TETB’s Brewdays

Day 1: Bière de Gard

Twenty litres in the FV without too much drama, although I'm (as usual) a bit out of practice
Pre-boil gravity seemed a bit low so I scaled back the bittering hops and extended the boil, and in the end it's not too far off (1061 vs. 1.065) - I'll take that, for the first time trying a new recipe
Not entirely sure why the mash was a bit inefficient: possibly the Barke malt is a bit under-modified, or possibly I was just a bit ambitious with my estimated BHE for a single 65 deg. rest.



I had to stop the sparge a little early as the kettle was getting perilously full... a bit annoyed that I didn't think to hang on to the extra and use it to top-up mid boil - ho hum!

The-Engineer-That-Brews said:

Day 1: Bière de Gard

Twenty litres in the FV without too much drama, although I'm (as usual) a bit out of practice
Pre-boil gravity seemed a bit low so I scaled back the bettering hops and extended the boil, and in the end it's not too far off (1061 vs. 1.065) - I'll take that, for the first time trying a new recipe
Not entirely sure why the mash was a bit inefficient: possibly the Barke malt is a bit under-modified, or possibly I was just a bit ambitious with my estimated BHE for a single 65 deg. rest.

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I had to stop the sparge a little early as the kettle was getting perilously full... a bit annoyed that I didn't think to hang on to the extra and use it to top-up mid boil - ho hum!

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Agentgonzo said:

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I knew someone was going to ask... It's the sensor with the cable identified by the blue masking tape

Day 2: Belgian Dubbel

OK, so as it's not made in Belgium I should probably say Belgian style ... but I'm using Belgian malt, sugar and (sort of) yeast so it's as "close enough for engineering work" as my Dad would say

And OMG... so much quicker brewing for the second day on the trot. Not sure whether it was having the equipment already part set up, or just being properly on the ball with the process. But definitely the way forward. Feels good to have both ferm-fridges on the go at the same time, too.

4.9 kg Pilsen malt, Mouterij-Dingemans
370g Special 'B', Mouterji-Dingemans)
280g Caramunich, Weyermann)

73g Hallertauer Hersbrücker @70
35g Tettnang @15
400g Light Belgian Candi crystals

WY3944 Belgian Witbier

To save myself a bit of time/hassle today I thought I’d try a bit of 'clean in-place':
Rather than strip the kit down and clean all the parts individually, I cleared out the mash and then put a bucket of percarbonate into the HLT and pumped it around the full circuit a few times while attacking the inside of the vessels with a cloth.
A lot less messy!

Couple more photos from today



Grain smelled SO good at mash-in.


(The chart is missing some data points because the iPad went to sleep a couple of times: I didn’t really do a temperature ramp halfway through the beta rest!)

Agentgonzo said:

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You should have chosen a different colour for the legend!

Agentgonzo said:

You should have chosen a different colour for the legend!

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Heh - I left that up to chart.js … I had enough on my hands getting Bootstrap, AJAX and JavaScript to play nicely

Hmmmm. Slightly early days but no signs of life on yesterday’s Dubbel yet…
Keeping an eye on it - yeast pack hadn’t inflated much during the day despite being well in date; ideally I should have done a starter but the logistics would have been a bit tricky

I’ll give it another 24h - I’ve got some suitable dried yeast I can throw at it (Lallamand ‘Belgian Witt Style’) if needed. Patience…

Meanwhile saturday’s Bière de Gard is chugging away nicely

Still absolutely no signs of activity from the WY3944 in the Dubbel after 28 hours, so in goes the Lallamand dried stuff

I know the-home-brew-shop-uk says they have very little trouble sending them out without ice-packs, but this one was ordered on Thursday and the post delivered it early Sat AM; and it was already partially inflated when it got here even though the nutrient sachet was unruptured. I'm certainly not blaming them, but I think the likelihood is it got cooked on the floor of the van or something.

Relieved to see the Dubbel is very clearly ‘up and running’ this morning: phew!

I don't use any liquid yeast straight from the packet except for building a starter. Dubbel is on the bigger beer side and I'm not opening the underpitch to stress the yeast a bit and make it more expressive.

I dropped a line to https://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/ just to let them know; and to their great credit they both refunded me the cost of the order, and also took the time to pick up the phone and talk to me about it.

Great service, and hats off to them.

They said most likely if I’d left it for another day it would probably have got going, but I’ve never known a brew show no signs of activity after 24h.

Saturday’s Bière de Garde is down to 1.040 (OG 1.061) with WY-3711 French Saison at 20-21°C.
So if it’s going to finish about 1.010 it’s probably about 40% the way through.
Maybe start ramping the temp tomorrow

Give it plenty of time, it copes with the heat well. I spend my saisons toward the end of ferment and they keep going.

I meant to post this before, as it was something I’ve noticed before but really caught my attention during last weekend’s brewing sessions.

Basically I’ve now become a bit more cautious about how I take my refractometer readings.

It’s not that I’m not already quite careful: my normal process to take a reading during the mash is to draw off a few tablespoons of hot wort from the recirculation circuit into a little stainless dish, cool that to 20°c by standing the dish in water, and then take a few drops in the squeezy plastic pipette and drip it onto the glass of the refractometer to take a reading. Fine, right?

The problem is that if I then repeat the reading straight away (from the same wort in the dish) I’ll most often get a reading five to ten points lower… and if I repeat again then the readings stay at this new, lower, level. Wtf…?

After a bit of trial and error I think there are a couple of things going on:

1) the wort sample seems to stratify really fast, with the highest gravity sugary portion sinking to the bottom and hence being sucked up in the first pipette-full.

2) maybe the remains of the previous sample somehow leaves some sugar residue on the refractometer glass… so when I take the ‘next’ sample it inherits this extra sugar and reads a bit high.

I can’t yet support the theory that that’s the cause of my varying readings. But what I have found is that if I (a) thoroughly mix the sample before loading the pipette, and (b) rinse and dry the refractometer between each use; then the variation goes away!

Narrow topped vessel to take samples mix well and remember evaporation will also affect the reading.

Looks like last weekend's Dubbel (left) is pretty much finished and the Bière de Garde is nearly there too:



I'll give them both a bit longer in the primary to clean up and (hopefully) clear down a bit, then they'll go into Cornies so they can lurk at the back of the garage.

They both taste pretty rich and full bodied - slightly raw alcohol taste on the Dubbel (hardly surprising) and maybe a bit of Banana on the BdG but both seem pretty promising

Dubbel (left) is unchanged at 1.012 (80% apparent attenuation, abv 6.8%) and it's dropped moderately clear so I'm declaring that one ready for kegging.
Nice job by the Lalbrew 'Belgian-style Witbier' and I'll harvest some fresh sediment for this weekend's planned Witbier

Meanwhile its brother the Bière de Garde (right) has as expected with the diastaticus-positive Saison yeast (WY-3711), trundled on down to about 1.006 (90% apparent, abv 7.2%... yikes). As it's also cleared down I'll probably keg that off while I'm at it.

Happy days!

Lovely clear second beer!