BIAB Witbier / Blanche / Belgian Wheat Beer 2 (ph, salts, fermentation temp...)

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According with BYO (lucky! another public-link!):
https://byo.com/article/the-science-of-step-mashing/

This is the table of mash steps:
table2.gif

So we would be doing:

15' 45℃ Beta-Glucanase (also Phytase?)
5' 55℃ Peptidase/Proteinase ?
60' 65℃ Beta-amylase
10' 72℃ ??? <-- to be Alpha-amylase it should be <71ºC, isn't it?
10' 78℃ Mash out <-- passed the Alpha-amylase denaturalization!

The article also includes some examples of common mash programs:

untitled-2.gif
untitled-3.gif

untitled-4.gif
untitled-1.gif


So what you suggest is similar to the Cover All the Bases Step-Mash Program:
5' 35ºC Phytase
10' 45ºC Beta-glucanase
15' 57.2ºC Proteinase
20' 62.7ºC Beta-amylase
25' 67.7ºC Alpha-amylase
5' 75.5ºC Mash out <-- within alpha-amylase range

I would like to read this one: https://byo.com/article/the-best-mash-program/ but bad luck... restricted area... :(
I need to study more about this too!! maybe I'd subscribe to BYO...
 
71- 72 is glycopretein but will also hit alpha.

Your regime looks good.
 
I do 40 degrees for 20 minutes, 68 degrees for 60 minutes and 76 for 10. the 40 degrees is the beta-glucanase rest to stop the oats gumming up the mash. that's for a 10% oats grain bill.
 
71- 72 is glycopretein but will also hit alpha.

Your regime looks good.

Don't get me wrong, I will stick to the mash program you told me, I just wanted to know the names and the purpose of every step.
For me it's not enough to have a procedure, I need to know and understand why, the reason behind. I guess you will get tired of telling me the answer to my questions everytime.... jeje

Thank you very much!


There's a guy at my office who always does that. I am an analyst (expert in our system) and I'm suposed to give the answers, so if he has a problem, without even trying to find a solution, he asks me. I tell him what to do, how to do it and what's the reason for that, he says ok ok thank you but he never takes notes or learns sh*t, for him it's just a problem solved. Next time he finds the same problem he doesn't have a clue and he asks me again. I get angry but in the end I do it again and again and again...


P.S.
https://www.winning-homebrew.com/enzymes-in-beer.html
http://beerandwinejournal.com/mash-out-options/

Mash program explained:
15' at 45º (Beta-glucanase: avoid unmalted grain gumming up)
5' at 55º (Proteinase: enhances the head retention and reduce haze / Peptidase: release yeast nutrients)
60' at 65º (Saccharification/Beta-amylase/Alpha-amylase: extract main fermentable sugars)
10' at 72º (Glyco-protein: stabilize head/foam /Alpha-amylase extract more fermentable sugars)
10' at 78º (Mash out: ease up drain and wash the grain)
Sparge at 78º (wash the grain, improve efficiency)

P.P.S. Do you think is it worth to add the malted grain after the first step or it doesn't matter? I've read the beta-glucanase rest is counter productive on highly modified malts like the Weyermann Pilsner I will use :S But if I tell my homebrew supplier to make two bags of grain he will probably laugh at me
 
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I finally brewed it on saturday.
In the end I decided to cut down in half the amount of aromatic malt, so I did:

50% unmalted wheat (flaked)
42.5% pilsner
5% rolled oats
2.5% aromatic malt

I increased the amount of sparge water from my last brew so the thickness of the mash (before sparge) or liquor-to-grist-ratio was a little over 4 (volume of strike water (L)/grain weight (kg)), which is just the top of the recommended ratio (2-4).https://byo.com/article/managing-mash-thickness/
The idea was to increase the amount of sparge water to wash totally the grain and I think I got it (see efficiency below) but I hope I didn't take more not-fermentable sugars or tannings...
Next time I'll adjust this this liquour-to-grist-ratio to just under 4, just in case.

I measured the PH with my totally unrealiable ph strips and I had around 5.6-5.7 so I added 1.5ml more of lactic acid and I'm not sure if I saw any change in the color of the strip but... whatever. I let it be. I trust more the calculations than those strips. Maybe I should borrow a PH meter to check them... anyone close to north sydney / mosman? jejeje

The only thing is, I must have counted wrong the amount of water because I had 1L more than I calculated!
Apart from that, everything went pretty smooth step by step. I managed to cool it down from boiling temp to 24º in ~40' and then I moved it to the fermenter, shaked it to areate for 3' or so, put it into the fermentation fridge until it was at 20ºC and pitched the yeast then.

In the end I got just over 1050 FG, 2 points more than expected. The sample was really really turbid/muddy. With my APA it was similar so I took a bigger sample, let it settle down (decant) , I repeated the hydrometer test only with the "clear" part and I got 2 points less, so I guess if we do the cross multiplication here, the FG 1050 would be 1048 in reality, which gives me an astonishing (for me) 80% efficiency!! Would it be the ceiling/maximum of the BIAB technique? Is not that I'm obsessed with efficiency, it's just a number, but it's also the inidication that I'm doing things better...

