Rookie brew

[tubbsy]

Doing my first brew today to see how my home malted barley and wheat go. My mash bill is 75% malted barley (pale ale), 22% malted wheat (malted as a pale ale) and 3% roasted wheat malt (roasted at 180C). My best guess is it would be a brown ale?

Anyway, the mashing went well with the SG coming back at 1.044. Me being a noob dumbarse thought "What! that's lower than the expected OG of 1.057!", so I added some Coopers Light Malt LME to bring it up to 1.058. Only when I began the boil did it dawn on me that I was measuring the pre-boil gravity. So can I add the missing volume of boiling water towards the end of the boil to keep the OG at a reasonable level?

 

[MHB]

Yes, you can adjust before the end of the boil.
Gets a bit harder after as you need to avoid adding an infection or Oxygen at the wrong time.

Back to your home made malt, care to give your masses and volumes, be interesting to see what you got.
Mark

 

[tubbsy]

Cool, thanks.

My mash was...

3.8 Kg barley malt
1.1kg wheat malt
0.185kg roasted wheat malt

Mashed in to 15L of water @69C, and vorlauf after an hour and got 12L. Added another 12L at 69C and vorlauf after 15 minutes, for a preboil volume of 24L.

 

[MHB]

OK so a Preboil Volume of 24L at 1.044, from a simple little equation
Mass of extract = V*OG*oP. =24*1.044*0.11 = 2.756kg (11oP is 11% or 11/100 = 0.11)

Given commercial Pale and Wheat malt I would expect that about 77% would be available. you have used 5.085kg, at 77% you should have had about 3.915kg of extract.

Looks like you got about 2.756/3.915 = 70% brewhouse efficiency.
Actually for a first brew with home made malt that's pretty impressive.

Sure there are things you will be able to do to improve your yield but that's a damn good start.
Mark

 

[tubbsy]

Thanks Mark! I've mashed before in other pursuits using my own malted grains but didn't pay much attention to anything but the OG (hence my stuff up). Currently got the wort chiller running and will be pitching BE-256 for something different.

 

[tubbsy]

Hi Mark, can you comment on the rest of my brew process?

Hops additions were 10g of Galaxy at 60min and 15g of Amarillo at 20min.

I plan on letting it sit for 2-3 weeks once ferment has finished, with 20g of Amarillo added 5 days before bottling.

How does this sound? Any idea what style it's close to? My best guess is Brown Ale, but really have no idea.

 

[MHB]

I have nowhere near enough information to take more than a stab in the dark.
The hopping would be regarded by many as being a bit on the light end, its probably enough if you just want a sessionable easy drinking ale. No law saying every beer must be a hop bomb.

One thing I can say categorically!
You should never let beer sit on the primary yeast for more than 14 days, in fact if your primary isn't finished in 7 days its fair to say you have either underpitched or your yeast is struggling for some other reason.
If the ferment isn't finished before 14 days or you want more contact time with hops... rack the beer to get off the old yeast.
As yeast ages it starts to break down (Autolysis) one of the first products released by the dying yeast is Protease A, an enzyme that will stay in your beer and slowly degrade all the proteins to peptides - there goes a fair fraction of the body/mouthfeel and head holding of your beer.
I know a lot of people will say its OK to leave beer on yeast longer but its very bad practice.

Mark

 

[tubbsy]

Yeah, realised this morning I should have upped the hops during the boil due to the addition of extra water. I'm not a fan of big hops or bitterness which is why I kept it lower, but I might increase the dry hopping to 25 or 30g.

Interesting you say that about sitting on the yeast. All I've read recently suggests racking to a secondary isn't necessary. But your response prompted me to have another look and I read that high gravity beers will benefit from more time in a secondary vessel, so I'll give that a go once the ferment has finished.

 

[kadmium]

Yeah, realised this morning I should have upped the hops during the boil due to the addition of extra water. I'm not a fan of big hops or bitterness which is why I kept it lower, but I might increase the dry hopping to 25 or 30g.

Interesting you say that about sitting on the yeast. All I've read recently suggests racking to a secondary isn't necessary. But your response prompted me to have another look and I read that high gravity beers will benefit from more time in a secondary vessel, so I'll give that a go once the ferment has finished.

Secondary aging is not needed for most beers. If you're doing a huge 1.090 plus barleywine or RIS then yeah you could age it in bulk (secondary) or you could age it in the bottles.

Mark's right, in that if fermentation is not well and truly over in 14 days something is wrong (in most cases) for standard beers.

I would ferment till it hits terminal gravity (can be a few days) and then dry hop for about 3 days, get it cold (crash it) for a couple days and then bottle.

This will help the hop debris settle out before bottling. Try not to move beer around or else you're basically just exposing it to oxygen for no real reason. Obviously moving to a bottling bucket and such is necessary but in my opinion ferment and bottle don't rack to secondary.

