Gallon Test Brew...

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Wed May 03, 2006 11:24 pm

QUOTE (Daft as a Brush @ May 3 2006, 10:22 PM) It should be bubbling away by the time you have your Wheaty-Bangs tomorrowÃ‚Â

I hope so DaaB, (although I've promised myself mushrooms on toast - my fave brekkie!)

BlightyBrewer · Post by **BlightyBrewer** » Thu May 04, 2006 12:05 pm

What's the latest Reg? How did you cool the wort? Any pics of it fermenting away in the demi-john?

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Thu May 04, 2006 2:16 pm

I have a surfeit of pics and some comments on the practical problems I encountered along the way owing to the size of the brew, and equipment used...

I'll be posting shortly!

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Thu May 04, 2006 4:25 pm

Okay... Well alot more went on last night and I had some interesting conundums on the way... So I'll start pretty much where I left off with the boil completed. I may have to break this up a bit to make the story readable...

To answer your question about cooling BB, I used a good old fashined sink and cold water...

Which produced some pretty quick cooling and good results...

So I'll sign off this one and cover the first issue I came across in the next post...

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Thu May 04, 2006 4:32 pm

At this stage I took the OG...

A poor photo I know, still using my phone whislt trying to get on with things... OG1070... ERRRP! I have lost alot of water in the boil even with the lid on. I guess in future I would probably elect to use boiled kettle water at this stage to make the volume up and bring the OG down to the desired level, but in this instance I decided to soldier on and take a look at the problem in the flesh as it were.

A little and fairly obvious trick here... If you lack an OG jar just sterilise the plastic storage tube it comes in. It does a passable job, you just have to hold it upright.

Anyway, moving on to a little homily. I referred back to my notes...

As you can see from page 1, I keep a pretty thorough if illegible record of everything I do so I can refer back. I checked my notes and could easily see that my OG was way too high for the malt employed...

My final conclusion was to put the kettle on and have boiled and cooled water ready once I'd seen where we were volumetrically. In the next test gallon, I'll probably make things up at this stage, however...

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Thu May 04, 2006 4:49 pm

So anyway, I'm not faced with trying to drain off a rather concentrated wort with quite alot of trub hanging around... I tried whirpooling but this had only a minor effect owing to the small volume involved...

So I tried three plans just ot see what would happen. They were all siphoning based...

Plan 1 - Having set up for siphoning, (above), I tried just using the walls of my mashing bag as a make do filter...

This worked very well but the small filter area clogged quite quickly.

Plan 2 - So I tried exanding the filtration area using a funnel...

Again this worked well but simply brought on the same problems slightly later.

Plan 3 - Use a seive to create an artificial Hop Bed...

This worked quite well, although it was not as efficient a filter and you had to be careful of spillages.

So after quite alot of experimentation I finally had my wort...

So there we go folks. I lost alot of water in the boil as you can see and in correcting this problem made a bit of a howler which I will cover in the next post...

Post by **Andy** » Thu May 04, 2006 4:53 pm

Just hope the Mrs doesn't find those pics Reg! Her precious kitchen.....

Who took this picture while you were posing behind the hydrometer ?

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Thu May 04, 2006 5:00 pm

So, nearing the final hurdle, I made up my wort with boiled and cooled water to a level that would allow for a good yeast head plus the 400ml volume of my starter...

Then I added my yeast and was about to cap the whole this when I touched the side of my demijohn and felt it was rather too warm for my liking!!!

A quick look at my notes confirmed I had omitted to check the temperature of my boiled and cooled water. So I crash cooled the wort by dumping the demijohn in a sink of cold water. Has I not had a vigorous starter this may have put me in trouble, but one of the advantages of a strong yeast culture is that is can survive most extremes for a short period. So I can strongly recommend both good notes and a good starter.

Anyway, with that problem solved, I soon had the whole affair capped and a few bubblesstaritng to form...

My only concern is that the separation of the wort from the trub has not been all that good, see the Trub settling below...

Nonetheless, I am happy that the experiment has both refreshed my meomory and taught me a few things. Lo and behold in the morning...

...and as the day has progressed I have a very vigorous ferment with two bubbles in the airlock every second...

So without being too pompous

, I'll do just one more post with a few conclusions...

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Thu May 04, 2006 5:01 pm

QUOTE (andy @ May 4 2006, 03:53 PM) Just hope the Mrs doesn't find those pics Reg! Her precious kitchen.....Ã‚Â

Who took this picture while you were posing behind the hydrometer ?

I wish I could explain the chicken thing... but I can't despite having asked my wife several times what she sees in it !!!

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Thu May 04, 2006 5:08 pm

ConclusionsA gallon brew is feasible, although the small volume does create a few issues re: filtration and the boilIt's possible to do a single vessel mash and boil using a mash/sparge bagIt's possible to brew a gallon of beer with a spargebag, a demijohn, an airlock, a thermometer and a few household itemsWith refininement, this could be an energy / materials saving way of testing new recipesOverall it may seem quite alot of effort for not alot of beer, but I tested a new recipe of my own design with very little in terms of materials and equipment and wahtismore energy. Both boiling the original water and the wort took very little energy and I was able to keep up a good rolling boil on around 3 on the dial of my cooker so the element wasn't on all that often...

Anyway... Good fun!

BlightyBrewer · Post by **BlightyBrewer** » Thu May 04, 2006 8:06 pm

Excellent Reg...you are a pioneer! :beer

Post by **Jim** » Thu May 04, 2006 8:25 pm

Mmm, looks nice, Reg! Even in it's fermenting state it's making me thirsty!

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Thu May 04, 2006 9:19 pm

Well, we'll have to see how the recipe comes out, but I'm reasonably happy.

Reg · Post by **Reg** » Fri May 05, 2006 9:41 am

Well, this morning fermentation has settled into a more gentle phase maybe a bubble every 3-4 seconds and the yeast has sterted to settle out of the beer on top of the trub, there are two distinct layers you should be able to just about see it in the photo below. :blink: A bit more cr*p at the bottom than I would have liked.

Resampling the yeast should I care to might be difficult. I guess I need to look at the cooling / filtration methodoligy a bit to see if I can make this more efficient for the next test brew.

On the plus side, experience would suggest that the slight darkening of the beer and the yeast fall is a good sign that the beer will settle out.

Post by **Andy** » Fri May 05, 2006 9:57 am

Might be worth investigating those 5L insulated drinks things from Lidl Reg. If you could fit a stainess braid to the inside of the tap then you'd have a nice little mash tun.

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Gallon Test Brew...