Punk IPA (advise needed please)

[Matt Loves Beer]

Hi All,

So I thought I'd post my 2nd ever all grain brew. The first brew I did turned out really good that I drank the lot in one night : )

I'd like to gain some tips on things I can do or change to help me get better. Sorry if my terminology isn't right, I'm new at this.

1 Gallon Brew taken from the DIYDOG book from Brewdog and adjusted down in size.

Recipe:

Extra Pale Maris Otter: 1.06kg

Ahtanum (pellet) - 5g - 60mins
Chinook (pellet) - 5g - 60mins
Crystal (pellet) - 5g - 20mins
Ahtanum (pellet) - 5g - 20mins
Ahtanum (pellet) - 5g - flame out
Chinook (pellet) - 8g - flame out
Crystal (pellet) - 5g - flame out
Motueka (whole flower) - 5g - flame out

Methods:

Total Liquor 11lt (mash with 7lt / sparge with 4lt)
Mashed in with bag at 70.5 degrees
Temp dropped to 66.5 degrees
Mashed for 1hour 15mins (75mins)
Temp at the end of mash 63 degrees

Heated mash back up to 77 degree / Placed mash bag on strainer and sparged with 4lt water at 77 degrees
Squeezed (but not overly) liquor out of bag
Let sit for 10 mins
Temp at start of boil was 82 degree (maybe I didn't take the sparge water temp correctly)
Heated wort up to boiling point then started adding hops
low to medium rolling boil

I forgot to put in the protofloc at 15min to go, will forgetting this help make a hazy beer?

After the 60mins boil I turned the flame off and added the last hop and place the lid on the pan.

Cooled in sink which tuck about 1 hour.

when the temp cooled down to 25 degree I tuck a gravity reading which read 1.038. I was hoping this to be higher. Will this be a weak beer? The wort also tasted quite sweet.

filled into demijohn and pitched a teaspoon of yeast (Safale US05). shook bottle and sealed.

It's now bubbling away like crazy.

So if anyone can give me any tips or prediction to what the beers going to turn out like that would be great.

I'll add a photo too.

Thanks in advance,
Matt

 

[Rockuronium72]

Chances are it will be a hazy beer without the protofloc, you could fine it with isinglass/irishmoss or flavourless geleatine, but this won't prevent the small proteins floctulating (clump together). If your FG finishes at 1.010, you're looking at 3.7% abv.

 

[matt76]

Hi there! I'm new too so treat my advice with caution, but maybe we can share lessons learned ;-)

That seems like a lot of water for the grain, for 1kg I think 2.5-3.0L mash water + 4L sparge water is more usual. After the boil you should end up with about 5L (you lose some water in the grain plus some boils off). So rule of thumb as far as I can tell is 1kg grain should make about 5L beer.

I suspect this is why the gravity is a bit low - but if it ferments down nicely you could still end up in the realms of a sessionable 3.5-4.0%. With some nice hoppy flavour I'd take that :) I always taste the wort and yeah it's sweet.

My first AG brew is conditioning at the moment, no protofloc and in the one clear bottle I have the beer is clear as a bell! When I was brewing again last weekend I forgot the protofloc until the end so I just bunged in half a tablet and boiled it for 5 more minutes.

Cooling in the sink - I gently stir or swirl the wort in the kettle and the water in the sink to aid mixing. Keep changing the sink water as it gets warm. At the start you have a big temperature difference so the wort will cool readily. Once you get the wort down to about 40degC it's harder - this is when I chuck some picnic ice blocks in the sink water to bring it down that last bit to 20degC.

Or make a wort chiller - shameless plug, but I'm so pleased, really worth it! :)
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/holy-heat-transfer-batman-its-a-wort-chiller.79604

I'm sure you'll have a good beer at the end, and if you want to change things next time there's tons of advice here. Good luck!

Matt

 

[GerritT]

S05 might bring it down to 1005 and give a 4.2-ish% brew. Mash start at 66.5, that could make some of those sugars nonfermentable so 4% is not an unreasonable guess.
8 grams of Chinook at flame-out, tasty! I know Chinook from a SMaSH I made approx a year ago. Heavens above... yet enjoyable!

Let us know how the AG trail works for you!

 

[Rockuronium72]

Chances are it will be a hazy beer without the protofloc, you could fine it with isinglass/irishmoss or flavourless geleatine, but this won't prevent the small proteins floctulating (clump together). If your FG finishes at 1.010, you're looking at 3.7% abv.

