AG#2 Comments welcomed

[RichardG]

Guys, having recently completed my first AG (Woohoo!) my thoughts have turned to the next one. Basically my aim is to produce a refreshing summer ale at around 4.5%. After much consideration I think I'll go simple, and do a single hop style using goldings (partly because I have 40g left over from the last brew). At the moment the recipe is;

Pale malt 4.5kg
Torrified wheat 150g

Goldings 40g 90mins
Goldings 30g 15mins
Goldings 30g 5mins

This is for 25Ltrs. Yeast will probably be Nottingham as I want something that will let the hops through. I know others prefer US05 for this, but I've used Nottingham before and have been happy with the results, and I happen to have a packet available (I will, however, certainly try US05 in the future). I also plan to get a Salifert kit to test my water and treat accordingly. Finally, I shall leave this in primary for a week, then transfer to secondary and dry hop with more goldings, probable another 40g. Efficiency is an issue as my first brew was based on an estimated efficiency of 70% (which seemed reasonable at the time); It actually came out at nearly 87%, so I plan to have plenty of liquor available to dilute back if necessary. Any comments and/or suggestions are most welcome.

[dave-o]

That looks simple but great.

[RichardG]

Just as a further thought; I want something fairly light on the palate, so was wondering about mashing at a slightly lower temperature, say 64c or 65c. My first brew was a 66c and I'd originally planned to use that again. Any thoughts on that?

[Deebee]

Just as a further thought; I want something fairly light on the palate, so was wondering about mashing at a slightly lower temperature, say 64c or 65c. My first brew was a 66c and I'd originally planned to use that again. Any thoughts on that?

Can't comment on that,

With regard to the efficiency do you think it likely this was a one off?

If you think you can repeat it then you can always reduce ( and save) some grain to account for the 87%

If you go into beersmith or any of the brewing programs and set the recipe for 75% then alter the efficienct to 87 8 or vice versa tyou will see how much different the strength will be.

Edit:-
i just plumbed you grain bill into beersmith. 25 l at 75% will give 4.2%

87% will give you 4.9%

thats a nice strength either way.

[RichardG]

Well, as to the efficiency being a one-off, at this stage I can't say. I'll have a better view on that when I've done a couple more (Sounds like a good excuse to do so more brews! ). As you say 4.2% - 4.9% would be fine, though I'd rather have it at the lower end of that, and it takes no extra time or effort to prepare 50Ltrs of liquor over 40Ltrs. I hope to be able to do this one next weekend, so I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes.

[boingy]

You recipe looks great. Just my kinda beer - simple and classic.

One question on your efficiency. I seem to recall you collected less wort than planned at a higher gravity and then diluted up. Did you use the pre-diluted SG to calculate the efficiency? That would have skewed the numbers quite a bit. You really need to measure the SG after dilution and use that to calculate efficiency.

[RichardG]

Agreed boingy. Looking back my 1070 must have been wrong; I suspect it was actually 1060. However, the 1050 was after diluting back to 24Ltrs, and allowing for temperature adjustment. Since then, and having thought further, I may have an answer. My recipe called for 4250g of pale malt. I had a new 3kg bag of pale malt and the remains of a previous bag. I started by weighing out the new bag, 1kg at a time, and being some what miffed when the new bag emptied after 2638g. Now, it is possible that I'd mis-counted, and the new bag was actually over-weight, and I'd actually weighed out 3638g of malt; this I then topped up with the old bag to what I thought was 4250g, but was actually 5250g of pale malt. If that is so (and I have no way of knowing at this point), then using a mash efficiency of 70% (and not fogetting the 200g of both crystal and torrified wheat) for 24Ltrs, which is the amount I actually ended up with, you get a gravity of some 1050; which, of course, is what I got. Is that what happened? Well, looking back, I'm sure it isn't; but it is a possibility, and would explain the unusual efficiency. When I do my next couple of brews I'll take extra care weighing out the grain so I can be sure of my efficiency.

[Deebee]

Richard.

if you had done this and had an extra kilo in the mash then based on the 2.5l:1 water grain ratio your mash would have been really thick.

[RichardG]

Good point deebee, hadn't thought of that. I did indeed use 2.5Ltrs per kilo. However, having never done AG before, I may have had a really thick mash, and just not realised it!