Blind Henry brewday

[chthon]

To show a bit of my gear and the way I brew in my kitchen. I am currently busy propagating Rochefort yeast, and since I do not have a stir plate, I do it in different phases, where in the last three I actually brew some beer. The first one is only 4 bottles, but the next is sixteen bottles, and currently I am using my (somewhat) home recipe to scale up to 24 bottles. I then use parts of this to make small starters for further brews.

First step, collecting reverse-osmosis water:

This is done in the store/washing room. I have a rainwater cistern, and the faucet to fill it with tap water is here. I use it to collect the RO brine, which is in this only concentrated tap water.

 

[chthon]

After collecting 14 l of water, I add minerals and check the pH. I actually bought the bucket a couple of years ago to make wine from my own grapes.

 

[chthon]

Yeast starter laboratory :p

The yeast from the last brew had been cold crashed, but was now brought to room temperature and a new small starter was prepared. On the morning of the brew day I decanted the old starter, and mixed the yeast with the new starter. After a couple of hours it was active. I like to pitch my yeast when it is active.

I also kept the decanted fluid to measure the attenuation of the Rochefort yeast. This one goes rather deep, with an appr. SVG between 85% and 90%. For reference, I got 80% on Westmalle and Sint-Bernardus.

 

[chthon]

I filter in a bucket in bucket set up. The buckets I got from the fry shop (from boiled eggs they buy) and were to be dumped. In one of them I drilled a hole for a faucet, and in the other one I drilled holes.
I mount an elbow fitting on the faucet to keep the losses to a minimum (150 mL). And I use a couple of espresso cups (original Illy :-)) as supports for the filter tun.
The space between the two buckets is appr. 2 l, but part of my sparge water is used there.

 

[chthon]

All things in a row: crushed grains, my pressure cooker as mash tun, my 17 l boil kettle, my fermentation bucket (also from the fries shop), the lauter tun and a bit of cleaning powder.

For the mash I measure the temperature of the crushed grains. I have a spreadsheets for the thermodynamics of this, to know the temperature of the water to be used in the mash, and to reach the correct mash-in temperature.

And here the mash has been prepared. Nice foam. Temperature was 59,7 degrees C, 0,7 degrees above the wanted temperature, better than previous brew sessions.

 

[chthon]

Some indispensable gear :-)

Cooling samples for pH adjustment. Afterwards the total of the samples is boiled so that the mash does not cool when adding the samples back.

 

[chthon]

Preparing for lautering and the boil.
I always go in for first wort hopping. 12 g of Eastwell Goldings.

Boiling is done on an Ikea induction cooker. I use this because I can connect it through an electronic power meter. Fact about this induction cooker: max. power is 2000 W, but after a quarter of an hour this drops to 1600 W.

 

[chthon]

Pre-boil gravity, 1.043-1.044.

Cooling setup, currently a 10-minute hop stand is busy after cooling down to 80°C.

I can tap water from my rain water cistern for cooling. Yesterday I dumped all cooling water in the drain, but later on the year I collect it in three brewing buckets to water the plants.

 

[chthon]

Cleaning and sanitation of the fermentation bucket and related stuff.

Color and gravity of wort after cooking.

1.054 after cooking, nice result, and I must still add 120 g of cane sugar.

This morning, 12 hours post pitch, a nice krausen has developed.

 

[Oneflewover]

Interesting read, thanks

 

[pilgrimhudd]

Love it!

 

[chthon]

Continuing this thread, after a fermentation of a week I moved the fermenting beer to secondary fermentation, so that I could harvest the grown yeast. I also wanted to add a more hoppy taste through a hop tea, and next week a bit of dry hopping before bottling.

 

[chthon]

With using whole hops in the boil, I had 0,5 l of wort collected from them after moving the wort into the fermenter. This is used to boil 118 g of cane sugar, which was still missing from the brew.
With this I made the hop tea with 16 g of Eastwell Goldings hops.

I then added this to a strainer and pressed most of the wort from out of the hop flowers.

I had 0,525 l of wort before, and after making the hop tea, I had 0,4 l remaining. This gives a loss of about 8 mL per gram of hops.

 

[chthon]

I then moved my wort to one of my secondary fermenters, a big bottle of about 10 l I picked up at the "garage sale" (is there another British equivalent of "rommelmarkt"? Literally translated that would be "rubbish market", but that sounds too negative) for 1 EUR.

I also kept 50 mL of wort for the dry hop, so that oxygen that might enter is still blown out by a bit of fermentation.

 

[chthon]

And finally the yeast harvest, note the thick layer of yeast (and possibly other trub) at the bottom of the bucket. I washed it out using demineralised water with pH adjusted to 5,5.

And finally the harvested yeast.

 

[chthon]

I dry hopped this last week, and I want to bottle next week. I put the secondary fermenter in a colder place. To make sure that no air is sucked into it, I put a rubber plug in the airlock.