Planning To Do My First Ags This Weekend - Biab Style

[RobH]

Gonna pick up the ingredients for a DrSmurtos Golden Ale (http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...&recipe=502)

And one of BribieG's simple Aussie Ale style recipies as in this thread - http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...st&p=773997

oooh yeah AG here I come

 

[Mclovin]

You wont look back, BIAB is the go. TRY RANDY ROBS INSATABLE PALE ALE. Its a hit.

 

[Punkal]

Good luck... I find the best thing you can do is get everything ready before you start and then check that you have everything out that you need when you are heating your mash water and run the process through your head...

Good luck and let us know how you go...

 

[Schober]

Good luck! You'll love it, there's something special about brewing a beer from grain.

 

[McFeast]

Gonna pick up the ingredients for a DrSmurtos Golden Ale (http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...&recipe=502)

And one of BribieG's simple Aussie Ale style recipies as in this thread - http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...st&p=773997

oooh yeah AG here I come

RobH, good on ya mate! Please take plenty of photos and post how you get on. I'll be doing that same brew as BribieG said in the coming weeks.
Will be a great learning experience!

Looking forward to your upcoming posts!

 

[Bribie G]

Good one, with the rice "lager" I wouldn't recommend using a lager yeast for the first time around - US-05 or Wyeast 1056 (close cousins) will give you an almost undetectable "fake" lager if you keep them below 17 degrees and you don't have to put up with lagering for a month, stinky egg gas like lager yeasts can throw, etc etc.

Just concentrate on the actual wort production first. :icon_cheers:

Edit: McFeast, are you actually in Central QLD? Sometimes the "from" and "location" fields are a bit confusing. There's a Mackay thread going somewhere - maybe you could get round to a brew day there if you contact a couple of the guys.

 

[RobH]

It's brew day, and I am up early for a Sunday ... running through volume calculations I find to my delight that I can use my smaller pot for the mash - this is good becaue it fits nicely inside my big esky.

I am also giving Brewmate a try - it will be interesting to see how closely my results are to the figures in Brewmate.

Was out most of the day yesterday, so on the way home I picked up my grain at around 4pm from Pat @ Absolute Homebrew St Marys (no affiliation) ... we talked about the differences betwwen local grains & the imported ones, and munched on a few grains to taste the difference - that was actully very helpful as I could certaily taste the difference between them - the imported "premium" grains having a more subtler taste than the locally grown ones - I can imagine them producing a smoother flavour in the finished beer.

As it is my first go at this, and to keep the cost down a bit, I opted for the local grains for the base malts of each brew.

Well time for brekkie now & then off to heat up the mash water

 

[RdeVjun]

Good luck with it Rob! Just take your time, follow the guides closely and nothing should go too far wrong. :super:
Nothing at all wrong with local malts either, they're just different.

 

[seemax]

Heat up some water, throw your bag full of grain in, stir... make sure its around 64-68C ... wait an hour.

Pull the bag out, squeeze it as much as possible, up to boil , add hops as desired, stop ... drain into cube.

Have a beer in between each step and all is good.

I would start off s 65% efficiency assumption and base all your volumes/gravities on that then after brew 1 you can adjust as needed.

Enjoy

 

[matho]

Hey rob you couldn't have picked a nicer day to brew, have a good day enjoying those fantastic aromas

Cheers Steve

 

[RobH]

Thanks guys

First mash in 15 mins ago ... glad I dropped the volume of water a tad from my initial level, as when the grain went in the level was right at the brim ... had to stir it in really carefuly

I had a glass of tap water just now & am a little worried as whilst it is drinkable, it does not taste the best - slight chemical flavour, wouldn't describe it as chlorine... not sure what to make of it. I have had this same flavour carry over to a finished beer before, fortunately it faded away after a few weeks.

I might have time to run off enough water for the next brew through the water filter ... before I try that I might try boiling some first and then seeing what it tastes like.

 

[RdeVjun]

Could be chloramine, RobH. A pinch of sodium metabisulphite (i.e. the sanitising agent, say 1/16 teaspoonful) stirred into the mash should take care of it and any chlorine, plus act as an antioxidant/ stabiliser. It shouldn't be too late to do that if you have some handy. That's for a full 23L batch, if you're dong a smaller one, reduce accordingly.
:excl: Some folks react badly to sulphites though, so proceed with caution. :excl:

 

[alizzan]

Good job on the move to AG, Rob. I did the same thing last week with Dr Smurto's recipe. You'll love it. I made a 9L batch, and it finished fermenting in about 4 days. Tasted it out of the fermenter, and it's very close to JSGA. You'll never look back, now. I can't wait to kick off another brew, and get rid of all my crappy K&K/Extract beers. Curious, though, how many brews had you made before the move to AG?

