Have I Buggered Up My First All Grain?

[bignath]

howdy fellow brewers,

yesterday i did my first BIAB in an urn all grain brew and i was hoping someone to could shed some light on if this is a problem or not.
There are several things i have not done before, that i did in this brew and they are, BIAB, using a whirfloc tablet, and using saflager 34/70.
Hopefully someone can put my mind at ease. Here's what i did.

Going for a lager using:

3kg Pilsner malt
1kg Light Dry malt
250g Carapils
250g Flaked Rice
250g Dextrose
Saaz 3.7% 60g @ 60mins
Saaz 3.7% 30g @ 30mins
Whirfloc (1/2 tablet)
Saflager w34/70

In my urn, added 27lt of water (because i know where 27lt comes up to on the interior of my urn)
Removed 4lt and added to my small stockpot to use as sparge water. this was topped up with an additional 3lt to give me 7lt sparge.
Urn turned on, brought up to 70 degree strike temp, added grains, temp dropped to 66 which was what i was after.
Mashed for 60mins constantly checking temp and applying small amounts of heat to maintain temp. It shifted two degress over the course of the mash.
Removed grains and squeezed into wort. Put grain bag in a big bucket, opened back a bit and poured sparge water through it. Gave bag another big squeeze (several in fact) using very untrendy pink kitchen gloves and added this to the wort.
Cranked up temp on urn and got to rolling boil. Added LDM and Dextrose. Maintained this for 90minutes as advised previously. During the first approx. 15mins of boil, i noticed some thickish stuff developing on top of the wort - i am assuming this is the break. I carefully scooped this out with a soup ladle and discarded. Not sure if this is wrong or not, but i seem to remember other posters saying that have done this with great success.
Added hops as scheduled, 10mins to go added whirfloc and put chiller in to sanitise.
End of boil, turned on chiller and stirred to speed up cooling process. got it down to where i was hoping and then transferred to fermenter, pitched yeast and is now sitting in my fermenting fridge slowly bubbling at around 14 degrees.

I have been informed that some of my ingredients are redundant against themselves as some add body, others take body away but with that aside, here's what i am unsure of.

the wort when transferring to fermenter was quite green and seemed to have a tonne of debris floating in it. I will obviously assume hop material as i did not use a hop bag. I guess my question is will this stuff fall out of suspension leaving me with a nice clear beer once it has finished fermenting and cold conditioning? I bloody hope so...Even checking gravity readings there is so much stuff floating in it i am not sure that the reading is accurate. I have used hops for a few years now, and quite often have got some debris in my fermenter when transferring, but this amount that i am seeing seems excessive. I hope i haven't done anything wrong in my process.

Sorry for the very long post.

Any help or light to shed, would be greatly appreciated.

cheers,

bignath

 

[haysie]

Sounds like the debris matter is due to not letting the break and hops settle after chilling, nevermind the beer will still be good. Are the pink trendy gloves standard kit :lol:

 

[manticle]

Yep.

You've totally muffed it. Chuck it away.


OR

Relax, don't worry so much. BIABERS can give you better advice than I can on your sparging etc processes (recent threads I've read suggest you probably don't need to worry and should do it all in one vessel).

Don't worry too much about the green - sounds like hop trub and should settle out. However what was your process after adding the whirlfoc? You mention stirring to aid chilling which might form a bit of a whirlpool but how did you transfer to fermenter? Did you leave behind the last bit of gunk (protein and hop trub?) At the risk of offending some older members of the forum, your beer won't die if you get some or even all in there but it is generally recommended to try and leave as much of the trub behind as possible and get only the clearer wort into the fermenter or cube. If the whirlfloc and whirlpool has done its job the trub should form a cone and precipitate out given enough whirlpooling and enough time. Easy enough to transfer all but 2 or 3 litres of clear wort and leave most of the gunk behind.

Anyway congrats on the first and just live and learn from here on in. Ferment and see what she tastes like. Make the next one as good or better.

 

[bignath]

Haysie,

def. not standard brewing attire. Or any attire for that matter. thought they may come in handy for draining a hot and heavy bag of grain and hell was i right. That stuff gets heavy real quick and all i could think about is how big a splash all over myself is this gonna make if i drop it back in to the urn!!!

manticle,

yeah dropped the whirfloc in, it sizzled a bit, i gave it a bit of a stir and waited 10mins before turning on chiller. I stirred every once in a while during the cooling phase with my paddle (paint stirrer) but because i haven't used the whirfloc before, i didn't realise i may have to let it settle before transferring. I should have though, makes perfect sense and not sure why i didn't realise it. will do it next time. i left as much stuff as i could in the urn but no doubt some other trub beside the obvious hops debris got in.

live and learn i suppose.

