Advice needed

[braailus]

Hi guys

I am just about ready for my first ag test brew. I have a 40liter ss urn as a boiler, 20 liter mash tun and want to do a test brew for my coopers 10 liter fermenter. Normally a brew would be for a specific size system (ie 25 l) and everything would be worked out accordingly. You would then end up with 25liter less your system losses as the final amount in the fermenter. I realise that there are many variables but it would be nice to have some idea. Obviously the grain will absorb some of the fluid and the 1hr boil will have losses as steam.
I would like to end up with approximately 10liters of beer due to the fermenter being used. The question is, what should my my initial planning start off with? Not sure if I should start with 20 liter recipe or 15l.

Thanks, your input would be appreciated.

Braailus

[AnthonyUK]

That is the beauty of brewing software such as Beersmith. You find a recipe and no matter what size it is, you can scale it to your equipment or requirements.
There is a 21 day trial but it is worth looking at some videos to familiarise yourself first as it can be a bit daunting to start with.
There are others too, some of which are free but I haven't tried them.

[gobuchul]

I would get a bigger fermenter.

A 20 litre mash tun could easily mash about 6 kg of grain and the 40 litre boiler could easily handle a litre batch.

A typical batch is 23 litres/5 gallon.

With my equipment, if I want to end up with 23 litres in the fermenter, I start with about 28 litres in the boiler at the beginning of the boil.

As mentioned there is software that can help with this. Beersmith is very good and has a free 21 day trial, there is also Brewtarget, which is completely free but not quite as slick as Beersmith. There are lots of tutorial videos with Beersmith as well.

[braailus]

Hi Guys

Thanks for the feedback. I have downloaded beersmith but I am not sure how to set it up. They ask the capacity of the boiler which is about 40 liters. My mash tun is about 20 and fermenter 10. (I have a bigger fermenter but would want to work on a smaller scale as testers).

Do I now state the boiler as 40 l (which do not work with the rest of the equipment in my example) or do I " lie" to try and mach my fermenter capacity? I understand that the equipment should be better matched in reality but I dont want to end up with huge batches of shite beer to start off with. I want to brew 3 or 4 different types of beer as a start and dont have unlimited space in fridges to store

Sorry to be a pain but this setup would suit my startup requirements

Thanks

Braailus

[braailus]

I would get a bigger fermenter.

A 20 litre mash tun could easily mash about 6 kg of grain and the 40 litre boiler could easily handle a litre batch.

A typical batch is 23 litres/5 gallon.

With my equipment, if I want to end up with 23 litres in the fermenter, I start with about litres in the boiler at the beginning of the boil.

As mentioned there is software that can help with this. Beersmith is very good and has a free 21 day trial, there is also Brewtarget, which is completely free but not quite as slick as Beersmith. There are lots of tutorial videos with Beersmith as well.

Sorry gobuchul; there seem to be some quantities missing in your post

[gobuchul]

I have added the quantity!

With Beersimith you could always download a recipe off the "Cloud" database, then there is a "Scale Recipe" function, top left of the screen when in design mode.

[AnthonyUK]

I have downloaded beersmith but I am not sure how to set it up.

I did mention it will require some groundwork
Watch the videos and look at the blog.
There is a tutorial on how to setup an equipment profile - http://beersmith.com/blog/2015/08/02/cr ... beersmith/

[Rick_UK]

You may as well brew a standard 5G batch if you can get hold of a bigger fermenter. The extra cost of grain and hops is negligible given the time/effort you will be putting in.

More beer is always better than less beer...

[Piscator]

Personally I would download Grahams excellent and free Beer Engine from the top of the page - set the batch size to 10L and get brewing with a minimum of fuss and aggro.

Cheers
Steve

[braailus]

Thanks guys, we live and learn.

[braailus]

Second brew today and all went well. Stuck to the recipe and quantities and used a bigger fermenter. Not sure where I will put all the beer when it comes time for refrigeration but we will cross that bridge when we get there. Red Ale in the fermenter. Thank you all for the advice, really appreciated.

Braailus

[braailus]

Just some feedback. Cracked our 1st brew (Erdinger clone) and........great disappointment. The beer just lacks body and really reminds me of the old cliche about the similarities between weak beer and making love in a punt. It is literally friggin close to water. The most annoying part is, I know how we stuffed it up and what we did wrong. We actually compared it to an Erdinger side by side and it could have been awesome. Everything is there, just not enough of it. Oh well, hopefully the Red Ale will be better when we crack them. Over and out.

Braailus

[Normski]

Hi Braailus
I think you are being a bit hard on yourself. It takes time and lots of brewing to get to the quality of a brew like Erdinger.
Make a clone over and over and you will get closer. And then you may even overtake the cloned brew to your own preference.
If you 1st brew was even drinkable then it was a success.
Norm

[gnorwebthgimi]

Hi Braailus

It was very bold to try and recreate or even better a very popular beer.
Just a couple of things for you to consider:

1) Brewing is easy to easy to do* but difficult to master.
A good analogy is fishing: it's easy to cast a line into the water and pull out a fish but you have to go to great lengths to the right place with all the right gear to land a specific fish, such as a marlin or something like that.

2) Wheat beer for a first AG is not keeping it simple, it can complicate the mash.

3) Erdinger is not an easy beer to replicate, as the yeast is very important to this beer and closely guarded. Erdinger proudly state on their website they filter out their yeast and repitch with a lager strain for bottle conditioning. I'm not aware that you can attain their the strain of yeast, but I suppose you could get something roughly equivalent. Without that it would be very hard to brew anything similar to this beer.

4) Erdinger is a very pale beer with a light body. Any faults in the brewing process, even if it's just the wrong mineral content of the water for the beer, are going to be fairly evident in the finished product.

You mentioned that you know what went wrong, what do you think it was?

I hope the red ale works well.

*ok, so it's not really easy but once you have the equipment and process you need to make a good beer it gets much easier

[braailus]

Hi Guys

It was our first attempt, 40 l boiler, 25 l mash tun and we aimed for a 10 l final product. We did not start with enough water, did not realise how much water is retained by the grain, did not sparge, ended up with way too little end product and topped up with water to increase volume. I am brewing with someone else and it was decided beforehand that they would take control of the first brew because we could not agree on some elimental decisions. I wanted to do more tests and he felt we were ready. Bottom line, we learned a great deal. We will do this beer again in the near future and I can say without a doubt it will be a lot better. It is not a bad beer, just dissapointed because of the obvious shortcomings.