new guy set up, opinions welcome

[deano2469]

hi all, on advice from Austin I posted this email as....wait for it....a post. Not sure if its the right place but, i'm sure it will be o.k.The only thing I did different was the final hop addition as i was away from the computer in my shed yesterday when i made it and i put the last hops in at flame out, then left them in alone for 20 mins before extraction....all other hops removed at flame out.I have put a shot of my set up as well, again forums and google is how i got started so any advice is very welcome...all seamed to go well with this brew. Started with 43lt as got too full with 45lt, i increased from original idea of 35 so as to sparge less, when added grains, then sparged with 10lt.

Hi Austin, I have been building up some gear to try BIAB. I made an india pale ale and it was great. Just ordered a brew from craftbrewer to try Ross's Nelson Sauvin Summer Ale. I have increased the ingredients by 75% overall to try and end up with 45 lt, enough for two sankey kegs and a couple of bottles to store away. i am boiling with gas in a 50 lt beer keg that I cut the top out to fit a glass lid. I found that the beer came out a little bitter on the aftertaste and im told its because i squeezed the bag quite a lot as it drained out. This time, i have made a strainer out of another 50 lt keg , cut in half and about 15 6mm holes drilled in the bottom. my plan is to do the grains 8.5kg all up with about 45 lt of water, then heat up, remove bag , place strainer on top, place bag and then add through sparging, another 10 lt of water to bring boil amount up to about 45/46 lt. The extra water is more than 75% but i wanted a slightly lower alcohol content as well. I am hoping it will all balance out at around 4.5%.

I will be doing it with no-chill for final hop addition 20 mins after flame out, then letting cool overnight to pitch yeast.

Its only second brew and I am getting more equipment all the time...If you have any advice i would love to hear it.

i might send some pix of my set up if interested..

deano

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

If you're looking to lower the abv on an IPA (especially an American style one), there are generally two options:

1. Mash higher and leave some fermentables. This will need an increased bittering addition (to rebalance the extra maltiness) and an increased flameout/flavour/aroma addition.
2. Lower the OG of your grain bill. I find that this generally means that you need to tweak down the base a little and tweak up your spec malts (crystals and the like) to give the 'body' needed to retain the balance.

Either method (I generally veer toward the first), require a bit of recipe tweaking. Unless your educated guesses turn luck (they may well do), it requires a bit of note-taking and some playing around with the recipe to get the right balance.

The other thing I found - I tried to brew a 4.0% IPA, and found it difficult. With effort I got to 4.5%, but that's about as low as I can get.

 

[marksy]

Who is Austin and who is Deano? What's the question?

 

[deano2469]

Hi Marksy, my round about way of a question was meant to be is adding water to my brew post mash going to ruin my beer. I only had a 50 lt keg to boil in and wanted to end up with 45 lt of beer prior to pitching my yeast. i have made it now and probably broke all the rules but let me know what you think. I started with 40 lt of water...then heated to temp,added bag, added 8.5kg of grains, 0.7kg of that was torrified wheat. Let sit with lid on and wrapped in towels for 60 mins...temp only went down about 3 deg C. lifted bag out, no squeeze, placed in strainer, poured 10lt of heated water about 70 deg after raising kettle to about 75 deg, through the grains to sparge. I ended up with about 45 lt which i brought to boil for 90 mins adding hops at stages...After cooling overnight i ended up with 35 lt of beer which i transferred to my fermenter drum and added another 10 lt of water to bring it up to 45 lt. the OG was 1.042.

Now ....

I did find a weird thing, soft balls the size of golf balls floating all through the beer..I am assuming it was the wheat, don't know yet.

I am Deano, and Austin is from Forum Admin.

 

[fcmcg]

G'day bloke and welcome to the forum..well done on your first efforts...
Word of advice though, maybe block out who owns your kegs, in your pictures...our multi national friends don't like people using their kegs..

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

You won't ruin the beer with adding water. It's often something that we do when we're over grav (rather than under-volume - since under-volume could also be poor efficiency and you end up with an under grav beer).

Get brewmate (if you haven't already). Look at the water dilution calc. Put in the OG before dilution and the IBU and colour and then add the water and see what figures come out at the other end. You might have diluted your IBU too far, though with a 1.042 beer - I reckon you might have needed the dilution. You won't get much of an IPA, but you might end up with a v.good APA.

 

[deano2469]

G'day bloke and welcome to the forum..well done on your first efforts...
Word of advice though, maybe block out who owns your kegs, in your pictures...our multi national friends don't like people using their kegs..

hey mate, cheers and point taken, stealth is always the best option....pix wise.

Deano

 

[Yob]

There is a dilution calc in brewmate?

Well there you go

Onya Goomba

 

[deano2469]

You won't ruin the beer with adding water. It's often something that we do when we're over grav (rather than under-volume - since under-volume could also be poor efficiency and you end up with an under grav beer).

Get brewmate (if you haven't already). Look at the water dilution calc. Put in the OG before dilution and the IBU and colour and then add the water and see what figures come out at the other end. You might have diluted your IBU too far, though with a 1.042 beer - I reckon you might have needed the dilution. You won't get much of an IPA, but you might end up with a v.good APA.

thank you Lord Raja Goomba I, I was trying to make a version of craftbrewers Nelson Sauvin Summer Ale.not sure if its a pale ale or an ipa.great to know I haven't blown it they estimated OG at 1.050 so i hope it to be around 4.5%.abv.I will take a look at Brewmate and see if i can use it. So much to learn. I am still trying to work out my efficiencies....never that good at maths.

Cheers

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Brewmate is simple to use, it's brewsmith that has a steeper learning curve (though far more options).

Plug in the recipe in there and see how it goes.

There's another thing you need to work out in future is your expected efficiency - those recipes are someone else's efficiency which may be higher or lower than yours. Bed down what you get normally (and until then, underestimate at 65-70%). The brewday calc will give you your 'actual' fermenter efficiency based on the current recipe. It also works out strike temp, mash temp and allows you to increase a regular sized recipe to a large one (so if the recipe is set for 25L, you put that in, put the recipe in and then increase the recipe to 45L and it gives you the updated grain and hop amounts).

That will help you work out how much you'll get into the fermenter.

The maths is easy - the program does that. You just plug in ingredients.

 

[deano2469]

Wow, beer mate learned me a new thing....Mash hop....that might explain why the bitterness is off the wall....oh well. I guess i've made an IPA after all...we will see in three weeks .

 

[deano2469]

just an update for anyone following still..Beer went into kegs today, OG was 1046 FG was 1006 , i think that should be about 5.3%...a lot higher than i was expecting. Tasted a drop to see how bitter it was because of my ignorance and its bitter all right but not terrible. I will be chilling in fridge overnight and force carbonating with Co2 tomorrow and the next day we will see .Keen as to try another with the same process..ended up with two full 19 lt kegs and two 750ml bottles to put away for posterity .... Gonna try to use beermate to get better values for next one and see how that goes.cheers.