I should of added, the beer will clear but you will find it goes hazy once you bottle & chill it, it's what brewers call 'Chill haze'. Plenty of info out there on the subject.

 

[GerritT]

There's plenty of longtime brewers here that still forget things, make simple mistakes and learn from n00bs. And yet they produce beer. It's a hobby. Things happen. Drink one while you make one

 

[SteveH]

I'm also new and don't know much, but like @matt76 I think your grain bill sounds pretty small?

FWIW I did an IPA this weekend which used 3kg grain with 16l total (BIAB mash + dunk sparge), ended up with about 10l in the fermenter after the boil/trub and an OG of 1.057.

So I guess you need about double the amount of MO if you want to get a Punk-ish 5.6%?
I've been learning how to use BeerSmith mobile and it's pretty complicated initially (youtube tutorials help), but you can scale existing recipes to match your equipment so perhaps worth looking into

 

[Matt Loves Beer]

Good Morning All,

Thanks for all the replies, its made me think that my beer might not be so bad after all and I'm happy with a 3 - 4% beer.

Matt - I'm going to reduce my liquor down next time and see how I get on, hopefully this will bring the % up. Nice chiller too, I have put making one on my to-do-list for next time.

Does anyone mash with a bag? Is it good practise to ring it out at the end to get all the liquid out as possible?

Thanks
Matt

 

[Matt Loves Beer]

Thanks Steve, I think that's where I'm going wrong. I will lower my liquor and raise the grain.

I going to try and brew another this week so it will be great to compare the two.

Do you think I should stick with the other part of the recipe, like the hops?

Thanks
Matt

 

[matt76]

Thanks Steve, I think that's where I'm going wrong. I will lower my liquor and raise the grain.

I going to try and brew another this week so it will be great to compare the two.

Do you think I should stick with the other part of the recipe, like the hops?

Thanks
Matt

Honestly, I'd do something completely different - here's why...

The brew you just did won't be ready to drink for a few weeks yet. It could be interesting once you finally try it to think, hmm, ok, what would i change. In the meantime brew a totally different style.

Or you could stick almost exactly to the same recipe but only change one thing, e.g. grain to water ratio.

So I've totally contradicted myself

FWIW, AG#1 was a pale ale - AG#2 was the same recipe but loads more hops (so more IPA-ish)

I'm not helping am I

 

[Matt Loves Beer]

Thanks Matt, that's what I'm thinking of doing. Just up the grain / lower water.

Do you think I'm putting enough hops in, I really like that IPA style.

 

[SteveH]

Does anyone mash with a bag? Is it good practise to ring it out at the end to get all the liquid out as possible?

I'm mashing in a bag and I've been squeezing it a bit, then leaving it to drain into the fermentation bucket (resting in a collander) after dunk sparging.

I read conflicting things about releasing (or not) tannins due to squeezing - my take is I don't want to waste any of my already small batches, but it's too soon to tell if that was a good decision or not.. :)

Do you think I should stick with the other part of the recipe, like the hops?

As I said I'm a novice, but FWIW I've been scaling the hops and grain based on the batch size (e.g what you're aiming for post-boil going into the fermenter), so if you're going for about 6 litres in the batch the hops will be about right (e.g divide by 3.5) but you need about 1.5kg of grain? (or maybe more if you're worried about efficiency). Could be completely wrong of course, but that's what I've been doing :)

In my first batch I made a mistake because the boil-off is not reduced relative the the batch-size (so I ended up with less but more concentrated wort, a higher than planned OG and now a 6.9% ESB in the cupboard ). In attempt #2 I added more mash/sparge water and got closer to the planned OG - for me this has been trial-and-error and I guess it depends on your pot dimensions and how vigorous the boil is.

Having tasted my first batch while bottling, I can confirm that even when you mess up volumes (and in my case a bunch of other steps in the process ), you still get beer at the end, so I'm counting that as a successful learning experience!

 

[Matt Loves Beer]

OK that's a big help, thank you. I'll get back to the kettle and see what my next batch is like.

 

[MyQul]

I'm a small batch brewer (I make usually make 10L brews). You definatly used too much water (unless you have a prodigous boil off rate). I normally use about 13L for a 10L brew.

