Newbie Question About Ag Brewing

[Silo Ted]

Watch this (and no, that's not the real me :unsure: ).

Uh, WHA ! ? So much to speak about in that video.

Big pot - looks like 30 litres - has a tap on it
BIAB style - Aussie reference was sweet
Mash PH (with strips, d'uh) - No-One here knows the calc for relevant pH. in on traditional nano-brewhouses
I should ask WTF !? with the wort in a bowl sample, pipetting in some iodine.

And more more more.

It's a giid video. Clever, but anal.

Which is funny, if you think about it.

 

[Silo Ted]

Too much science ! ! Must repel knowledge ! !



Thanks for introducing this bird to me, Nick. :chug:

 

[Nick JD]

I'm pretty sure that the goop in the kit cans isn't "boiled" down to that thickness ... it's vacuum evaporated at a low temperature. Still boiled I s'pose, but cold boiling.

 

[flano]

I have watched her videos a few times now.

Imagine if she was your mother in law.

 

[Malted]

Careful Malted, if that hotty works at Spotlight at Gepps Cross it may be my niece.
Nige

Thanks for the tip Nige, I shall go to Gepps Cross Spotlight for a look around. Which section should I look in? She'd be fine with ladders would she, not scared of heights or anything? h34r:

 

[Silo Ted]

I have watched her videos a few times now.

Imagine if she was your mother in law.

Probability of having a lesbian mother-in-law = 3%

 

[Truman42]

Thanks for the advice and tips, think I'll ask a hottie at Spotlight first and after shes looked for awhile then try the nanna..LOL

What sort of hops should I use pellets or the flowers? And what do you do with them? Do they just go into a voille bag and get dunked into the wort at the right time?

 

[bignath]

Thanks for the advice and tips, think I'll ask a hottie at Spotlight first and after shes looked for awhile then try the nanna..LOL

No hotties at all at my spotlight...Only nannas...

 

[Malted]

What sort of hops should I use pellets or the flowers? And what do you do with them? Do they just go into a voille bag and get dunked into the wort at the right time?

Shove some in one ear (and up one nostril for good measure), stand on one leg and chant, 'Make good beer, make good beer'.
If this does not make good beer then chuck some in the boiling wort for 60 minutes for a bittering addition, 20 minutes for a flavour addition or some for 5/10 minutes/flameout/whirlpooling for aroma. You boil the wort for 60 minutes or more regardless of when the hop additions are. 20 minute additions means when 40 minutes of the boil has elapsed or 20 minutes of the boil remains. How much hops you add to a brew is a calculation you will need to do. There are various programs to calculate this for you, some free and some a negligible $ amount.

How to use them is not a simple explanation, so I shall give one. It depends upon your equipment.
Some say pellets will sink to the botom during whirlpooling so are not a problem going straight into the wort. They will even sink to the bottom of the fermenter if you chill it (helps with clearing etc) when brewed and prior to bottling or kegging.
Some say flowers clog things up and other say flowers float and aren't a problem.
Some folks bung them in a bag just to be sure.

 

[manticle]

I find pellets drop and flowers clog taps. I use a bag for flowers (a big minimash bag with flowers in loose) and chuck pellets straight in.

 

[Truman42]

okay so I thought the hops were taken out at the end of the boil. So obviously pellets arent but what about the flowers, do you pull the bag out at the end of the boil?

 

[manticle]

No real need to. Usually the boiler gets drained through a tap or siphoned out.

 

[Nick JD]

If you are being a lazy bastard like me and simply leaving the pot (kettle) overnight to cool down so you can pour it into your fermenter the next morning when it's reached 20C, then leaving the hops in is a bad thing to do.

Your hops that were in the boil for 60 minutes won't make it much more bitter, but if you added 30g of a 15%AA hop with 5 minutes left in the boil ... and then you leave these in a very, slowly, cooling, pot - it's going to be MUCH MUCH bitterer than you had planned. You've lost touch with your recipe; external factors are controling the taste of your beer. You don't want to lose control of your recipe.

