US Brown Ale V2

[spook123_uk]

Hi all,

I've been off for a while whilst I build my new brew shed! It's now functioning and I got the first brew going in there on Sun.. Now with a Herms system too!

I made a few changes from my last brew.. Changed the hops and lightened up the chocolate malt.

Grain Bill (mash at 67 for 1 hour):

3.8kg Pilsner Malt (2 Row)
700g Munich Malt
600g Crystal Malt
200g Wheat Malt
110g Chocolate Malt

Hop Bill (1 hour boil)

25g Northern Brewer - 60 min
25g Willamette - 20 min
25g Willamette - 5 min

Ferment with WLP001 Liquid yeast (from a 1l starter) at 20 degrees

Expecting (hoping for!):
FG 1.010 ish
ABV 4.7%
37 IBU
32 EBC


Mashed at 67 degrees using my Herms system for the first time. Held a perfect 67 for 1 hour.
I then raised the herms temp for Mashout to 76 degrees. This took 20 mins which was acceptable I think.
I then switched the pump inlet tube over to my HLT and ran the herms water from the HLT though the coil and into the mash tun for the fly sparge. This meant that the herms system gets cleaned out at the same time.

This is where I failed first off. I'm new to fly sparging and don't think I kept enough water on top of the grain bed. I needed to collect 35 litres (as per my beer smith recipe) and only managed just over 25 before the runnings were down to 1.010 and tasting watery to I stopped. I'm hoping that was just the result of poor technique (or it could be that herms did such a good job, there was nothing left to give!).

My efficiency has always been 65% when doing normal mash and batch sparge so I was still using that as a reference for the grain. I think it has shot up as I was expecting a pre-boil sg of 1.033 and even after adding 10L of fresh water to make it up for the boil, it was still 1.040 ish. I then made it up to just over 40l which brought it back down to 1.033.

Boil went as per normal but I increased the hops to 30g each to allow for the extra volume in there. I crammed as much as I dare into the fermentor which was admittedly a little too much as it keeps coming out of the air lock (it is calming down now!).

It's worth saying that after using herms, the wort was crystal clear going into the kettle!

 

[MyQul]

Definately convinced about Americanised brown ales after trying Dad's Ale's bottle swap version. Although I did buy a couple of bottles of Asda Extra Special Whitechapel porter months ago, which I found undrinkable as they had taken a porter and Americanised it (Do Asda think Whitechapel is now on the other side of the Atlantic rather than on the other side of the river from me?) by overhopping it. It was far to bitter. I think the trick is to get the balance right as DA had

 

[spook123_uk]

That's it. I've found that they need to keep the malty brown ale taste and have the hops just pushing above.
Byatts American brown ale is a damn good example!

 

[cheapbrew]

Is your wort chiller only about three or so coils?

I like the solid copper pipe though, I keep thinking I'm gonna kink my pipe on the edge of the pot :thumb:

 

[spook123_uk]

There are around another 15 coils below the liquid level.

I made my herms coil (around 15 coils) from 12mm micropore tubing. Simply wrapped it round a corny keg now problem.

The trick is not to use straight copper pipe. It is a different makeup to tubing and not designed to bend easily. If you use copper tubing (normally in coils), it's really malleable and you can bend the living daylights out of it.

12mm certainly bends well. Not tried 15mm.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Microbore-Copper-Tube-10mmx10m/p/420700

 

[spook123_uk]

Been kegged and bottled for 5 days now. the bottles have cleared up very nicely!