Brewday 28/01/07 Chim Chimnay

[tubby_shaw]

Ok my atempt at a Belgian Dubbel is underway
Recipe for 23 l
4.5 kg pale malt
500g Amber malt
500g Wheat
600g white sugar
90 minute mash 11 litres mash liquor, temp 64ºC.
25g Perle 8% 90 minute boil
10g Saaz 3.2% 15 minutes boil
I am aiming for an efficiency of 75% to give an OG of 1.067

The yeast from the bottles of Chimay red is looking happy


I have had to use whole wheat processed through the coffe grinder


Just a quick piccie of my evolving mash tun, I added some foam insulation as per DaaB last night



Mash underway, it smells like freshly brewed coffee



Extra insulation added


I'll post more piccies as the day progresses

[Garth]

good luck tubby, have a good brew day, mmmm marmite

I'm doing a oatmeal stout in about an hour

[tubby_shaw]

Cheers Garth I hope your brewday is going well.
Some more piccies,
Run off


Sparge, no posh spinny sparge arm for me Yet


Coming up to the boil


more to come

[Bongo]

Looks like it's going well,I'm glad you use pictures it's interesting and really helpfull to see it all going on,I hope to try ag one day myself.

[prodigal2]

Tubby it looks your having a good day of it

Sorry for the rookie style question, but how long does it take to sparge like that?

[tubby_shaw]

Prodigal2, it takes me around 45 minutes, I use a sort of batch sparge, but once I have the grain bed filtering correctly I do not stir the mash I just sort of float it
DaaB of course no problems with the false bottom, it's a good design
I also ensured that all the grains were well mixed prior to dough in
On with the picture show,
Cooling,


Dropping,


I use dropping to aerate the wort, it works well


Pitching the yeast,


In the end I got my 23 litres but at an SG of 1.064 giving an efficiency of 70%
I think that I need to improve my sparging technique I had collect 28 litres and the SG of the runnings was still 1.012 I feel a spinny spargy thingy coming

[NzDan1]

Regarding the Chimay red yeast, did you lift that from a bottle? I was wondering whether or not it is their primary yeast or do they use a priming yeast for bottling?
I lifted some from a bottle a while ago but have been afraid to use it because it seems different than other yeasts ive used such as, it seems very low flocculating and sort of stringy, it dosent take much to move it off the bottom of the bottle, do you think this is normal for this yeast?

Cheers

Dan

[tubby_shaw]

Hi Dan,
Yes the yeast was taken from bottled Chimay red.
From reading the Chimay web site http://www.chimay.com they aparantly centrfuge the beer to clear it and then re seed with yeast before it is sent to the bottling plant. From what I am lead to believe it is the same yeast as used for fermentation.
As for flocculation I will know when I come to bottle it, but I have used this yeast from the bottles many years ago and do not recall any problems

[SteveD]

Sounds like you have a pretty good system already with those numbers, you could have sparged a little more. There's an article on the CBA website where one brewer raised his efficiency into the mid eightys but ended up easing off a little as the increased efficiency was effecting the quality.

Mind you, after you've done a batch with a spinny sparger you won't go back...set it off and watch it do the work for you

Great Piccys btw

I wondered a while back wether it was qualitatively better to use more malt and not have to sparge down to 1006, rather than sparge until you've wrung every last sugar molecule out of a smaller mash.

I average 90% brewhouse efficiency, ie using volume in the FV in the calculations, and so I'm going to try upping the quantities of grain and stopping the sparge short to see if the beer turns out better. My tasters (wife & mates) say it's good as it is, and the current brew (Pale Ale well hopped, OG1051, Maris Otter + Fuggles/Goldings + Safale S-04) trounced Caledonian's Golden Promise (TTL/Deuchars fans take note ) in a blind tasting....but, it doesn't hurt to explore avenues that could lead to improvement.

[moorsd]

I agree, Stella is the only commercially mass produced lager I don't mind drinking nowadays (Since I sampled the delights of Pilsner Urquell, and various German quality ones! )

Unlike most it still has some degree of character that hasn't been destroyed by mass production and quick turn arounds!

[NzDan1]

Yeh i had always been a stella fan too! before i brewed of course but New zealand steinlager (Mass produced) is Im thinking now probably better in the hop department and an overall better beer than the artois, which is a bold statement for an australasian beer, should I say New zealand beer (aussies cant brew), although theres much better lagers brewed by micros in Nz which far surpass the blandness of steinlager and the rest of the worlds piss poor takes on lagers i.e artois, heinekien, and especially that american corn rice junk such as bud, miller etc

If you live in Britain you have no excuse to not drink good beer! the rest of the world its hard to find a good beer!

[prodigal2]

Stella if the lines are clean can be good. Its the only cooking lager that I will drink when faced by no choice in a pub.

I must say Rolling Rock was a great beer until it got "Brewed Under License" And I must admit I am partial to Super Bock.

On a side note with Stella their current 1pt goblet type glasses would be great with a good beer as like a wine glass it helps push the fragrance to the nose, and increase the enjoyment of the beer.

[SteveD]

Stella=fighting juice that'll give you a nice hangover to go with the thump you got from the bouncer

Why bother? It's cheap, so buy it, and use your brewing skills to brew something 10 x better instead

I read this somewhere :- " Why bother brewing beers like those you can already buy? As craft brewers we are in a unique position to be able to brew and drink great beers that you CAN't buy"

[SteveD]

I listened to the BN interview with Denny Conn yesterday (atmopheric conditions allowed me to pick up next doors broadband connection ) he sounds like a sensible sort of bloke, open minded, no nonsense, and for my money worth paying attention to. He was also suggesting with increased efficiency comes reduced quality, why chase numbers on a homebrew scale, grain is cheap.

Now i've found out my system will give me an eficiency in the mid to high 80's i'll definately be throttling it back and aim for the mid 70's, most recipes I have are based on this anyway.

I'm not entirely convinced about batch sparging, especialy as i've tried it recently with a mini mash and got about 67% compared to around 75-80% when I do a combination of batch and fly sparging. Hias thoughts on first wort hopping have convinced me to give that a go though

We're thinking along the same lines then.

How did you batch sparge? When Durden Park did the same comparison they reported that they found no noticeable difference in extract or quality.

The old method for 'multiple mashing' ie, batch sparging, was to mash and rest at conversion temperature as normal, then after running off the 1st wort would refill the mashtun with hotter liquor, say 77c, stir the mash and let it infuse for a period, say 60 mins. Then run off the 2nd wort. They sometimes produced 3rd worts and 4th worts, again with even hotter and hotter liquor, but these were often used as return worts, ie, liquor to mash the next day's brew.

[SteveD]

Did you get a gravity reading for the second running? I dunno, maybe with only once rinse you do lose some. Two smaller rinses might be better, but I'm only guessing...it could be down to a dodgy batch of malt!