Brewed this last night - it's a recipe I've done before, but I doubled it to 40 litres this time. I had a heap of new ideas to try after spending last Saturday brewing with Kev, and Kev came around to lend a hand (which turned out to be very helpful). Here is the recipe...
Bitter and Twisted
Special/Best/Premium Bitter
Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 45.0
Total Grain (kg): 8.022
Total Hops (g): 168.26
Original Gravity (OG): 1.044 (°P): 11.0
Final Gravity (FG): 1.011 (°P): 2.8
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.32 %
Colour (SRM): 7.1 (EBC): 14.0
Bitterness (IBU): 46.1 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 80
Boil Time (Minutes): 90
Grain Bill
----------------
6.848 kg Maris Otter Malt (85.37%)
0.391 kg Crystal 60 (4.88%)
0.391 kg Flaked Barley (4.88%)
0.391 kg Torrified Wheat (4.88%)
Hop Bill
----------------
113.5 g Fuggles (5.7% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (Boil) (2.5 g/L) (didn't quite have enough, so added a little Target)
27.4 g Styrian Golding (4.4% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil) (0.6 g/L) (actually used EKGs)
27.4 g Styrian Golding (4.4% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Boil) (0.6 g/L) (actually used EKGs)
Misc Bill
----------------
Single step Infusion at 66°C for 90 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with Safeale S-04
The first change was adding gypsum to thye liquor - the first time I've tried water treatments. I'm hoping this will improve the hop flavor of the resulting beer.
The next change was the sparging method. Previously I've just used a tin-foil layer on top of the grain-bed, sparged with a spinning sparge arm, and jugged the runnings from mash-tun to boiler. This time, I built a return manifold which I can lower into the tun to return wort (from my solar pump) just above the level of the wort. So after manually jugging the first litre of runnings (which is always full of grain) back to the tun, I connected the solar pump and recirculated the wort for a while to set up the grain bed. Then I simply switched the input of the pump to the HLT, and drained the runnings via some silicon hose into a bucket on the floor (Kev pumps out straight to his boiler, but you need two pumps for that, and my 2nd pump isn't commisioned yet). By tweaking the rate that the runnings are draining, and the rate the pump is supply sparge water, you can acheive a constant flow in/out of 1 litre/min. Then you just sit back and watch it (and have a few beers in out case).
This turned out to be a dramatic improvement on my previous results. Not only is it easier and less error-prone, but the resulting wort is super clear. You can do this with a single cheap solar-pump, and I think it is much better than the manual jug and tin-foil method.
Through-out the sparge my wee boy was refusing to go to sleep (SWMBO was out, so I was in charge), which meant that Kev basically made the beer while I tended to the child. Was a big help having a safe pair of hands around - thanks Kev!
The next change was my new hop filter (a domed stainless steel false-bottom). I also changed by chilling method - instead of running through a counter-flow chiller straight into the FV, I recirculated into the boiler, in the hope of leaving all the cold-break in the boiler. Firstly, the new filter worked fine - it didn't move about, and filtered all the hops out well. The recirculation was a total waste of time. The chilled, recirculated wort falls to the bottom of the boiler, where it goes out the tap and runs through the counter-flow chiller again. So the chiller is mostly chilling wort it has already cooled. So it took ages (over 1 hour) to cool, so by the time I had pitched the yeast and tidied up is was 1am. I ended up with 42 litres in the FVs, at 1044. A long night...
I should also add that I didn't end up with the break material in the boiler either - it's all in the FVs anyway. Next time I'll try pumping through the counterflow chiller, into my (emptied) HLT, and let the break settle out there. If that is a pain in the neck too, I'll just go back to chilling strainght into the FVs and living with all the break-material settling out in there.
So in summary, the new sparging method is awesome, recirculating to the boiler through a counter-flow chiller is a total waste of time, and the domed hop filter looks to be working well. Thanks for the help Kev!
(I think Kev took some photos, so hopefully we can upload them to this thread)
Bitter and Twisted
Special/Best/Premium Bitter
Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 45.0
Total Grain (kg): 8.022
Total Hops (g): 168.26
Original Gravity (OG): 1.044 (°P): 11.0
Final Gravity (FG): 1.011 (°P): 2.8
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.32 %
Colour (SRM): 7.1 (EBC): 14.0
Bitterness (IBU): 46.1 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 80
Boil Time (Minutes): 90
Grain Bill
----------------
6.848 kg Maris Otter Malt (85.37%)
0.391 kg Crystal 60 (4.88%)
0.391 kg Flaked Barley (4.88%)
0.391 kg Torrified Wheat (4.88%)
Hop Bill
----------------
113.5 g Fuggles (5.7% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (Boil) (2.5 g/L) (didn't quite have enough, so added a little Target)
27.4 g Styrian Golding (4.4% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil) (0.6 g/L) (actually used EKGs)
27.4 g Styrian Golding (4.4% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Boil) (0.6 g/L) (actually used EKGs)
Misc Bill
----------------
Single step Infusion at 66°C for 90 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with Safeale S-04
The first change was adding gypsum to thye liquor - the first time I've tried water treatments. I'm hoping this will improve the hop flavor of the resulting beer.
The next change was the sparging method. Previously I've just used a tin-foil layer on top of the grain-bed, sparged with a spinning sparge arm, and jugged the runnings from mash-tun to boiler. This time, I built a return manifold which I can lower into the tun to return wort (from my solar pump) just above the level of the wort. So after manually jugging the first litre of runnings (which is always full of grain) back to the tun, I connected the solar pump and recirculated the wort for a while to set up the grain bed. Then I simply switched the input of the pump to the HLT, and drained the runnings via some silicon hose into a bucket on the floor (Kev pumps out straight to his boiler, but you need two pumps for that, and my 2nd pump isn't commisioned yet). By tweaking the rate that the runnings are draining, and the rate the pump is supply sparge water, you can acheive a constant flow in/out of 1 litre/min. Then you just sit back and watch it (and have a few beers in out case).
This turned out to be a dramatic improvement on my previous results. Not only is it easier and less error-prone, but the resulting wort is super clear. You can do this with a single cheap solar-pump, and I think it is much better than the manual jug and tin-foil method.
Through-out the sparge my wee boy was refusing to go to sleep (SWMBO was out, so I was in charge), which meant that Kev basically made the beer while I tended to the child. Was a big help having a safe pair of hands around - thanks Kev!
The next change was my new hop filter (a domed stainless steel false-bottom). I also changed by chilling method - instead of running through a counter-flow chiller straight into the FV, I recirculated into the boiler, in the hope of leaving all the cold-break in the boiler. Firstly, the new filter worked fine - it didn't move about, and filtered all the hops out well. The recirculation was a total waste of time. The chilled, recirculated wort falls to the bottom of the boiler, where it goes out the tap and runs through the counter-flow chiller again. So the chiller is mostly chilling wort it has already cooled. So it took ages (over 1 hour) to cool, so by the time I had pitched the yeast and tidied up is was 1am. I ended up with 42 litres in the FVs, at 1044. A long night...
I should also add that I didn't end up with the break material in the boiler either - it's all in the FVs anyway. Next time I'll try pumping through the counterflow chiller, into my (emptied) HLT, and let the break settle out there. If that is a pain in the neck too, I'll just go back to chilling strainght into the FVs and living with all the break-material settling out in there.
So in summary, the new sparging method is awesome, recirculating to the boiler through a counter-flow chiller is a total waste of time, and the domed hop filter looks to be working well. Thanks for the help Kev!
(I think Kev took some photos, so hopefully we can upload them to this thread)
