Posts Tagged ‘sparge’
AG#104 – NZ Sour Wheat
Posted on: September 22, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
NZ Sour Wheat – This is the start of my brewday on Sunday, but its still Wednesday!
I have just mashed 2.45kg of Pale malt in my old mini-mash Tun, 66°c for 60mins, then added about 2-3L of cold water to bring the temp down to 49°c with another 1kg of pale malt added to the mash to add some Lactobacillus to the Mash. I have put my little mash tun into my FV fridge set at 46°c and i hope to keep the temperature above 35°c as it says here http://beerandwinejournal.com/fossil-cove-sour-mash-experiment/ I did as it states and I covered the mash with cling-film and topped it off with a blanket of co2.
The Sour Mash:
My Main Mash is to be on Sunday and I’ll update this more then.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 40%
Wheat Malt – 25%
Wheat Malt, Dark (Weyermann) – 25%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Melanoidin (Weyermann) – 5%
Hops:
NZ Hallertau Aroma – 8.2 % @ 60 mins – 20g
NZ Hallertau Aroma – 8.2 % @10 mins – 30g
NZ Hallertau Aroma – 8.2 % @0 mins – 30g
Pacific Jade – 15.1 % @ 0 mins – 30g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.047
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.5% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 22 EBU
Colour: 15 EBC
Mash: 75mins @ 69°c
Boil: at least 75mins
Yeast: NBS Weiss, I assume this is Munich Wheat yeast.
Copper Finings: Protafloc @ 10mins left to boil
I’m expecting a fair few spec-changes, I’m thinking of my combined Run-off / sparge to be no more than 30L, I may get more, I may boil down, I will no doubt have a gravity change which will also effect the bitterness…. 
**Sunday**
To start off with I prepared my malts while the HLT was heating:
Then Checked the Sour Mash, it was 33°c in the center and smelled like the waste malt skip at work, I’m pretty pleased it managed to stay at 33c as @lugsy51 tells me that should be alright:
The top of the mash, even though it was covered in Cling-film had changed to a darker shade than the rest of the mash underneath:
I added about 3.8L boiling water to the Sour mash and gave it a good stir before running off about 7L into the copper, these are the weirdest first runnings I’ve ever had, the photo below shows them as clear as they were going to get:
The copper was pretty full after the main mash was sparged with about 32L in total, I liquored back 3L as the boil progressed checking with my Refractometer:
I did a 10min & Flamout (90°c Steep) additions, I’m hoping the Pacific Jade will give some Orange notes which i think will compliment the Wheat beer yeast:
I liquored back 3L to 1048, 2 points above my original predicted OG:
I tasted the Sour wort after it had 15mins of boiling, it was very sour (like so sour I went to spit in the sink!), I boiled it down to 5L with the hope of driving off some of the smell…! Things calmed down after today’s main mash was run to the copper with the wort ending up with just a subtle tang behind the malt sweetness at the end of boil, I’m told the sour will increase as the wort ferments and the sugars are used up.
Yeast was rehydrated and pitched into 30L at 20°c.
Things went very smoothly even with extended boil times running off the small sour mash worked well while the main mash was having its mash rest then the rest of the brewday was as per usual with just a slight lingering smell of the sour mash in the house, I was expecting worse! 🙂
Fingers crossed on this one as its all new to me!
*24th Sep ’13 – Gravity at 1019 and tastes pretty ok, a cider-like bite/tang.
*27th Sep ’13 – Gravity at 1018 and looks to have finished, have given it a rouse and will check again tomorrow, at this rate the beer will be really balanced against the lactic sourness.
*28th Sep ’13 – FG seems steady and I’ve just dry hopped this with 22g Motueka I had in the freezer.
*Bottled 5th Sep ’13 – Primed about 24L with 165g White Sugar, its got a permanent haze and tastes like cheap orange juice, though the balance of sweet to sour is quite good, hopefully it will carbonate up well and give it a crispness. With its starting and finishing gravities this beer is actually 3.9% ABV.
*16th Oct ’13 – Taster time… Yeasty Clove on the nose, quite light sparkling body on the pallet with a tang like fresh squeezed oranges. I’m hungry and this is making my belly rumble, bitterness is subtle and quite chalky but its hard to detect as the sourness and prickly carbonation cross the tongue first, with a few more mouthfuls the body feels to have a slick quality like a good Belgian Wit.
