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Brewing 11/14 - 11/15


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#1 SchwanzBrewer

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 10:53 AM

Finally brewing the doppel bock. It's gat damn gorgeous outside today. It's 72 degrees on the porch. I'm watching football while I wait for the mash water to heat up. Got 94 pounds of grain milled and ready to go in the mash tun. It's gonna be a good day tater.

 

Got to get the fermenter ready and the chillers ready. I'm excited about this beer!



#2 SchwanzBrewer

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 11:56 AM

94lb of grain almost didn't fit. It's about an inch from the lip in a 40 gal MLT. :shock:



#3 positiveContact

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 12:01 PM

damn skippy!  that could have been bad!



#4 SchwanzBrewer

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 12:48 PM

I'm gonna have to drain 5 gallons of wort before I can attach the sparge arm.



#5 SchwanzBrewer

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 03:44 PM

I got at least another 4 hours of brewing left. Should have started earlier.



#6 HVB

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 07:54 PM

Modified version of my house APA on for tomorrow. I will be giving 1450 another try, that yeast and me never seem to get along but let's see if that changes.

#7 SchwanzBrewer

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 08:06 PM

Well, it will only be about a 7.9% doppelbock instead of 8.4%. I haven't done a lot of big beers on the 1 bbl. I think I need to modify my technique to get better efficiency. I think that means doing a mash out. I bet stirring in some hot water will help with extraction. I probably need to mash a little higher too. There's about a 5 degree gradient from center to outside. So a mash that's 150 in the center is 145 on the outside (after about 20 min). The % of the mash at the outside is much higher than the center so I suspect raising the mash temp will get me better conversion and possibly speed up conversion.

 

We'll see. I'm gonna do a dubbel next and try these changes and see if it helps.

 

21 days to doppel bock!



#8 SchwanzBrewer

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 08:10 PM

Also, for those of you on city water that filter with carbon, I'd get a hannah instruments chlorine meter. My source water has a 3.5ppm total chlorine. After filtration it's 2.0ppm. After using campden it's 0.04ppm. When I was using two big whole house filters I knocked it down to 0.5ppm by daisy chaining the filters together. I have to order more filter media for those filters so I can use them again.



#9 neddles

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 09:04 PM

Well, it will only be about a 7.9% doppelbock instead of 8.4%. I haven't done a lot of big beers on the 1 bbl. I think I need to modify my technique to get better efficiency. I think that means doing a mash out. I bet stirring in some hot water will help with extraction. I probably need to mash a little higher too. There's about a 5 degree gradient from center to outside. So a mash that's 150 in the center is 145 on the outside (after about 20 min). The % of the mash at the outside is much higher than the center so I suspect raising the mash temp will get me better conversion and possibly speed up conversion.

 

We'll see. I'm gonna do a dubbel next and try these changes and see if it helps.

 

21 days to doppel bock!

Is there an easy way to do an alpha rest on your system? It might help you get complete conversion. 



#10 ncbeerbrewer

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 09:50 PM

Brewed a Belgian IPA today and pitched WY3522. bubbling away nicely now. Planning to brew a Dry Stout on Monday and adding Coffee beans in secondary. 



#11 SchwanzBrewer

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 10:45 PM

Is there an easy way to do an alpha rest on your system? It might help you get complete conversion. 

 

Not unless I set up the herms which I haven't built the controller yet. Otherwise I just add boiling water.

 

It's tough to measure conversion because of the volume of wort in the false bottom. Unless I pull about 10 gallons out of the mash tun I don't get an accurate reading on the first wort OG. When I measure it without using a ton of wort, it ends up being about 7-10 pts low (90%+). I'm pretty sure I;m getting complete conversion on an 1+ hour mash. 

 

The wort stratifies in the mash tun and there's water in the bottom that hasn't touched malt. So the first wort you pull has less sugar in it until you've run a bunch out, hence the low reading. I vorlauf the first wort and start the sparge so I never have a chance to get that first wort reading without some sort of adulteration.

