else once the boil was done.
Hops were dumped on the garden and the spent malt is now chicken feed for our neighbour.
My oversight was forgetting to change the Hops AA% in BeerEngine, they were 3.7% rather than 5.2% so I’m having to settle for 52 IBU rather than 66 IBU… ahh well!!
The Temp controlled HLT worked a treat, I’m so glad I added the Solar pump as a HLT stirrer as it saved loads of ladder climbing and physically stirring it, just one minor leak on the intake of the pump while the HLT has about 44L in it.
I’m finally getting to the place I want to be at with the brewery, today felt smooth and logical with the only bind being adding hops every 5 mins! 🙂
*Bottled 10th July ’10
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
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