- OFFTOPIC -
I'm reading:
"How to Brew. Everything you need to know to brew great beer every time" (John J. Palmer, 4th edition)
And it's really really good. so far I've only read the extract brewing part and I've learnt some stuff I can use, let's see what I learn when I read the real deal (all grain)
 
Yesterday I bottled.
The FG was 1010 so... 5.25% ABV, righ on the money!

The color was right and I got 11L of beer. I calculated it for 10L but I don't know when I did a mistake and added 1L extra... anyway, all good.

I drunk the beer from the hydrometer and I don't know why but it has a burnt-rubber taste I don't like, I've checked the off flavours and it says it could be caused by:
- Water chlorination: I used Sydney water which has very little and never had this issue.
- Fast temperature changes: it was in the fermenter fridge with the controler so no changes (until a brief 12hours "cold crash" to 3ºC rigth before bottling)
- Bacteria/wild yeast: I sanitized everything as I always do with starsan-like sanitizer and never had an infection, could it be this one?!?!
- Yeast issues: (old yeast) I bought the white labs witbier yeast from my homebrew supplier 2 days before brewday and it went from his fridge to mine in less than 20', it can't be that...

I bottled anyway and put the bottles back to the fermenter fridge to bottle condition at 20º, but I'm worried...
Some years ago I had a blanche de bruges with this exact flavour and to be honest I thought it wasn't good, could it be due to the spices? The aromatic malt? (I used 65g = 2.5% of the grain bill)
:S:S:S
 
by the way, I washed the orange and the grapefruit thoroughly with soap and rinsed them very very well
 
I've read it could be:
- sulphur -> dip copper to avoid it (during the boil), unfortunately my chiller is not copper :(
- autolysis -> no way, my beer was only 10 days in the fermenter!
- lack of nitrogen -> use yeast nutrient??
- white part of the peel -> impossible, i peeled it with my sharpest knife and i got 0.0000% white
- wrong kind of orange -> it could be, last time I used seville orange, this time I used naval
- sanitizer -> i used 5ml of startsan-like sanitizer for 2L of water, maybe I left too much foam inside? should I dilute the mix a little more??

Most people talk about burnt rubber smell, but in my case is not smell is taste!
Other people say it's because of the dead yeast, in that case, after 2 weeks of conditioning into the bottle, if I pour the beer leaving a little behind, it should be right... ??? :s:s
 
Hez, you might want to bring it to our next brew meet for an observation. Might be something else that's causing the mystery flavour. You're in Mosman? Look up FRBC brew club, we're in Naremburn. Next meet is 14 Feb (yes, you'll need to sort this out with your missus....good luck...haha)
 
by the way, I washed the orange and the grapefruit thoroughly with soap and rinsed them very very well

You washed the fruit with soap. WTF!!

So after you rinsed them did the micro pores magically rinse themselves.
 
- sanitizer -> i used 5ml of startsan-like sanitizer for 2L of water, maybe I left too much foam inside? should I dilute the mix a little more??

It likely won't have caused your flavour issue, but you should dilute that down a bit more. Most phosphoric sanitisers are 1.5ml per L of water, so your mix is almmost double strength

Also, are you sure that the burnt rubber smell isn't just how you are experiencing the esters and phenols from the yeast? I've had a couple of friends who haven't really dabbled in Belgian type beers describe both a saison and belgian blonde that I made with a similar taste to what you're describing. I (and other friends who enjoy Belgians) just found them to be very expressive of the expected yeast character
 
gJust for fun I went and looked at the recipe for Hoegaarden in "Brew Classic European Beers at Home" Wheeler and Protz.
Pierre Celis was never too forthcoming on the subject of how he brewed, but Protz visited the brewery often enough to have a pretty good idea of what was going on.
I think you're over thinking the beer a bit, see what they had to say -
Hoegaarden.jpg

And for gods sake spend the $0.60 (at my LHBS) to put the proper Coriander and Bitter Orange - they make a big difference to the beer.
One other possible modification would be to add all the wheat, oats and some of the malt to a pot and heat it slowly with about 2.5:1 water from ambient to about 70oC, then add the balance of your pale malt and water to get you to the recommended mashing temperature (note 90 minute mash). Better yet do a fully designed cereal mash.
People tend to think enzymes turn on and off like a switch - wrong this is old-school analogue. Enzymes are all active from ambient from just above freezing until they die!
From Kunze
ENZYME.JPG

So by slowly heating you go through all the various enzymes (including several most people don't even recognise (there are over 20 active in the 20-70oC range)) Ideally heat at a rate of rise of 0.5oC/minute.
Mark
 
^ that book just casually recommends a "top fermenting" yeast? The reader-brewer might be disappointed with this results if he used US05.
 
Been talked about before - the book predated the wide availability of specific yeasts. Naturally you would opt for the Hoegaarden Yeast if you could get it.
My point is that one of the most likely to be right resources available recommends a very simple brewing procedure, malt and hop bill - even an isothermal mash, I believe we are more likely to get the beer we want if we start with a very simple close to original recipe/process, get that right then develop it in the direction we want.
Mark
 
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