Raven's First Ag Brew

[raven19]

Sorry about the long post all, however there are photos to sweeten the deal!

Completed our first AG yesterday, it was a Dr Smurto Golden Ale.

4.5 hrs, including an 80L boil. The new SS 100L electric boiler worked well - 2 x 2400W ceramic elements took 80L of 65 degree wort to the boil in 35 minutes.

I am thinking we may have overdone our fly sparging a little. I calculated my efficiency as 70%.

Took a heap of readings, with times and temperatures during the day, so this will aid in working out heat loss in mash tun, etc.

We planned a 50L batch size, however we ended up with 62L in a no chill cube & two fermenters. One of the fermenters we will dry hop for side by side sampling.

Planned OG was 1.047, however we ended up with 1.035. We fly sparged with 50L of water, until runoff was down to 4 Brix (1.004), and we had used our allotted water. We let the grain bed run out tottally with valve open fully towards the end.

Q1. Based on the end runoff out of mash tun of 1.004, should we have stopped fly sparging earlier? Do you stop capturing runoff when gravity drops to a certain level? (keen to hear thoughts on tannin extraction, etc... if this presents an issue)

Q2. I also suspect we allowed it to drain a little to quickly, if we slowed down our runoff rate from the mash tun, would this have helped in requiring less sparge water? (i.e. will a slower runoff rate result in more sugar washing out of the mash quicker?)

Q3. My calculated efficiency (based on Zwickel's method) is based on 9 Brix (1.035) pre-boil with 80L in the kettle (i.e. 90 gms sugar or 9% x 80L x 1.035 = 7.45kg sugar / 10.6 kg grain (total grain bill) = 70.3%). Keen to hear comments on this from others.

Zwickel's method:
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=19202

Q4. Mashed in with 28L of 66 degree water with our 10.6 kg of grain = 2.6L/kg. Is this ok, should we have gone a little closer to 2L/kg?

Also some pics of our efforts below. We tried cooling into our first two fermenters, however it melted the ice so quickly not much benefit was gained. Plate chiller is required soon I think!

I tried to adjust hops based on the larger batch and lower OG, we shall see how it goes upon tastings in a few weeks.



Brewery Setup


Fly Sparging (kepping about an inch of water above grain bed)


Runoff into buckets, then tip carefully into boiler


2nd round of flysparging (urn is only 25L, hence we used an immersion element to heat up another 25L in fermenter bucket)


Wort into Cube & Fermentors (copper coil in ice didnt work very well!)

 

[Goofinder]

Looks like your first AG went off nicely. Well done.

Q1. Based on the end runoff out of mash tun of 1.004, should we have stopped fly sparging earlier? Do you stop capturing runoff when gravity drops to a certain level? (keen to hear thoughts on tannin extraction, etc... if this presents an issue)

I think you're supposed to stop when the gravity drops to around 1.010 or 1.008, but don't quote me on that as I batch sparge and am not too familiar with fly sparging.

Q3. My calculated efficiency (based on Zwickel's method) is based on 9 Brix (1.035) pre-boil with 80L in the kettle (i.e. 90 gms sugar or 9% x 80L x 1.035 = 7.45kg sugar / 10.6 kg grain (total grain bill) = 70.3%). Keen to hear comments on this from others.

Not sure about this method... I just use what Beersmith gives me based on my post-boil volume and SG.

Q4. Mashed in with 28L of 66 degree water with our 10.6 kg of grain = 2.6L/kg. Is this ok, should we have gone a little closer to 2L/kg?

2.6L/kg sounds fine. Did you use 66 degree water, or get the mash to 66 degrees? I usually use about 74 degree water to hit 66 in the mash.

 

[raven19]

2.6L/kg sounds fine. Did you use 66 degree water, or get the mash to 66 degrees? I usually use about 74 degree water to hit 66 in the mash.

Sorry - yes water went in higher so we hit mash in temp with grain & water mixed (ended up adding 3L cold water to adjust!)

