Hello from Brackley

Hey all,

First full-mash brew day tomorrow, looking forward to it! I'm going for the 'Amarillo Single Hop Ale' from Greg Hughes' Home Brew Beer book. I have all the malt, hops and equipment all ready and a liquid yeast starter I've been feeding for a couple of days in the fridge to chill out before I pitch her tomorrow.

Got a few questions:

First, would like to get an opinion on something that I'm a little worried about - I downloaded BrewTarget and I put my recipe in and the only way I can get the OG that is required by the recipe (1050 for 40 pints with 5 kg malt) is by assuming an efficiency of 84%. From what I've ready on the internet, for batch sparge my efficiency is likely to be more like 75%. I could bump up the amount of malt to 5.5kg to get the expected OG, but I'd like to just dump all the 6kg of pale malt I have in which BrewTarget reckons should up the OG to 1055. Is this a good idea? Is there anything else that I should do to the recipe to counter the increase in OG or shall I just try it out?

In general terms what affects the expected final gravity? Is this a function of the amount of yeast first pitched? I've made a 1l starter from Wyeast 1056, which I fed 500ml the first day and 500ml the second. I'm optimistically hoping that that has doubled my yeast count, will that decrease the exp final gravity sufficiently so I wont have a silly sweet pale ale?

The mash temperature is stated as 65C. What should the temperature of my liquor be to achieve this temperature after pouring 12.3l over the malt to dough in? I'm planning on warming my mash tun with a kettle or two of boiling water prior to starting the mash. What should the temperature of the sparge water be set to?

Anyway, looking forward to getting malty tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Welcome along,, and good fortune with the brew, the beer gods generally smile down on first brews so dont let any lil cock ups put you off completing the brew.. my #1 brew was more cock ups than anything else and still i relished every drop of the result


those figures assuming a 84% bhe dont sound right, download a trial copy of beersmith which is afaik the gold standard of brewing s/w to double check. But the recipe in the book should be your major guide, follow that imho..
but 6kg of grain should provide more than a 1.055 OG??

its the attenuation of the yeast (brew speak for % of sugars the yeast consume) that will dictate your FG and each yeast strain will behave slightly differently, As well as the result of your mash, Too hot a mash for example and you will have too many complex sugars in the mix leaving you with a much higher FG as less of the sugars will be accessible to the yeast, or is that too cool tbh i never can remember which way round the enzymes go.. Your mash should result in a liquor with a majority of consumable sugars and some sugars too complex for the yeast to consume, these will remain in the beer and contribute towards the positive FG if all compounds in the beer were fermented the FG would be below 0.000. Its the the remaining sugars that contribute the body mouthfell and underlying malty flavour..

Pre heating the tun with a kettle or 2 of off the boil water is spot on.. leave it to heat up for 20-30 mins while you weigh up and mix in your grains perhaps..
Your strike temp is one of those brewday variables that you may need to refine for brew #2 based on the results of brew #1.
the general rule of thumb with a plastic cold box tun, a circa 4-5kg grain bill and a mash target temp of 66.7C is to strike the mash @ 71c
However have both a jug of cold and an off the boil kettle full of water at hand to adjust the mash if necessary, Dont worry about having a thin mash Temperature is way more crucial..

Sparge temps are a matter of a little controversy some will simply sparge using water direct from the hot tap if fed by a combi boiler, but imho 73-4C is a good sparge temp any higher and you can pull more tanins into the beer than you would like.

85c is iirc the temp at which the enzymes that do the conversion for us are denatured or killed off.

hope thats useful,,

have a grand day, and if you fancy posting a brewday post remember we like pictures in here

btw 84% bhe is a bit high an expectation for a first brew, not an impossible target, but imho an assumption of a bhe of 75-80% is probably more realistic.

also my method of compensating for the slightly lower efficiency of a batch sparge is to weigh my grains according to the recipe, and then grab a handful or perhaps 2 of the base malt and add that too

Batch sparging makes life a lot easier, if you have an estimated boil off of 3l and a target final volume of 23l and kettle losses (due to deadspace and hop absorption) of 2l for example you want 28l of liquor from your sparge.

SO.. when your mash is complete top up the tun with your first batch of sparge liquor, no need to measure it at all.. and drain that into a FV or vessel that has an accurate grade marking so you can measure the volume you drain. then simply subtract the volume you have drained from your preboil target and you have a precise volume to add for your 2nd batch sparge.

so with a preboil target of 28l and if you drain 17l from your first batch sparge you need to add 11l for the 2nd sparge

edit.. boil off rate and kettle losses are two more variable which will need refinement based on results, if you boil off too much its no biggy you can simply add water to the FV to make it up (preboiled and cooled )
and if you end up with a few too may litres in the FV your brews going to have a slightly lower abv which isnt going to be too much of a problem im sure.. only worry when the abv falls below 3% and thats highly unlikely with the brew planned..

Welcome aboard John, I hope the beer gods are smiling on you today, hope you hit that 84% and knock it out of the park. All the best for today and keep us posted on how it goes.

Thanks guys, really appreciate your answers. I've had Fil's posts open on my phone all morning! I'm about 10 minutes off sparging now, my temperatures seem to have been pretty good so far. I just hope that the Jam thermometer I bought yesterday is accurate enough (and I'm so glad I didn't go with the temperatures on the dial of my boiler!).

I've been taking a few photos so I'll put together a post about what I've been up to later on.

Hi John,
Hope the brew is going well? I'm in Brackley too. [emoji3]
Been AG brewing a couple of years. Give me a shout if you need something.
Chris

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Hope all went well, check your thermometer with a 2 point temp test, pages 16,17,18.. in this pdf details the procedure https://thermapen.co.uk/ThermapenGuidebook-2015.pdf
its quite simple really..

Chris you can have a bottle if it turns out better than the affront to decency I'm worried it may become

Result is here btw http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=73434

Sounds good, I like an amarillo. I have a Seymour citra dark in the FV, can do a swap.

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