 

[RobH]

Could be chloramine, RobH. A pinch of sodium metabisulphite (i.e. the sanitising agent, say 1/16 teaspoonful) stirred into the mash should take care of it and any chlorine, plus act as an antioxidant/ stabiliser. It shouldn't be too late to do that if you have some handy. That's for a full 23L batch, if you're dong a smaller one, reduce accordingly.
:excl: Some folks react badly to sulphites though, so proceed with caution. :excl:

Never knew about chloramine before ... that's a good tip if that is what it is. I have Sodium metasilicate, sodium percarbonate, but not any sodium metabisulphite that I know of (unless that is the other name for bi-carb soda?).

 

[RobH]

Anyway - end of day report...

The DRSmurtos GA went well & was spot on with an OG of 1.040
The BribieGs "Fake" Aussie Lager .... well I must have done the mash wrong or something as I ended up with an OG of just 1.024
I did have to leave the mash in for about 2.5 hours as I got told at the last minute that I had to hook up the trailer and go pick up some bookshelves (thought to myself "that shouldn't take long") ... nice story that one, 2 bookshelves my hat! ... 2 bookshelves, 1 set of drawers, 1 bed, 1 sofa bed, 1 small ornament cabinet ... so yeah that resulted in a 2.5 hour mash .... could that be what went wrong? (I just can's see how though).

Maybe I am brewing a Tooheys 2.2 clone! (blech!)

 

[McFeast]

Take any photos mate?

 

[Punkal]

Your brew should turn out ok even with the 2.5 hour mash you may find it will turn out a little thinner than you expected but thats not a big problem...

I really like going to Absolute Homebrew St Marys, i just don't take SWMBO with me or i miss out on the chat with Pat and drink or 2 of his newest on tap and she also knows just how much i have spent she did have a chew on some grains last time i took her. I would go to his old store in Faulconbridge when it was open even though it was a little further it was a nice ride on my motorbike up through the mountains.

 

[Rosscoe]

Either way, don't worry too much Rob. It's all learning experience. I tried my hand at grain for the first time yesterday too. I only had a 19ltr Big W pot to use, but I wanted to make a full strength beer, so I added a can of light LME to up my OG to an acceptable level and help my efficiency out. I know this is cheating but I'm just learning anyway and I'll go AG once I get hold of a bigger pot.

Worked a treat anyway. I used this recipe to make a Schwarzbier (I needed a lager beer because my fermentation temps are around 10-12deg) :

2kg Pilsner
1.5kg Light LME
0.8kg Chrystal 120
0.2kg Carafa II

Perle 20gm @ 60min
Perle 20gm @ 5min
Perle 20gm Dry hopped

W-34/70 yeast

I started with the grain in 12ltr of water, mashed @ 65deg for 60min. (only lost 1deg over mash by wrapping the pot in an underlay and a blanket. After mash I sparged in 5ltr which put my boil vol up to about 16ltr which was perfect for the boil. I added the LME towards the end of the boil. After the boil I cooled in the laundry tub with some ice blocks and water. This only took 15 mins or so. Then I strained with a hop bag and a sieve into the fermenter and topped up to 23ltr.

My OG was 1049, which was spot on what Brewmate said it should be at 75% efficiency.

Tastes good enough to drink already . Hope it comes out just as good after fermentation. I'll let you know how it goes. Hope this helps Rob. Good to see how others do things some times.

A big thanks to everyone's posts on biab and stovetop in the past. All that time reading the old posts made everything go so smoothly, I felt like I had already done it before.

Cheers guys :icon_chickcheers:

Rosscoe

 

[RdeVjun]

Good on you folks having a chop at Stovetop BAIB of late, seems very popular all of a sudden! :icon_cheers:

Rosscoe, one option for that additional extract is to add it to the fermenter, so long as you're happy that it is sanitary (usually it is, that's no different from a kit). Doing so will eliminate losses of LME to trub, its only a very small proportion however it may be worthwhile if you have a lot of trub or an unusually high trub loss.
I always think of doing that 'partial mash' method as an excellent way to trick up a can of extract! Usually the results will be very worthwhile, so it is not really cheating at all. The 20L Stovetop Lager thread of NickJD's shows you how to get much more out of the 19L pot without using extract, I use a very similar method and that same pot to do all- grain 23L batches every weekend (MaxiBIAB- link below), but occasionally I do a partial just like yours.

RobH, sodium metabisulphite is the Brigalow and Coopers sanitiser which comes in powdered form, the smelly sulphurous stuff which needs to be rinsed off afterwards. I can't vouch for the foodsafe-ness, however I'll use a pinch per standard batch and that is not uncommon (Campden Tablets).

 

[manticle]

Never knew about chloramine before ... that's a good tip if that is what it is. I have Sodium metasilicate, sodium percarbonate, but not any sodium metabisulphite that I know of (unless that is the other name for bi-carb soda?).

Sodium bicarbonate.

None of those are sodium metabisulphite.

I wouldn't recommend using sulphites unless you know for sure that you have chloramine but I do have a hatred and a sensitivity to them. You may find you don't. How do you react to most commercial red wines and ciders?