Appreciate your input!

 

[Frank]

Raven
You will end up with a beer around 3.5%ABV give or take, so probably not that bad for a session beer.
With your sparging, you might be able to slow it down a bit, but don't be too concerned for the next few beers.
When sparging I don't actually measure the gravity whilst filling the kettle, I concentrate on getting the right volume of wort into the kettle to ensure I end up with my 50L (plus waste trub) into the fermenter. I don't think I have had issues with tannins yet. If you are missing your OG by too much just add some more base grain until you get use to your setup.
From your numbers 62L fermentable, plus I am guessing 3L of waste trub and dead space in pipes etc. 65L post boil, therefore 15L evaporation in a 60min boil. Next time fill your kettle until you have 50L (fermentable) + 3L (waste) + 15L evaporation = 69L (pre-boil).
I use a steel ruler as my dipstick for measuring, your a numbers man, so could make up your own graduated dipstick down the side of your mash paddle. If your paddle is too short to touch the bottom, use it to measure the distance from rim, to wort level (measuring dead space).
You did lose a lot to evaporation (15L), Did you have a rapid boil, or rolling boil? My kettle is 49.5cm in diameter, and I lose around 10L (5.5cm) to evaporation in 60min. Did you try only using 1 element once you reached the boil?
Cheers

 

[BoilerBoy]

View attachment 24259
Wort into Cube & Fermentors (copper coil in ice didnt work very well!)

Could you give further detail on the copper coil and ice to cool the wort?

I have been using this method for about 3 years now, but I think from your picture you were using crushed ice?

I use 20-30 1L frozen blocks of ice (depending on if its an ale or lager & the weather) and can get a 30L batch of wort from kettle to 15-18C in about 20min by just stirring and adding ice and adjusting exit temp through the kettle tap.

Cheers and well done,
BB

 

[raven19]

Raven
You will end up with a beer around 3.5%ABV give or take, so probably not that bad for a session beer.
With your sparging, you might be able to slow it down a bit, but don't be too concerned for the next few beers.
When sparging I don't actually measure the gravity whilst filling the kettle, I concentrate on getting the right volume of wort into the kettle to ensure I end up with my 50L (plus waste trub) into the fermenter. I don't think I have had issues with tannins yet. If you are missing your OG by too much just add some more base grain until you get use to your setup.
From your numbers 62L fermentable, plus I am guessing 3L of waste trub and dead space in pipes etc. 65L post boil, therefore 15L evaporation in a 60min boil. Next time fill your kettle until you have 50L (fermentable) + 3L (waste) + 15L evaporation = 69L (pre-boil).
I use a steel ruler as my dipstick for measuring, your a numbers man, so could make up your own graduated dipstick down the side of your mash paddle. If your paddle is too short to touch the bottom, use it to measure the distance from rim, to wort level (measuring dead space).
You did lose a lot to evaporation (15L), Did you have a rapid boil, or rolling boil? My kettle is 49.5cm in diameter, and I lose around 10L (5.5cm) to evaporation in 60min. Did you try only using 1 element once you reached the boil?
Cheers

Boston,
Thanks for the input mate.
Being a numbers man indeed (guilty as charged! ), we have a dipstick already with markings on it. Did a 75 min boil, had both elements on, and it certainly was not a furious boil, but I was keen to get some decent evaporation to get the SG up a bit more (as it was a bit low IMO)!, I think next time we shall have just the one element on though. My quick initial calculations are similar to your numbers above, in terms of trub loss and evap. Trub maybe even a bit higher, the hops soaked up a fair bit, and we were not keen to have that in the fermenter! My kettle diameter is 415mm.

I am hoping it will be a good session beer indeed.

Cheers!