 

[bignath]

with transferring, i connected a length of food grade tubing to urn outlet, and gravity fed to the fermenter below.

 

[manticle]

Sounds fine. Generally it's good to add the whirlfoc 10-15 mins before flamout then after flameout (I usually wait 10 mins or so) gently but firmly stir in a motion that creates a smooth whirlpool. Continue as long as you can (some do up to 20 minutes; I do nowhere near as long)
and you should notice the centrifugal action draws the crap into a spiral or cone. As it chills or the whirlpool settles, you'll see it drops out and the stuff on top is clear.

You'll be fine. Move onto fermenting.

 

[bignath]

thanks manticle, you've replied and helped me out a fair bit over the last week or so as i have been preparing for my first AG.

Cheers mate, i lift a cold frothy in your honour!!

 

[ballzac]

1kg Light Dry malt
.
.
.
250g Dextrose

That's a hell of a lot of sugar to still be calling it AG. I mean, I call it AG when I add a dash of treacle or something for flavour, but that's a significant proportion of your fermentables there. Not having a go, just curious about whether this is commonly accepted nomenclature? I would call it a partial if it has anything in it that can easily be gotten from grain. A bit of extra pilsener malt and a bit of rice would replace those ingredients. However, adding honey or something can't be done with grain.

 

[bum]

While you aren't entirely wrong, ballzack, you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. This isn't a question that can be answered by your average can opener.

Best of luck with it, Nath. And maybe throw further beginner questions in the beginner Ag forum to avoid unnecessary exchanges like this one.

 

[bignath]

ballzak/bum,

sorry guys, i didn't realise i was in the wrong forum for beginner AG questions... will certainly post future Q's there...

ballzak,
what you said makes perfect sense to me. I was under the impression from reading other postings that all grainers still used LDM and dextrose, or maybe that the process of AG still warranted using Dry Malt's and some other fermentables (dex in this instance). My apologies if i have unintentionally offended any of the AG'ers with my assumption that i myself are infact AG'ing when it appears that i am not.
Also i would like to thank you for the info about the difference between partial and AG. I am assuming by adding these to my recipe, that i guess technically it makes my style of brewing partial? I didn't know what the difference was.

With this in mind, do you have any idea of what (ratio wise) i could do to substitute the LDM and dex for rice? Is this an equal 1:1 ratio, and by rice, do you mean flaked?

Thanks again guys, and in future i will post in the correct location.

regards,
bignath

 

[bum]

PMed

No apology required, Big Nath.

 

[ballzac]

ballzak/bum,

sorry guys, i didn't realise i was in the wrong forum for beginner AG questions... will certainly post future Q's there...

ballzak,
what you said makes perfect sense to me. I was under the impression from reading other postings that all grainers still used LDM and dextrose, or maybe that the process of AG still warranted using Dry Malt's and some other fermentables (dex in this instance). My apologies if i have unintentionally offended any of the AG'ers with my assumption that i myself are infact AG'ing when it appears that i am not.
Also i would like to thank you for the info about the difference between partial and AG. I am assuming by adding these to my recipe, that i guess technically it makes my style of brewing partial? I didn't know what the difference was.

With this in mind, do you have any idea of what (ratio wise) i could do to substitute the LDM and dex for rice? Is this an equal 1:1 ratio, and by rice, do you mean flaked?

Thanks again guys, and in future i will post in the correct location.

regards,
bignath

Haha, it would truly be an AG snob !#$%wit who got offended by someone adding a bit of dextrose and DME and still calling it AG. I just wasn't sure if I had the wrong end of the stick as far as the definition of AG goes, so wanted to clear it up Personally, I find it more fun to use only grain, but it probably won't make a huge amount of qualitative difference.

If you choose to replace the LDM with malted barley, I think it's a 2:3 ratio. That is, replace your kilo of DME with 1.5kg of grain. I think it's about the same for rice/dextrose, but not sure, so you'd better wait for someone more knowledgable to reply.

