Also known as Paul Gets It Wrong!
Ok, so for a few weeks I've been planning to do a traditional style Belgian Tripel with the ingredients below:
20l batch
6.3kg Pale malt
50g Hallertau Mittelfruh (60m)
15g Saaz (60m)
50g Hallertau Mittelfruh (15m)
15g Saaz (15m)
3787 Wyeast Trappist yeast
10g Irish Moss
Here goes... Since it was going to be an old-fashioned 3 stage decoction mash, I made a fairly early start:
60 minutes at 35°C
60 minutes at 50-55°C
60 minutes at 65-68°C
Grains weighed out nicely in advance:
First stage of the mash goes in at 35°C for the acid rest:
Since my two thermometers can never agree on anything, I use them together and go on concensus:
...which is just as well because 15 minutes later, one of them dies!
Necessary supplies to get me through the brew (it was 10:10am so not quite beer time!):
Acid rest over and it's time to heat some of the mash and raise the temperature:
I was aiming for 53 for the protein rest, so was quite pleased:
OK, NOW it's beer time since it is a Six Nations weekend (12:20pm). The old expression goes "it takes money to make money" and I believe that it takes beer to make beer!
The yeast starter that I had prepared 48 hours previously (Italy got their first penalty shortly after this which distracted me and made me spill a litre or so of the vorlauf over the floor!):
After the mash and vorlauf, the first runnings:
The hops, which were identical for each addition so I just mixed them up, and 1 litre of candy sugar from 1kg of caster which I made yesterday:
Boiling away nicely.
Now, here is where I think it went wrong. The post-sparge OG with the candy sugar added read at 1065, which was a little on the low side, so I decided to boil for 90 minutes rather than 60. I also kept both elements going for the duration of the boil rather than just one:
The final result was losing nearly 50% of the total volume and the OG reading which was a tad higher than what I was aiming for (1090):
The main conclusions that I can take from this are:
1 - switch off one of the elements once the damned boil is reached
2 - I am never doing another 3-stage mash again!
Ok, so for a few weeks I've been planning to do a traditional style Belgian Tripel with the ingredients below:
20l batch
6.3kg Pale malt
50g Hallertau Mittelfruh (60m)
15g Saaz (60m)
50g Hallertau Mittelfruh (15m)
15g Saaz (15m)
3787 Wyeast Trappist yeast
10g Irish Moss
Here goes... Since it was going to be an old-fashioned 3 stage decoction mash, I made a fairly early start:
60 minutes at 35°C
60 minutes at 50-55°C
60 minutes at 65-68°C
Grains weighed out nicely in advance:
First stage of the mash goes in at 35°C for the acid rest:
Since my two thermometers can never agree on anything, I use them together and go on concensus:
...which is just as well because 15 minutes later, one of them dies!
Necessary supplies to get me through the brew (it was 10:10am so not quite beer time!):
Acid rest over and it's time to heat some of the mash and raise the temperature:
I was aiming for 53 for the protein rest, so was quite pleased:
OK, NOW it's beer time since it is a Six Nations weekend (12:20pm). The old expression goes "it takes money to make money" and I believe that it takes beer to make beer!
The yeast starter that I had prepared 48 hours previously (Italy got their first penalty shortly after this which distracted me and made me spill a litre or so of the vorlauf over the floor!):
After the mash and vorlauf, the first runnings:
The hops, which were identical for each addition so I just mixed them up, and 1 litre of candy sugar from 1kg of caster which I made yesterday:
Boiling away nicely.
Now, here is where I think it went wrong. The post-sparge OG with the candy sugar added read at 1065, which was a little on the low side, so I decided to boil for 90 minutes rather than 60. I also kept both elements going for the duration of the boil rather than just one:
The final result was losing nearly 50% of the total volume and the OG reading which was a tad higher than what I was aiming for (1090):
The main conclusions that I can take from this are:
1 - switch off one of the elements once the damned boil is reached
2 - I am never doing another 3-stage mash again!
