The Chaos that is a Buffers Brewery brew day

[Buffers brewery]

Last week was a significant brew day. My daughter was visiting from Australia and my eldest son from New York to celebrate their brother's birthday and have a brew day with Dad! My first lager. A Bohemian pilsner from GH book. Both sons had brewed before with me so it was their sister's turn to do the heavy lifting.

Bohemian malt and carapils added to the mash tun ..

..a bit of a stir to make sure no dough balls...

Eldest son made himself useful and brought out elevenses...

Mash and boil with Saaz hop additions proceeded with no problems. Wort chilled down to 15C after adding a couple of bags of ice to the pre-chiller. Then there was an hour wait for things to settle out. Pub! was their cry so off we went for a little over an hour, enough to enjoy a couple of pints then back to transfer to the fermentation bucket and pitch the yeast...

Transferred to the fridge set at 12C and after a little over 2 days fermentation was underway.
OG 1.052

 

[Buffers brewery]

Everything set up and cleaned ready for tomorrow's brew day. American Wheat beer, recipe out of Greg Hughes book. Set the timer to heat the water, mash tun and HERMS to 50C ready for when I'm up tomorrow. As the recipe involves 3kg of wheat malt I'm planning a b-g rest at 45-50C for 30 minutes before heating up to mash at 65C for an hour.
Here's hoping I manage not to cockup too much

 

[Buffers brewery]

B-G rest completed 45-50C for 30 minutes. Took a little over 30 minutes to get to mash temperature of 65C using the HERMS. Now mashing...

 

[Buffers brewery]

Mash completed. 10 litres of wort at 1.071 from first 60 minute mash

Another 10 litres at 1.038 from 15 minute mash

The last 15 minute mash yielded wort at 1.018

and brought the pre boil volume up to 7 gallons and a gravity of 1.040.
17 grms of citra pellets added at the start of the boil

Gave the mash equipment a clean down while waiting for the boil. It's all drying in the sun now

 

[Buffers brewery]

Hmmm. Had a bit of a technical hitch with the boil. All started well but as time went by I noticed the boil had lost its vigour and the volume wasn't reducing as quickly as usual. After some observation noticed it switched off for a while then turned on again a while later. There's obviously a thermal cutout (boil dry) that's misbehaving! Had to extend the boil to reduce the volume. Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow.

 

[Buffers brewery]

Just sitting in the garden enjoying a post brew day beer, my Bitter Half I brewed back at the beginning of April.

So, I ended up with a smidge over 25 litres in the FB

SG of 1.058

Liberty Bell yeast scattered on the foam

That's the easy bit out of the way. Now, turning my attention to my boiler. Having emptied out all the trub and given it a quick rinse.....

A nicely caramelized or burnt area on the base of the boiler! Well that's not happened before!? What could have caused that, and don't say the heater element!

 

[Buffers brewery]

More importantly, how do you get it off? Scourer?

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

More importantly, how do you get it off? Scourer?

I put some sodium percarbonate in there and let it soak for ten mins, and then use a nylon scrubby pad.
If that doesn’t shift it then try a bit of acid (AMS, lactic or even vinegar)

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

What could have caused that, and don't say the heater

I’m guessing, but perhaps while the element was cut out some solids (possibly hot break material) settled on the base; so when the power came back on they got baked on

 

[Buffers brewery]

I’m guessing, but perhaps while the element was cut out some solids (possibly hot break material) settled on the base; so when the power came back on they got baked on

Good thinking. I'm considering bypassing the over heat cut out. I only use the boiler outdoors, always attended and full of liquid so boil dry ain't gonna happen.

 

[Buffers brewery]

Tried oxy. Didn't touch it. Moved on to Oven Pride oven cleaner. Seems to be working. Second application should do it

 

[Buffers brewery]

Could have been a better start to a brew day. After having thunderstorm warnings for what seems like a week and no storms appearing, I set my brewery up yesterday for a brew day today only to get up to find the gazebo canopy filled with water and sagging precariously over my kit! Managed to sort it out without getting too wet and got underway with today's brew, my now "go to" ale a cascade pale ale that I brewed at the beginning of the year.

Sixty minute mash yielded just two gallons of wort.

A further four and half gallons from two 15 minute mashes resulted in a little over 6 gallons of wort in the boiler.
A one hour boil with cascade hop pellets added for 30 and 15 minutes of the boil and a further addition after the wort had cooled to 80C.

Five gallons into the fermentation bucket and one sachet of Verdant IPA yeast added.... literally.....having opened the sachet I then dropped the whole thing into the wort .

Managed to scoop it out and empty the yeast out. All tucked up in the brew fridge at 20C.
OG 1.048

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

having opened the sachet I then dropped the whole thing into the wort

Round my place it’s not a proper brewday without at least one cockup…

 

[Buffers brewery]

Talking of “cockups”. My brew day yesterday was one huge cockup, and if anything good beerwise comes out of it I’ll be amazed. The brew was a NEIPA. I’ve brewed this recipe several times before. Started by doing a beta-glucan rest with the oats. Temperature range of 50C to 55C was missed. I got to 49C and thought that’d be good enough. Mashed in all the grain set the HERMS to 66C and had to leave it while I went out for an hour. When I got back, mash temperature was 48C! No wort was circulating so the mash had just cooled down. What to do? So I added some hot water and gave the mash a stir and managed to drain the wort back into the empty kettle, heated it up to 70C and pumped it back into the mash tun. Good stir and got recirculation going again. Then it stopped again. After a bit of investigation I discovered a blockage in the mash tun tap that was quickly sorted and got the circulation going again. Managed to get the one hour mash and the faced the challenge of sparging. For some reason the water/wort wasn’t draining through the grain so I ended up hosing the grain with the sparge water and giving the grain a thorough stir that got the wort to drain. The downside was that the wort had a lot of fine grain flour in it. Soldiered on to the boil. The boiling wort had the appearance of boiling cream, presumably the hot break. After the one hour boil, cooled and left it for a couple of hours to settle down but when transferred to the fermentation bucket there was still a lot of sediment in the wort. Fermentation has started but will it be any good?

Following yesterday’s experience I have a couple of things to sort.
1. Modify mash tun to eliminate risk of drain blockage.
2. Investigate the impact of grain flour on mash performance.
3. Is it possible to remove/reduce the base malt flour prior to mashing?

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Given that some brewers were putting flour in their fermenter/end of boil for hazies that aspect should be fine.
Time will tell.

 

[Buffers brewery]

Just done a bit more research and it appears that it’s best to leave the “flour” in the mash. However, I did make 2 significant errors I think. First the b-g rest wasn’t hot enough so was probably ineffective. Second, the restriction in circulation caused the mash to cool and in effect set. The addition of hot water and stirring got things going again but resulted in a lot of sediment, that would normally be retained in the grain bed, in the boil. Think I might give rice hulls a go with my next NEIPA brew.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Or glucanase if you can get it as it would add 3ml to a 25 litre batch.

 

[Justin Dean]

It’s brewing. Every now and again this sort of thing happens. It is so we can learn for the next one like. I recently discovered how lazy S04 yeast is

 

[Buffers brewery]

Two days in and looks like there's been some serious action through the night ...

..indications of a thick Krause, probably kissed the bottom of my dry hopper with 250g of hops. Decided to drop them a day early as they're probably a bit damp from the Krausen.

 

[Justin Dean]

Ride the wave go with it and see how things turn out. Good luck