Even the RIS I am doing this week will be fermented till it hits terminal, rested for a few days after to help the yeast finish up and then bottled.

 

[tubbsy]

Thanks kadmium. That sounds like a nice, straightforward procedure, so I'll give that a go for this first brew.

Also sounds like I've got plenty more to learn!

 

[kadmium]

Thanks kadmium. That sounds like a nice, straightforward procedure, so I'll give that a go for this first brew.

Also sounds like I've got plenty more to learn!

Pretty sweet you malted your own grain! Be sure to put some photos up, I'm super curious to see how it turns out!

 

[tubbsy]

Next malting I'll have to remember to take some pics to put up. This brew is more a proof of concept of my grain and of the malting. Malted it before but was only worried about getting a decent gravity and efficiency. If it makes a half decent, drinkable beer I'll call it a success, especially as the grains I used only cost $0.60/kg.

 

[MHB]

Wasn't talking about aging beer but primary fermentation of a beer we know is 1.059.
Specifically referring to tubbsys' proposed fermentation schedule, where he proposes leaving the beer in the fermenter for something like 4 weeks.
That is a bad idea!
It doesn't take a great deal of mechanical aptitude and 1.5m of 10mm line to get beer off the old yeast and into another container with out exposing the beer to much if any in the way of Oxygen.
If you brewed in a CCV and were using it as a unitank, there would normally be 4 yeast/trub drops in a 21 day lager cycle, just standard good brewing practice.
Mark

From Kunze,
arrows indicate yeast drops.
Dark solid line - Temperature
Light solid line - Diacetyl
Dashed line - Gravity in Plato

 

[kadmium]

Wasn't talking about aging beer but primary fermentation of a beer we know is 1.059.
Specifically referring to tubbsys' proposed fermentation schedule, where he proposes leaving the beer in the fermenter for something like 4 weeks.
That is a bad idea!
It doesn't take a great deal of mechanical aptitude and 1.5m of 10mm line to get beer off the old yeast and into another container with out exposing the beer to much if any in the way of Oxygen.
If you brewed in a CCV and were using it as a unitank, there would normally be 4 yeast/trub drops in a 21 day lager cycle, just standard good brewing practice.
Mark

From Kunze,
arrows indicate yeast drops.
Dark solid line - Temperature
Light solid line - Diacetyl
Dashed line - Gravity in Plato

View attachment 119750

Yeah I was agreeing with you, and clarifying where he stated that he would age it in a secondary (or had given thought to doing that) and wad clarifying that in my opinion for this beer he didn't need to age it in a secondary and a simple fermentation schedule would be more than sufficient in my eyes.

 

[tubbsy]

So it looks like the ferment is done already. Airlock activity has stopped so I checked the gravity and its 1.010. Was expecting it to last a few more days yet, but my shed has been running a bit hot the last few days. Was trying to ferment at 18°C but its been at 22°C during the days. Will check the gravity again tomorrow and if unchanged will add the hops.

 

[MHB]

Always worth noting your Apparent Attenuation Change/OG*100 or from (58-10)/58*100 = 83%, that about all most of the popular brewing yeasts will give you, so yep its probably done.
Worth looking at the yeast you chose and checking out its specifications.
Mark

 

[tubbsy]

Thanks Mark. I did read it prior and promptly forgot, but BE-256 is a fast fermenter with an attenuation of 82-86%. Also says "To maintain the aromatic profile at the end of the fermentation, we do recommend to crop this yeast as soon as possible after fermentation.". Is that to do with the autolysis you talked about?

 

[MHB]

Nah they are just saying if you want to reuse the yeast don't hang around, keep the yeast too long and it will change and not be as good next brew.
Mark

 

[Klosey]

I have nowhere near enough information to take more than a stab in the dark.
The hopping would be regarded by many as being a bit on the light end, its probably enough if you just want a sessionable easy drinking ale. No law saying every beer must be a hop bomb.

One thing I can say categorically!
You should never let beer sit on the primary yeast for more than 14 days, in fact if your primary isn't finished in 7 days its fair to say you have either underpitched or your yeast is struggling for some other reason.
If the ferment isn't finished before 14 days or you want more contact time with hops... rack the beer to get off the old yeast.
As yeast ages it starts to break down (Autolysis) one of the first products released by the dying yeast is Protease A, an enzyme that will stay in your beer and slowly degrade all the proteins to peptides - there goes a fair fraction of the body/mouthfeel and head holding of your beer.
I know a lot of people will say its OK to leave beer on yeast longer but its very bad practice.

Mark

Hey Mark, I got called away urgently while brewing an ale. Looks like maybe 10 or 11 days in the FV before I can keg it. Never have left my ales on the primary yeast for that long before. Trust all is well with it? Your thoughts?

 

[MHB]

Should be fine, if you have temp control best would be to crank it down to 3-5oC. Good rule of thumb anything that can go wrong will go wrong faster warmer.
Mark