AG#70 – Ta Moko
Posted on: December 18, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 10 Comments
Ta Moko – This is a tweaked re-brew of AG#16 Once Were Warriors The hopping is just about identical but I’ve changed the malts a little and dropped the ABV to 4% for a nice easy drinker.
The original was very tasty with a chalky bitterness, I’m hoping for the same again.
Some may have to forgive my beer naming, Wikipedia tells me there is a more acceptable term for Maori designed Tattoo which is Kirituhi meaning “Drawn Skin”. I have my own piece of ‘Drawn Skin’ on my thigh which was done in Auckland at www.mokoink.com
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 80%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 10%
Wheat Malt – 8%
Cara Munich Type III – 2%
Hops:
Pacific Gem – 14.6 % @ 60 mins – 15g (FWH)
Pacific Gem – 14.6 % @ 15 mins – 10g
Nelson Sauvin – 12.6 % @ 10 mins- 50g
Nelson Sauvin – 12.6 % @ 0 mins – 50g (80°c for 20-30mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.040
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.9 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 52 EBU (25% Hop Utilisation)
Colour: 8 EBC
Yeast: Safale US-05
Mash: 67°c for 60mins (I got 85% Mash efficiency)
Weighing out the Calcium Chloride & Magnesium Sulphate:
Malt was at 9°c this morning:
Mash temp 67°c:
Pacific Gem and lots of Nelson Sauvin hops:
Sparge running into copper:
The 10 min Nelson Sauvin addition, hops all sticky and smelling lovely:
Break material forming while cooling with the Copper Immersion Cooler:
OG: 1040 will do me, my neighbour just gave me a longer (hence hopefully more accurate) hydrometer:
All done and in the fermentation fridge at 19.5°c
*Bottled 28th Dec ’11 – with 70g white sugar, tasting good enough to drink from the FV, very clean and bags of Nelson Sauvin Flavour, this will be spot on once its carbonated up 🙂
*1st Jan ’12 – Very very early taster, Cat-Piss, Grapes, Muskiness, little bit of Kiwi maybe, classic Nelson Sauvin.
Thanks again to Rob at Hopzine for another glowing review:
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 FG 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.
Phlegm – A Belgian Style beer made with Whitelabs WLP550 and another brew using up odd bits and bag ends.
‘Phlegm’ Flemish, Belgian, Dutch, Flanders etc
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 45.2%
Vienna Malt – 15.1%
Pale Malt – 14%
Golden Naked Oats – 10.9%
Aromatic Malt – 4.3%
Muscovardo Candy Light – 3.8%
Sugar,Belgian Candy Light – 3.8%
Cara Red – 3%
Hops:
Liberty @ 60 mins – 60g
Bobek @ 60 mins – 50g
Bobek @ 10 mins – 10g
Liberty @ 0 mins – 40g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.071 – Actually got 1066 according to the Refractometer
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 7.6% ABV
Total Liquor: 36.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 15.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 41 EBU
Colour: 52 EBC
First Wort Hops:
Wort running to copper:
Light Home made candy sugar:
Flame-out liberty hops, 20min steep:
Its really 1066, a few points low, I was expecting it low as the Naked Golden Oats were not crushed just blitzed in a blender for a while:
Wort running to fermenter@ 18c:
Dregs of my starter WLP550, hopefully it will get going pretty soon:
*Bottled 19th Jan ’11 with 85g of White Sugar, hit its target FG
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#19 – Munich 5000 IPA
Posted on: January 24, 2010
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
This is an excuse to use 5kg of Munich, and the hops are an excuse to make the freezer drawer shut properly! 🙂 If I was being sensible I’d be making my planned 12 litre brew of St Austell’s Admirals Ale, but I’m not being sensible and only put this together this morning with a late start with the Mash start @ 12.45pm which will be for 90mins @ about 64C to try for the maximum fermentable sugars.
Yeast is going to be some Whitelabs Burton Ale yeast (3 yeast splits going to go in without a starter as they could do with using up) I know this yeast is going to eat up hope flavour and aroma so there’s going to be a good bit of dry hopping following initial fermentation.
