Tales of a brewday

[neo__04]

Hey all,

After moving houses, building a big shed to brew in, redesigning all the brew gear and about 18 months too long, im finally setup and brewing again.

Today was the maiden brewday, havent brewed for maybe 18 months. The brau clone was the tool of the trade today.

Decided To do a Nelson Sauvin Summer ale, reasonably simple brew. Ale malt & wheat malt. Easy.

Got my strike water up to temp, malt pipe in, grain in, lid on the malt pipe. Screwed it down, hoping for malt pipe to seal.......
Water gently trickled over the sides Malt pipe a success. Lost a tiny little bit of grain husk into the brew. Nothing worth worrying about.

Ardbir controller worked a treat.

Used my plate chiller for the first time.

Was aiming for 23l brew, got 19.5 litres into the fermenter.

Problems/Things to improve on:
- Dont be in a rush and leave out the wheat malt !!! Would 400g make much of a difference to the brew?
- Boil didnt seem vigerous enough for my liking. its a 3600w element boiling 26 or so litres, Only gave me a little roll on the boil.
Is there settings on the controller to crank this up? I would have thought 3600w would get fairly cranking.
- Didnt have a pickup for the ball valve connected. so couldnt whirlpool with pump.
- Didnt use a hopsock.
- Didnt use brewbrite


I only ended up with 19.5 litres into the fermenter, expected 23l. SG seemed ok, only took final which was 1042 as beersmith said, which was good. I know i lost a bit through the chiller, turned the pump off and disconnected a hose, thinking the rest of the beer was dribbling from the chiller, but it was actually siphoning through. so lost a litre of so there.

I seem to have lost a bit to trub.

Being a first brew though i think im resonably happy, first run on BM clone, first time using a plate chiller, lots of mess. Lots of fun

 

[dent]

Odd that you're finding 3600W a bit slack. I run the same in my electric setup and I find I have to ramp down the duty cycle to about 70% to stop it boiling over on a 40L batch.

 

[neo__04]

Yeah I thought it was odd. Expected more.
Would the brauduino controller on auto have anything to Do with it?
Pid settings or something affecting it?

I might try a test tomorrow on manual mode and see if it goes flat out.

Either that or they made my element wrong for a 2nd time

 

[MastersBrewery]

Neo,
The controller has a temp setting for the boil, you may have left this set at 100, I'd do a manual run see what temp a nice rolling boil is for your system, then change the setting.

MB

 

[djar007]

But don't set the boil temp too high. The time won't start if it can't reach that temp.

 

[neo__04]

Hey MB,

I did actually think that might have had something to do with it.

As standard it was set on 100 degrees, it say at 101.5 slightly rolling.
I changed it to 104, but this was mid brew, it then reset the boil timer because it hadnt reached boiling...
Then i set it back to 100 and it reset the timer again! Made it a hectic brew day lol.

I'll give that a go, hopefully that fixes it