 

[raven19]

Could you give further detail on the copper coil and ice to cool the wort?
I have been using this method for about 3 years now, but I think from your picture you were using crushed ice?
I use 20-30 1L frozen blocks of ice (depending on if its an ale or lager & the weather) and can get a 30L batch of wort from kettle to 15-18C in about 20min by just stirring and adding ice and adjusting exit temp through the kettle tap.
Cheers and well done,
BB

Yes, crushed ice, 3 bags only lasted about 10 minutes!

For this to work we need more copper, more ice and a slower flow through the pipe.

Not much else I can expand on for this cooler, my mate whipped it up while the boil was happening, 2 short lengths of copper tube from Bunnings, and a foam brocolli box. It only dropped temp from 100 to 50 in one fermenter (23L) then the ice was gone and it was no longer a worthwhile process IMO.

He has a pool, so I am thinking we shall make a second coil for the kettle with overflow into the pool, maybe bigger blocks of ice are required and more coils in the foam box!

 

[BoilerBoy]

Yes, crushed ice, 3 bags only lasted about 10 minutes!

For this to work we need more copper, more ice and a slower flow through the pipe.

Not much else I can expand on for this cooler, my mate whipped it up while the boil was happening, 2 short lengths of copper tube from Bunnings, and a foam brocolli box. It only dropped temp from 100 to 50 in one fermenter (23L) then the ice was gone and it was no longer a worthwhile process IMO.

He has a pool, so I am thinking we shall make a second coil for the kettle with overflow into the pool, maybe bigger blocks of ice are required and more coils in the foam box!

Cheers Raven,

Yeah, I suspected that crushed ice wouldn't last very long, but its a method that does work 'if you have the freezer space for making 20-30 blocks of ice".

The copper coil I use is 9m, but it was made as a test to see if it could work, over 3 years later I'm happily still using it, but If I made another I would probably go for 12m which may in turn decrease the amount of ice needed.

The next step will be setting up a mechanism for a paint stirrer to agitate the water.

BB

 

[Steve]

Congrats Raven

Thats one helluva kettle, where did you get that from? What was it originally?
Cheers
Steve

 

[troopa]

Steve you musta missed the biuld topic Ravens Kettle

 

[Smashin]

Sorry about the long post all, however there are photos to sweeten the deal!

Planned OG was 1.047, however we ended up with 1.035. We fly sparged with 50L of water, until runoff was down to 4 Brix (1.004), and we had used our allotted water. We let the grain bed run out tottally with valve open fully towards the end.

Q1. Based on the end runoff out of mash tun of 1.004, should we have stopped fly sparging earlier? Do you stop capturing runoff when gravity drops to a certain level? (keen to hear thoughts on tannin extraction, etc... if this presents an issue)

noticed you quoted your final runoff gravity as 4 Brix first off, this is 1.015, if so then you certainly didn't push the sparge to far.

wd on first AG

 

[raven19]

Congrats Raven

Thats one helluva kettle, where did you get that from? What was it originally?
Cheers
Steve

Steve, as per other reply above, it is a custom built kettle - 100L capacity with sheaths for ceramic elements.

Plenty of pics and other info as per link provided by Troopa.

Cheers!

Eidt: Correction, yes my final runnings were 4 Brix or 1.015 - sorry I put 1.004 in the original post.

 

[Ross]

Congrats Raven, nothing like your 1st AG.

What sort of false bottom/manifold are you using?

cheers ross

 

[Fourstar]

Great to see you popped your cherry Raven19! So when is my Raspberry Wheat getting done ?

Looks like you have taken on board everything from this forum as it seems like your day went on without a real snag! Now heres hoping the beer turns out great (i would expect so!)

Cheers!