I’ve added a good helping of Gypsum added to the mash so bring out the hops and make the yeast happy.
I’m hoping for a Hoppy and Bitter IPA with a balancing maltiness (but not too balancing as I want a fairly big hit!) 🙂
Munich 5000 IPA
Fermentables:
Munich Malt 20 EBC 5000g
Wheat Malt 3.5 EBC 500g
Caramalt 20 EBC 200g
Hops:
Aurora @60 mins 45g
Beeta @30 mins 50g
Beeta @15 mins 40g
Aurora @15 mins 35g
Celeia 35 grams (Might do either flame out or 80C steep for 30mins)
Beeta 10g (Dry Hop in FV)
Aurora 10g (Dry Hop in FV)
Celeia 20g (Dry Hop in FV)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 5.4% ABV
Total Liquor: 34 Litres
Mash Liquor: 14.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 72 EBU
Colour: 34 EBC
Munich malt, caramalt, wheat malt, Gypsum and grain temp:
Filling and pre-heating the mash tun:
Doughing in:
Start of mash Temp:
pH right on the money:
The hops:
Recycling batch sparge runnings, sparge was pretty horrible:
15min hops:
Flame out steep hops:
Hydrometer with temp correction is about 1052, 3 points low:
Late start, late finish, things went to plan just a few points adrift on the OG and sparge was annoying.
The wort was very tasty, just a nice tingly bitterness and nice and fresh tasting, should ferment out to some bitter-goodness 🙂
I’ve got a little less than I anticipated left for dry hopping, but that still means that I’ll be sinking a hop bag with 35g in it, I need to find a suitable weight 🙂
This is the most hops I’ve put in anything, 205g to the copper with 35g for Dry hopping as mentioned 🙂
*Bottled 10th Feb 2010 with 120g DSM
AG#8 – JBK Anniversary Brew 09
Posted on: October 2, 2009
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
The instructions:
Jim wrote:I would look for something around a maximum of 55 OG, with crystal malt to give it body and a bit of darkness from roast barley and good old English hops – plenty of fuggle with a bit of golding for aroma and around 45 to 50 IBUs.
So this is what I’ve come up with:
Fermentables:
Maris Otter 1880g
Dark Crystal Malt 205g (no mention of which crystal, so this gives me a chance to try out some Dark Crystal)
Torrefied Wheat 78g
Roasted Barley 26g
Hops:
Challenger – 60 mins 19g
Progress – 30 mins 16g
First Gold – 5 mins 11g
Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.041
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Bitterness: 48 EBU
Colour: 64 EBC
The Grain weighed out, 2 Tsp of Chalk and Gysum for the Mash:
The Intended Yeast slurry from a previous brew which is coming back to life and releasing some bubbles, will decant off the beer and pitch some of this:
The new manifold in my 15L tun, note the support sleeving to support my warm floppy pipe. I may need to make this a rigid arrangement in future:
Grist Temp:
The Mash Tun:
Mashed in @ 67C, leaving for 90 mins:
Mash pH looks near enough:
Hops, Generous weighing as I know the Burton Ale yeast will subdue them:
End mash temp:
First Runnings being recycles, sparging went brilliantly, no sticking and pretty clear wort:
First Wort Hops going in with first batch spargings:
Leftovers:
Bacon butty:
5 min hops addition with cooler already in:
Sanitising with Starsan:
Pretty clear hitting the FV and a good deep colour:
Pitching Whitelabs Burton Ale yeast Slurry @ 24C:
Well Aerated:
Hops and Trub:
My exceedingly happy brewing cupboard, FV1 is JBK, FV2 is Blauer Vogel, in the back the Top crate is full of TTL, underneath and to the left there is my Otter Dark Stout:
Just a bit of clearing up to do, hit OG1042 @ 24C so that’ll do me 🙂
Happy Anniversary JBK, Live long and prosper and all that 🙂
Hope this will be a good one, I needed a darker ale under my belt 🙂
Bottling Update FG hit 1010/1012 ish
Full Crate:
Sun shining through then bottle, lots of Burton Ale yeast in suspension, should take a few weeks for it to settle out:
2 weeks of warm followed by 2 weeks of cool and these should be ready.
Something for the JBK Anniversary bottles 🙂
Probably Due To Network Congestion 