Removing your hops from the pot makes sense if you plan to let it cool in the pot. If you are transfering into another vessel to no-chill, or rapidly cooling it using a heat exchanger of some sort ... then bunging your hops in comando is the way to go.

 

[manticle]

If you are being a lazy bastard like me and simply leaving the pot (kettle) overnight to cool down so you can pour it into your fermenter the next morning when it's reached 20C, then leaving the hops in is a bad thing to do.

Your hops that were in the boil for 60 minutes won't make it much more bitter, but if you added 30g of a 15%AA hop with 5 minutes left in the boil ... and then you leave these in a very, slowly, cooling, pot - it's going to be MUCH MUCH bitterer than you had planned. You've lost touch with your recipe; external factors are controling the taste of your beer. You don't want to lose control of your recipe.

Removing your hops from the pot makes sense if you plan to let it cool in the pot. If you are transfering into another vessel to no-chill, or rapidly cooling it using a heat exchanger of some sort ... then bunging your hops in comando is the way to go.

Dunno. I don't slow chill in the kettle but I do no chill. I'm waiting for a side by side chill vs no chill hopbursted apa to carbonate so I can tell the exact difference with a tried and true recipe.

I have never, ever tried to remove any hop addition from my kettle. I was under the impression that in the right temperature, the acids would become separate from the hop debris so bittering would continue with or without the green gunk. I do not know, or pretend to know for sure though. Obviously when I no chill, apart from any cube additions, the gunk is left behind so that differs from slow chilling.

Have you tried both and found a difference with the same recipe?

 

[Nick JD]

I was under the impression that in the right temperature, the acids would become separate from the hop debris so bittering would continue with or without the green gunk.

If that were true, my 15-minute-only slow chilled Citra APAs would be IPAs. I reckon when you remove the hops, you remove the potential bittering.

 

[manticle]

As I said - not sure.

Interested though. Try a small batch side by side one day with hops removed and hops left in.

 

[Nick JD]

As I said - not sure.

Interested though. Try a small batch side by side one day with hops removed and hops left in.

Easy way to test it would be to dip your 60 minute addition in for 5 minutes and see if it's bitter. Someone else can drink the sweet beer though.

 

[manticle]

I'm not quite following what you're suggesting.

Even dry hopping gives some bitterness to my palate (and loads of flavour despite everyone insisting it's only for aroma). It's how much hops (physical matter) will contribute to the overall IBU once the acids have been isomerised that's interesting (real world experiences rather than theoretical).

People have also suggested hop bags will restrain isomerisation/utilisation if too tightly packed.

Maybe I'll try it. 1 tight packed hop bag, 1 loose packed, 1 loose pellets, all slow chilled, same wort, same fermentation.

Slow chilling freaks me out a bit though.

 

[chunckious]

Some advice if I could please lads.
Doing stove top BIAB small batches to cut my teeth on. After pitching the yeast I noticed that I had the bung and not the tap in the FV. So I didn't take a gravity read. Fermentation was active. Just left for 2 weeks to bottle. Notable cidery smell was present upon bottling. Thinking along the lines of the wort had been left to long after fermenting and oxidation has occurred. Bottled anyway to see what will happen.
Did my second batch on the weekend and did the same ******* thing with not putting the tap on FV. Fermentation is active after 2 days.
Now I'm thinking that fermentation is finishing quicker than expected due to the small size of the batch. I don't know whether to tip the FV back and take out the bung & put in the tap so I can monitor when fermentation has finished. Trying to avoid the mistake of my first batch.

 

[argon]

Cidery aromas and flavones are typically attributed to yeast pitching rates and fermentation health. Leaving the fermentation go for 2 weeks won't produce these attributes in your finished beer. Eg my regime consists of 14 days primary then at least 7 days cold conditioning before packaging.

What yeast did you use? How much did you pitch? What temp did you ferment at? How was the yeast handled before pitching... Sprinkling dry yeast/rehydrated dry yeast/starter? In my experience these are the factors to look at when trying to eliminate off flavours such as cider