 

[Jazman]

by looks of your the amount of wort u collecte4d and your og gravity u could of boiled the wort longer to hit your targets

 

[jusman]

Just going back to the hastles of chilling your wort. Not sure of your budget and I would guess you want a method that's as quick and convenient as possible. Have you looked at plate chillers. I recently bought Beerbelly's 30 plate chiller for $119.95. Not to sound like an expert, but on the 2 occassions I have used this plate chiller since purchasing it (just using tap water at about 21 C, this is only a guess and is Victorian tap water in summer), I have been able to get about 22 Lt of wort from 90'ish degrees Celcius down to 23 C & 24 C in about 15 minutes. I then use a few trays of ice to get it right down to 19C/20C for pitching. You do use a little bit of water with a plate chiller, but this can be saved or used on gardens/washing machine/etc.

Anyways, just my experience and I have to say I love it and it works great. My next purchase might be a few of the quick disconnect cam locks for this chiller so I don't have to keep on removing and inserting different bsp fittings between using the chiller and cleaning/back flushing it.

Cheers

Justin

 

[buttersd70]

Raven
Congrats on your first.
Looking at the numbers you have provided, I agree with Bostons comments.

I have GA in my beersmith folders, so just scaled it up to see what the numbers would roughly have been...one thing that stands out to me is the pre boil grav and the efficency.....the 1035 you were working on for preboil, I presume that was a calculated amount, and not a measured amount? because at 1035 at 67L, it works out as 70% to boiler....which tallies up. Changing the target volumes to the higher volume, including 3L trub loss, your actual efficiency based on OG in the fermenter looks to be around the 65% mark, give or take.....if you had of stopped the sparge at volume, you would have ended up in the region fo 1040-44 ish (you might have lost a few % due to the lower sparge, but I don't know by how much exactly). So it seems to me, the main issue was sparging with too much water.

The other issue that I might have mentioned the other night in the whats in the glass thread was to do with the hopping...If I did, forget about it. I thought at the time you'd scaled everything up to 62L beforehand, but as it stands, if the recipe was only scaled to 50L, the extra 12L in volume rebalances the bugu anyway, so its a non-issue.

Overall, it should end up as a nice sessionable beer...you might find the malt isn't quite as dominant due to the lower gravity, but it should still be fine.

 

[raven19]

Congrats Raven, nothing like your 1st AG.

What sort of false bottom/manifold are you using?

cheers ross

Ross - We are using a piece of SS mesh (from a security window). Cut and grinded the edges to fit in nicely in the bottom of the esky. We lift the back of the esky up slightly when sparging with a piece of timber about 15mm thick. It seems to have worked well at this stage.

:icon_offtopic: My Celli tap is now working a treat, loving the kegging system and items you recommended!

Great to see you popped your cherry Raven19! So when is my Raspberry Wheat getting done ?

Looks like you have taken on board everything from this forum as it seems like your day went on without a real snag! Now heres hoping the beer turns out great (i would expect so!)

Cheers!

Fourstar - It is one of the next on my list indeed!
Yep this forum is great, I am addicted!
Also what helped us a lot was doing this mash brewing Tafe Course here in Adelaide. Was with the Brew Boyz at regency tafe, it gave us lots of ideas on how to get things happening on a budget too.
The only major snag was having 2x2400W elements cranking, then turning on the immersion element also caused the safety switch to trip. <_<

Very keen on a rasberry wheat soon though! Have your PM saved still with info raring to go. Will PM you closer to the date to get your thoughts on our recipe.

Raven
Congrats on your first.
Looking at the numbers you have provided, I agree with Bostons comments.

I have GA in my beersmith folders, so just scaled it up to see what the numbers would roughly have been...one thing that stands out to me is the pre boil grav and the efficency.....the 1035 you were working on for preboil, I presume that was a calculated amount, and not a measured amount? because at 1035 at 67L, it works out as 70% to boiler....which tallies up. Changing the target volumes to the higher volume, including 3L trub loss, your actual efficiency based on OG in the fermenter looks to be around the 65% mark, give or take.....if you had of stopped the sparge at volume, you would have ended up in the region fo 1040-44 ish (you might have lost a few % due to the lower sparge, but I don't know by how much exactly). So it seems to me, the main issue was sparging with too much water.

