Monday 8th February- AG Summer Ale (moderate mineral count)

[BenB]

So tomorrow in the brewshed I'll be making Greg Hughes Summer Ale from the "Home Brew Beer" book:

Batch Size (fermenter): 18.93 l
Estimated OG: 1.042 SG
Estimated Color: 15.0 EBC
Estimated IBU: 37.5 IBUs
Boil Time: 70 Minutes

Amt Name Type # %/IBU
3.40 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 91.9 %
0.30 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (118.2 EBC) Grain 2 8.1 %
20.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.50 %] - Boil 70.0 Hop 3 13.8 IBUs
15.00 g Progress [5.50 %] - Boil 70.0 min Hop 4 10.4 IBUs
15.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.50 %] - Boil 30.0 Hop 5 7.7 IBUs
10.00 g Progress [5.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 6 5.1 IBUs
0.30 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 7 -
15.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.50 %] - Boil 1.0 Hop 8 0.4 IBUs
1.0 pkg British Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1098) [1 Yeast 9 -

It will be the first time I've used my Bulldog mill for all the malt- previous brews at least one malt (usually speciality) was pre-crushed. It will also be my first foray into "proper" liquour adjustment with individual salts (previously only used DLS). It's also the first AG I've done in a while whilst investigating the off flavours I was getting. And whatsmore the first time I've done AG with a proper 3 vessel system (previously I was using the boiler as a HLT).... So all in all quite a few bits to screw up!!

My target water profile is quite basic:

Calcium: 100
Magnesium: 10
Sodium: 40
Sulfate: 180
Chloride: 90
Bicarbonate: 10

I'm going to brew it again in a week with a much stronger mineral count (think Sulfate 300, Chloride 150 IE same ratio but higher levels) and see what difference it makes to flavour.

I can get tomorrow's profile using my tap water (fairly rock hard) by using 20L of Ashbeck, 12L of tap, a few grams of this and that and some CRS for pH.... Handily the CRS additions for mash and sparge worked out pretty much the same so I can just treat the whole lot. Doing a split salt additions as per Bru'NWater calculations.

I'm going to fill some empty Ashbeck 5L bottles tonight in preparation and do the Salifert test etc tonight to double check the mathematics. If I get some time I'll measure out the grain ready for crushing TM as well.

First job of course was to make up the starter. It's a low gravity brew and the yeast was damn fresh (mfg 17th January!!) so it's only a 0.6L starter (I could have just not used the stir plate but I wanted to test some new larger magnetic pellets I've bought- they do appear to work quite well.....).... Silicon gloves work wonders when making starters and for once I didn't have a boil over- remembered not to swirl it once bubbling....). Cup of tea on the go as per...

[BenB]

Looking good for the morning. Wallybrew water analysis had my alkalinity at 211 a little while back. Just bottled up my tap water proportion of the low liquor and tested it- 210.7 once converted to ppm. So no nasty surprises then.....

[orlando]

I like a bit more calcium Ben, see if you can push it up to closer to 150.

[BenB]

Yes, my next brew will have more Calcium as I'll be repeating this brew with more sulfate and chloride so more calcium...

Anyway... all done and dusted and the daughter collected from nursery....

Day started well. Got the HLT on, measured out the grain and the salts and got milling:



Obligatory grain shot:



The bottom grain isn't darker, it's just something casting a shadow through the bucket...

Then things got a bit more complicated- I confused Beersmith by suggesting my mashtun was 22 degrees (I think that's default). Sure wasn't.... So got a mash temperature of 61 degrees. Dumped in some quickly boiled liquour from the sparge and it went to 64, dumped in some more and it went to 65. Then it went to 66.5... Target was 65. Lesson learnt- next time wait before adding more... So I had a slightly loose mash. pH hit the target at 5.4 cold (although I retested the same sample an hour later and it was 5.6 which is strange..



Anyway. Batch sparged and to the boil...



