1st Braumeister brewday - Amber Biere De Garde

A combination of factors such as needing to clear space, not having much time, a leaking mash tun and having a bumper month in Feb meant I've treated myself to a Braumeister Plus. I've been wanting to do more step mashing to enhance the body and flavour of my beers and now I can.

The first brew I've done is a tweak of one of my best and loosely based on a beer called Gavroche.

Mash:

5kg Weyerman Munich I
1kg Weyerman Bohemian Floor Malted Pilsner

40C - Mash in
57C - 15 mins
63C - 30 mins
72C - 30 mins
78C - 10 mins

Chloride to around 150ppm
Sulphate to around 75 ppm

Boil - 90 mins

50g Brewers Gold @ 60 mins
25g Saaz @ 20 mins
Protofloc, 350g white sugar & 350g Molasses sugar @ 15 mins

OG: 1.074
IBU: 25
Yeast - WLP072 French Ale

I'm really impressed with the Braumeister. It's nearly silent and I could just leave it to do its thing for a few hours until the boil. i've not got my head around the amount of water I need to use yet. On my old system I'd aim for a pre-boil of 30L to get 20L of wort as the boil was really vigorous and there was more dead space. I used quite a bit less water in the BM and ended up with 2L more wort but it was a little weaker than I'm used to.

I added 26L at the start, draining off a few litres of strike water before adding the malt pipe and adding back once I'd sealed the malt in. I figured if the malt absorbed 6L of water I'd have to add 10L to get the pre boil of 30L but I went for 8 instead based on what other people with BMs do. I did a room temperature sparge with the extra 8 litres by just pouring it over the malt once I'd pulled the pipe out.

I may try 6 next time and that should get me the 20L at full strength and then experiment by mashing in with less water to see if there's any noticeable difference.

I found the boil was quite gentle and around the same as my old boiler with one element running. I'd alternate between one and two elements on with my old boiler to get a good hot break.

The Braumeister Plus has a cooling jacket which eliminates some of the faff of having another chiller. It got the wort down to 30C no problem and about as quick as my immersion chiller would but struggled to get beyond that. I might try my immersion chiller next time and see if it's quicker.

The Braumeister is nice and easy to clean. After scooping out the hops it was just a case of filling it with hot water and sodium percarbonate and turning the pump on which giving it a wipe with a cloth and it came out nice and shiny again.

Overall this brew took around the same amount of time as I used to take but that's only because I did a lot of mash steps and was learning how to use the new gear. An hour long single infusion would be very fast on this thing. Can't wait to get another one on!

Next up will be a similar beer but with 5kg Pilsner and 1kg Munich.

Great to see another Braumeister brewer on the forum! I love using mine!
May have to have a go at that recipe as it looks fairly simple and is a beer style I'm yet to brew.
I have mashed all my brews with 23L except the last one which was 25L.
Pre boil to post boil I tend to gain 4-6 points on the hydrometer reading if that helps with your calcs?

Looks like a great recipe, have you used that yeast before? Also it'll be interesting to see what difference the stepped mash makes. I keep saying I'm going to try that floor malted pilsner but I'm always put off by the price, have you used it much before?

I do the same as Crystal Ball with my BM, mash with 23 litres and then make up to 27 litres for the boil. I never sparge. End up with 20-21 litres depending on boil time.

Brian

BarnBrian said:

I do the same as Crystal Ball with my BM, mash with 23 litres and then make up to 27 litres for the boil. I never sparge. End up with 20-21 litres depending on boil time.

Brian

Click to expand...

I'll try something similar. I had a Beersmith profile someone made to help me plan the OG. It was too low based on a 20L brew length but as soon as I changed that to 22 it was bang on.

TBH what I did wasn't really a sparge, I just poured the extra wort through the grains quickly rather than just adding it to the boil. Not sure if it made a difference in gravity but I figured I might as well give the grain a rinse and it would warm the water up a bit on its way to the boil by putting it through the hot grains.

Tips are much appreciated as I'm back to being a newbie after 36 brews on my old setup!

strange-steve said:

Looks like a great recipe, have you used that yeast before? Also it'll be interesting to see what difference the stepped mash makes. I keep saying I'm going to try that floor malted pilsner but I'm always put off by the price, have you used it much before?

Click to expand...

Yes I've done one brew with this yeast which was my basic BdG but I think I only posted that on the other forum. I'll sort you a bottle of that when we next swap. It's pretty neutral but with a little sweetness in there. I like it so far.

I've not used the floor malted pilsner and the only reason I went for it was that it lends itself better to a step mash apparently and gets you that corny flavour some German pilsners and blond BdG's have.

This brew is bubbling away now. I put it in an outbuilding that's quite cold so I've tried rigging an STC to a heater to keep it about 15C. At the height of fermentation it should then stay well within the limits of the yeast. I'll bring it back in the house once the initial 3 days are up so it can finish off.

Crystal_Ball said:

Great to see another Braumeister brewer on the forum! I love using mine!
May have to have a go at that recipe as it looks fairly simple and is a beer style I'm yet to brew.
I have mashed all my brews with 23L except the last one which was 25L.
Pre boil to post boil I tend to gain 4-6 points on the hydrometer reading if that helps with your calcs?

Click to expand...

One more thing, what sorts of other beers do you make and what mash schedules do you tend to go for?

I had a sample of this and it's down to 1.016 after a week. It tastes pretty boozy now so interested to see what it's like once it's aged and that calms down.

Bottled this last night. Down to 1.012 which gives a tidy 8.2% abv. The slightly higher finishing gravity is just what I hoped for with the step mashing. I'm hoping I get a more full bodied beer than I did on my old rig.

Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk

I've had a first taste of this an it's already about a thousand times better than the last beer I made on my old rig. I don't know if it's the mash program or something else about the BM but it's really smooth and rounded just five weeks after brewing which is mad for a beer this strong. The base malt flavour is really coming through and that's exactly what I wanted. It's not quite clear yet so I think it'll improve more.