The other issue that I might have mentioned the other night in the whats in the glass thread was to do with the hopping...If I did, forget about it. I thought at the time you'd scaled everything up to 62L beforehand, but as it stands, if the recipe was only scaled to 50L, the extra 12L in volume rebalances the bugu anyway, so its a non-issue.

Overall, it should end up as a nice sessionable beer...you might find the malt isn't quite as dominant due to the lower gravity, but it should still be fine.

Butters, thanks for that input mate.
Yep, I certainly over sparged!
I was trying to play with Beersmith whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, and I ended up increasing the longer boil hops (60mins hops) to get the bitterness up, and as such there will be less aroma hops (as I only had 180gms of hops to play with!). I also played with the efficiency on beersmith to try and match the larger preboil volume and measured gravity. Then later that night I ran thru Zwickel's method to get that 70% figure.

I did scale up beersmith to 50L, hence the extra 12L really played havoc with things! :lol:

However, I am anticipating 3 different styles of beer from this, as one is cubed (more bitterness as I understand), one is to be dry hopped in fermenter, the other bog standard.

Hoping to bring samples of all 3 to the case swap. Have also promised a few to Dr S!

ps - I think our losses in the kettle are more like around 6 or 8 litres, so I shall be taking this into account also next time.

Overall an exciting and great learning experience. Cant wait to sample it, an afternoon session beer it shall have to be!

Cheers.

 

[raven19]

Raven
Congrats on your first.
Looking at the numbers you have provided, I agree with Bostons comments.

I have GA in my beersmith folders, so just scaled it up to see what the numbers would roughly have been...one thing that stands out to me is the pre boil grav and the efficency.....the 1035 you were working on for preboil, I presume that was a calculated amount, and not a measured amount? because at 1035 at 67L, it works out as 70% to boiler....which tallies up. Changing the target volumes to the higher volume, including 3L trub loss, your actual efficiency based on OG in the fermenter looks to be around the 65% mark, give or take.....if you had of stopped the sparge at volume, you would have ended up in the region fo 1040-44 ish (you might have lost a few % due to the lower sparge, but I don't know by how much exactly). So it seems to me, the main issue was sparging with too much water.

The other issue that I might have mentioned the other night in the whats in the glass thread was to do with the hopping...If I did, forget about it. I thought at the time you'd scaled everything up to 62L beforehand, but as it stands, if the recipe was only scaled to 50L, the extra 12L in volume rebalances the bugu anyway, so its a non-issue.

Overall, it should end up as a nice sessionable beer...you might find the malt isn't quite as dominant due to the lower gravity, but it should still be fine.

Butters,
What are your thoughts in regards to stopping fly sparging, and leaving sugars (albeit low gravity) in the mash tun?

We couldve boiled it for longer I guess to increase the gravity, but time was getting on, and SWMBO was wanting me back in the house!

Just to confirm, next time I shall stick to sparging until kettle has reached preboil volume then stop. (This is the correct method I assume?)

Does that mean the remainder can go into the 2 penny beer discussed by others previously?

 

[buttersd70]

Butters,
What are your thoughts in regards to stopping fly sparging, and leaving sugars (albeit low gravity) in the mash tun?

We couldve boiled it for longer I guess to increase the gravity, but time was getting on, and SWMBO was wanting me back in the house!

Just to confirm, next time I shall stick to sparging until kettle has reached preboil volume then stop. (This is the correct method I assume?)

Does that mean the remainder can go into the 2 penny beer discussed by others previously?

I don't actually fly sparge, but yes, you sparge untill preboil volume has been reached, or pH drops below a certain point (can't remember the number), or gravity drops below (I think) 1010 - whichever comes first. If the runnings are still reasonable in gravity when you hit your volume, theres no reason afaik why you can't continue to sparge and collect seperately for other uses, such as a tupenny, until you reach the limits of pH and gravity.