Quite a busy time with the hop additions and it was blowing a gale and chucking it down so putting out the hoses from the tap and to the drain etc etc was not much fun. But we quickly got there....

Cooled it down and drained it off



As per usual I forgot to liqour back by adding to the boiler so when I inevitably came up short on volume (excessive boil off- 15% per hour) I dumped the required 1L of Ashbeck in the FV. And I'd forgotten to account for the starter (0.6 starter wort plus the Wyeast pack volume) so actually ended up 1L over...

Oh well lots of lessons for next time.

I did at least remember to give it a good old shake- normally I've just poured it into the FV from a height and then forgotten to shake / aerate it.

End result was 19.5L of 10.38. Which actually is spot on the recipe in the book (for some reason Beersmith reckons 1.042). So my efficiency isn't great at mid 60s but diluting it twice (once with starter and once with Ashbeck) won't have helped. I'll adjust the settings in Beersmith to account for the high loses during boil off and perhaps decant the yeast next time.

Anyway, a good brew day I reckon. The pH shifting is a bit strange and I'll have to set my target a bit lower next time... I wonder if the pH issue was something to do with ATC of the pH meter plus a shift from the 15 minute pH to that an hour later... Or something like that... I'll have to have a think...

[liamtmt7]

looks good mate, plenty of notes as well!

[Eric]

pH hit the target at 5.4 cold (although I retested the same sample an hour later and it was 5.6 which is strange..


Anyway, a good brew day I reckon. The pH shifting is a bit strange and I'll have to set my target a bit lower next time... I wonder if the pH issue was something to do with ATC of the pH meter plus a shift from the 15 minute pH to that an hour later... Or something like that... I'll have to have a think...

Not strange at all, fits well with my own findings, so thank you for posting your observation.

While pH will generally fall during the period of a mash, the more time taken to cool a sample for pH measurement, the more the reading will increase.
By observation, the earlier into the mash the less stable is pH.
No pH prediction ever takes this into account.

Good luck with your project.

[orlando]

Noticed your Hitachi drill. Get yourself a mash paddle, the slotted style, shove it in the drill and use that to aerate, beats shaking by a mile.

[BenB]

Hi Eric, good to know my observations aren't a sign of anything too bizarre. I'll take comfort that my pH was good at 15 minutes and leave it at that. The sample was pretty cold when I tested it (although I didn't use the thermopen to check), perhaps I'll keep some ice in the shed next time for cooling down the sample rapidly to room temperature to be certain.

Orlando- yes, good thinking- in fact a few weeks back got as far as almost ordering a stainless steel paint mixer for the drill. It was in my virtual basket... then I got side-tracked when I realised we have a 150L oxygen cylinder here at work which is expired for the purposes of using on humans but I can't imagine yeast being so choosy! I've now got a 0.5micron stainless stone, just got to wait for the flowmeter to arrive...

Of course the tricky question in relation to yesterdays brewday is what do I do when doing version 2. Do I deliberately make the mistakes I did yesterday just to make the samples similar? I think I might have to- particularly when liquouring back the 1L of Ashbeck. Otherwise the samples will be very different just due to the lack of errors. Deliberately making mistakes seems counterintuitive though!!!

[Dave S]

[quote="BenB"]Yes, my next brew will have more Calcium as I'll be repeating this brew with more sulfate and chloride so more calcium...

/quote]

There is good reason for aiming higher with Calcium as half or more of it is likely to get lost in the mash due to precipitation.

[orlando]

Yes, my next brew will have more Calcium as I'll be repeating this brew with more sulfate and chloride so more calcium...

/quote]

There is good reason for aiming higher with Calcium as half or more of it is likely to get lost in the mash due to precipitation.

....and you want some left over for the yeast.

[BenB]

Well I had a sneeky peek in the Brewshed tonight. Bubbling had finished so either it never started our we're done! Will do a quick SG and taste tomorrow. The bucket is opaque so couldn't assess krausen and it was a quick 2 minute dash so no time for a property shoofty. Fingers crossed. Might try to get it bottled quicker this time, not sure 2/52 on the yeast cake is that good an idea when we're getting some odd flavours. If it has finished it's bloody quick considering no spewing out of the bubbler... guess time will tell. ..