Flaked rice is probably best, but it depends on how well you cook it. A lot of people use flaked rice directly in the mash, but I have found that adding uncooked adjunct to the mash is not as successful as cooking them, even when they're pre-gelatinised like flaked rice is. There may be something else that can be done to enable the starches to be better utilised, but I'm quite happy to cook up a 'porridge' and add it to the mash.

Also, regarding your initial post, it's fine! Sometimes I've had a lapse of concentration while syphoning and ended up with a quarter of a gallon of trub in my fermenter and it eventually clears. I've never noticed any astringency or anything with such a brew. I was wondering the same as you whether the SG reading is accurate though.

Good luck with it all, and sorry if I hijacked your thread with semantics :unsure:

 

[mje1980]

That's a hell of a lot of sugar to still be calling it AG. I mean, I call it AG when I add a dash of treacle or something for flavour, but that's a significant proportion of your fermentables there. Not having a go, just curious about whether this is commonly accepted nomenclature? I would call it a partial if it has anything in it that can easily be gotten from grain. A bit of extra pilsener malt and a bit of rice would replace those ingredients. However, adding honey or something can't be done with grain.

What, 250g?? That's bugger all. If you can taste a "dash" of treacle you have pretty good taste buds. Lots of AG recipes have some adjuncts in them.

 

[bignath]

Haha, it would truly be an AG snob !#$%wit who got offended by someone adding a bit of dextrose and DME and still calling it AG. I just wasn't sure if I had the wrong end of the stick as far as the definition of AG goes, so wanted to clear it up Personally, I find it more fun to use only grain, but it probably won't make a huge amount of qualitative difference.

If you choose to replace the LDM with malted barley, I think it's a 2:3 ratio. That is, replace your kilo of DME with 1.5kg of grain. I think it's about the same for rice/dextrose, but not sure, so you'd better wait for someone more knowledgable to reply.

Flaked rice is probably best, but it depends on how well you cook it. A lot of people use flaked rice directly in the mash, but I have found that adding uncooked adjunct to the mash is not as successful as cooking them, even when they're pre-gelatinised like flaked rice is. There may be something else that can be done to enable the starches to be better utilised, but I'm quite happy to cook up a 'porridge' and add it to the mash.

Also, regarding your initial post, it's fine! Sometimes I've had a lapse of concentration while syphoning and ended up with a quarter of a gallon of trub in my fermenter and it eventually clears. I've never noticed any astringency or anything with such a brew. I was wondering the same as you whether the SG reading is accurate though.

Good luck with it all, and sorry if I hijacked your thread with semantics :unsure:

thanks for the reply dude!

this has answered many of the next "round of questions" i had in advance! I didn't know you could literally cook up the flaked rice to basically porridge state and then add to mash. Might have to give that a try...

cheers for the ratio of extract/grain too. this will make it easy for me to work out future additions.

must be time to go brew another batch!!

regards,
bignath

 

[ballzac]

What, 250g?? That's bugger all. If you can taste a "dash" of treacle you have pretty good taste buds. Lots of AG recipes have some adjuncts in them.

It's 1.25kg, and works out to 1/3 of the fermentables, roughly.

 

[mje1980]

thanks for the reply dude!

this has answered many of the next "round of questions" i had in advance! I didn't know you could literally cook up the flaked rice to basically porridge state and then add to mash. Might have to give that a try...

cheers for the ratio of extract/grain too. this will make it easy for me to work out future additions.

must be time to go brew another batch!!

regards,
bignath

Just use rice if you're going to cook it anyway.

 

[mje1980]

It's 1.25kg, and works out to 1/3 of the fermentables, roughly.

Dry malt extract is not sugar.

 

[ballzac]

From wiki:

The term "malt" refers to several products of the process:

the grains to which this process has been applied, for example malted barley;

the SUGAR, heavy in maltose, derived from such grains, such as the baker's malt used in various cereals; or

a product based on malted milk, similar to a malted milkshake (i.e., "malts").

Now we're really getting into semantics. :lol:

 

[mje1980]

Definately drawing a long bow saying sugar and DME are both sugar.

 

[ballzac]

Well, my point was that 1/3 of the fermentables are not grain. I call maltose/dextrose/lactose/maltodextrin/sucrose/fructose etc. sugar. Perhaps it is not accepted in this community, but I think that's the terminology used by organic chemists.

Anyway, we should start a "semantics" thread if we want to continue this discussion, as we are really hijacking Nath's thread here.