Tannin extraction is a chemical reaction not a physical one. So squeeze away at that bag - I do. It'll help up your efficiency . You only got 61% efficiency with this brew. My efficiency is normally 66% some people get up to around 80% but you dont need to be aiming that high.

 

[SteveH]

I'm a small batch brewer (I make usually make 10L brews). You definatly used too much water (unless you have a prodigous boil off rate). I normally use about 13L for a 10L brew.

Interesting, I'm also aiming for 10l batches but seem to require a lot more water;

First attempt I used 2.8kg grain with 11L at mash-in, then sparged with another 3l so 14l total. After grain absorption and boil-off I ended up with only about 8-9l in the FV, and at bottling I think I only got about 6.5l out (I used too much irish moss and also tipped the entire kettle in to the FV which perhaps meant a lot lost to trub).

Second attempt was 3kg grain with 12L at mash-in, then sparged with 4l = 16l total, after boil off was about 13l but I only syphoned the clear wort this time (used less irish moss and left the cold break in the kettle), ended up with about 9.5l in the FV.

Any tips on reducing my losses? Seems like I'm losing a lot so I guess I need to improve my process further :)

 

[Matt Loves Beer]

Ok great, thanks for that. I'll see if I can better it next time around.

 

[MyQul]

@SteveH

One thing that seems to happen with small batch brewing is there's a lot of trub loss (about 20%). For some reason I am not aware of, as you go to a larger brew length the trub loss lessens. You'd think that it would stay the same (proportionally).

Anyway, here's how I get around it.

I make up my reciepe for 12L, how ever I make my brewlength up to only 10L. So I have created a concentrated wort. After the boil I put my near boiling wort (after first straining the hops out with a seive) into 2x5L FV's and cover them with cling film held on with an elastic band. I then leave the wort to cool overnight (no chill).
The following day all the protein matter will have fallen to the bottom of the 2x5L FV's. I then decant the wort off the protein matter into a 10L FV, giving me about 8L concentrated in the 10L FV. I then top up to 10L giving me my target OG. I then only have a small about of trub in the final beer, losing only about 200ml or so.

 

[matt76]

Just reading MyQul's comments there...

I looked at AG#2 in the FV yesterday, and of my 5L brew in gonna lose about 1L to trub losses Hence my comment about scaling up to 10L if you can.

When I did AG#3 last weekend i had about 3kg grain - this is getting very cumbersome to squeeze (hot!) water from. I do wonder if a picnic cooler mash/lauter tun would be better in terms of extracting less particulates that settle to firm the trub. And less burnt fingers!

 

[MyQul]

Just reading MyQul's comments there...

I looked at AG#2 in the FV yesterday, and of my 5L brew in gonna lose about 1L to trub losses Hence my comment about scaling up to 10L if you can.

When I did AG#3 last weekend i had about 3kg grain - this is getting very cumbersome to squeeze (hot!) water from. I do wonder if a picnic cooler mash/lauter tun would be better in terms of extracting less particulates that settle to firm the trub. And less burnt fingers!

Man up and break out the marigolds!

 

[Rockuronium72]

I'm mashing in a bag and I've been squeezing it a bit, then leaving it to drain into the fermentation bucket (resting in a collander) after dunk sparging.
Tannins are extracted when your water is too hot during mash or sparge, not how hard you squeeze the bag.
I read conflicting things about releasing (or not) tannins due to squeezing - my take is I don't want to waste any of my already small batches, but it's too soon to tell if that was a good decision or not.. :)



As I said I'm a novice, but FWIW I've been scaling the hops and grain based on the batch size (e.g what you're aiming for post-boil going into the fermenter), so if you're going for about 6 litres in the batch the hops will be about right (e.g divide by 3.5) but you need about 1.5kg of grain? (or maybe more if you're worried about efficiency). Could be completely wrong of course, but that's what I've been doing :)

In my first batch I made a mistake because the boil-off is not reduced relative the the batch-size (so I ended up with less but more concentrated wort, a higher than planned OG and now a 6.9% ESB in the cupboard ). In attempt #2 I added more mash/sparge water and got closer to the planned OG - for me this has been trial-and-error and I guess it depends on your pot dimensions and how vigorous the boil is.

Having tasted my first batch while bottling, I can confirm that even when you mess up volumes (and in my case a bunch of other steps in the process ), you still get beer at the end, so I'm counting that as a successful learning experience!