[BenB]

Mini update- went to the shed last night. It's done! FG 1.008 which is bang on the money. Tastes beautiful. Can't wait for it to be mildly carbonated and in a pint glass! It will have to wait until Sunday before I can bottle it, then 3 weeks in the new lagering chamber... (although I'll only set it to 12degC). I'm definitely liking the 1098 Yeast- it had a slight sulphorous nose on the starter but nothing in the beer itself which smelt great when I cracked open the FV.

I've decided to go ahead with the second brew but equally have decided not to replicate the same mistakes just to be consistent- at this stage I'm honing my AG technique not creating robust scientific studies. So I'll aim to not have to liquour back by adjusting the Beersmith boil off amounts (and if I do I'll add the water to the boiler) and I'll try to hit the 65 degree mash temp first off- one thing I realised is I didn't pre-heat the MT with some boiling water and it was pretty cold in the brew shed- I suspect the tun and associated metalwork was at about 7 degrees. I'm also going to try a slightly finer crush on the rollers to improve efficiency- I set it so a crush was similar to the pre-crushed in the HBS but in actuality the pieces looked a bit under-crushed even then and some mean people suggest the HBSs crush their grain coarse so they sell more.....

Anyway very happy (to put it mildly) with my first "proper" (IE non DLS) salt adjusted AG. I'm beginning to wonder whether I don't like 1968 Yeast though. Both the ESB I made and the Moose Drool have a slight flavour I dislike, it's not hops because the only commonality is EKG which there is a lot of in the latest beer which is lovely. I'm very fond of Fullers ESB which is supposedly 1968 but yet when I brew with supposedly the same yeast.... Food for thought at least...

[orlando]

one thing I realised is I didn't pre-heat the MT with some boiling water and it was pretty cold in the brew shed- I suspect the tun and associated metalwork was at about 7 degrees.

As you use Beersmith take a look on the mash tab, there is a check box for taking into account the temperature of the Tun, just under mash profile. If you tick that change the defaults for both grain temp and mash tun temp, this should get you closer to strike temp.

[BenB]

Absolutely- normally I take my laptop into the shed and fill in all those figures and get a proper value. This time because the gale was blowing I just printed off the recipe/brew steps before legging it down there and therein forgot to account for it. I should have just looked up the weather report and stuck the ambient as the mash tun temperature before printing it off... Oh well! Something else to remember I guess.
I might have to invest in a cheap laptop to keep in the brewshed. I've got Beersmith mobile on the phone and on tablets but it does lack some of the functionality of the full software (more a support program for Beersmith than the real deal IMHO).

[BenB]

Had a sneeky premier tonight- when I bottled the beer a week ago I used a jug to pour the dregs from the bottling bucket into a spare bottle- it had quite a lot of yeast at the bottom but seemed a shame to waste it. It's been carbonating for a week and I chilled it down to about 10 degrees before opening. A gentle hiss, very gently carbonated, very minimal head unless poured from a height. Very refreshing brew. Starts quite light and a bit malty before a nice level of bitterness comes in. Not a massive hop aroma really. Looking forward to trying one once its had three weeks conditioning at lower temperatures. There was no hint of mustiness, a slight flavour in the mid-palette which I suspect is probably yeast (even though it's amazingly clear already). We shall see- looking forward to this one come the traditional mid-spring heatwave!

I'm now setting up for Monday's brew. The same recipe but the following water profile:

Ca: 162
Mg: 15
Na: 40
Su: 281
Ch: 136

It will be interesting to see how it compares. One thing I have though just realised is that none of the recipes seem to account for boiler dead space. Beersmith accounts for it through looking at volume loss but presumably that just waters down the beer to make up lost volume- ideally boiler dead space would be compensated by increasing ingredients as well as liqour......