 

If I ran the herms I would have a homogeneous wort and probably find that I have 100% conversion.


Edited by SchwanzBrewer, 14 November 2015 - 10:50 PM.


#12 neddles

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Posted 15 November 2015 - 08:57 AM

Our systems could not be more different but I here is something I have found that could actually be more valuable to you (at the scale you are brewing) than it is to me. I am getting higher gravity extract into the kettle by doing an alpha rest. No question about it. For example, I will get better extract into the kettle by mashing at 148F/40min. and then 158-162F/20min. (60min total) than I get by doing 148F/90min. I am not noticing any difference in fermentability. Now, there's really no reason for me to chase efficiency (at your scale it probably matters) but that's not what this has been about. I am getting very predictable extract with this mash schedule. When formulating a recipe or rebrewing an old one I simply look at Kai's chart of predicted first wort gravity with 100% conversion and every single time my gravity has been dead-on or, actually, one point higher than predicted by this chart.

ikslS6m.gif

 

I know that for years Jamil advocated long mashes when mashing low (your situation) or with a lot of flaked adjunct.  If I understand things correctly, in most mashes the beta activity peeters out around 30min+/- so you would be relying on alpha amylase to do any remaining conversion (well under its optimum temp) for the last 60 min. I have conducted several mashes with 15-20% flaked wheat and/or oats with this 148/40 158-162F/20 schedule and they have all give me the same predictable results I noted above.

 

Hopefully there is something useful to you in this. I guess you would have to decide if the extra efficiency and extract predicability was worth the trouble of stepping the mash. But I think you that certainly you could get away with 60 minutes instead of 90 and that has to be worth something to you. 

 

ETA: I should add that this predictability has panned for me consistently from a 1.034 berliner weiss to a 1.086 BVIP Which when no-sparging (BIAB in my case) represents a wide range of mash thicknesses.


Edited by neddles, 15 November 2015 - 09:09 AM.


#13 SchwanzBrewer

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Posted 15 November 2015 - 10:32 AM

Yeah I about have that chart memorized.lol

I'm gonna try a higher mash temp first. I think I'm on the right track because with 1.050 beers I mash much thinner and the temp gradient is much smaller.

If I had an easy way to do a step mash I'd try it. But if we get a location soon I'll be outfitting a 3 bbl system instead of mucking with the 1.

#14 HVB

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Posted 15 November 2015 - 03:32 PM

Modified version of my house APA on for tomorrow. I will be giving 1450 another try, that yeast and me never seem to get along but let's see if that changes.


Went with a 30 minute boil and had my boil set way to high. Only ended up with 4.5 gallons so about a gallon short.

#15 positiveContact

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Posted 15 November 2015 - 03:33 PM

Went with a 30 minute boil and had my boil set way to high. Only ended up with 4.5 gallons so about a gallon short.

 

were you trying to compensate for the shorter boil or was this just a random mistake?



#16 HVB

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Posted 15 November 2015 - 04:14 PM

were you trying to compensate for the shorter boil or was this just a random mistake?


Compensating and I guess I over compensated.

#17 positiveContact

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Posted 15 November 2015 - 05:57 PM

Compensating and I guess I over compensated.

 

well as mistakes go there are much worse!  enjoy the beer :cheers:



#18 HVB

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Posted 15 November 2015 - 08:16 PM

well as mistakes go there are much worse! enjoy the beer :cheers:


I am using 1450 so I am bound to have issues if my past beers are any indication 😁

#19 positiveContact

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Posted 16 November 2015 - 04:39 AM

so how are things going so far?



#20 HVB

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Posted 16 November 2015 - 05:44 AM

so how are things going so far?

Positive pressure on the airlock and sitting at 63.  I think it will be a fine beer, higher OG than I wanted but that is OK.  I ended up boiling off 1.75g in 30 minutes... oops!




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