AG Brewday - Amarillo Centennial APA Pics & Walkthrough

[Ceejay]

Brewday tomorrow, 1500ml starter of WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast has been prepped and I'm swirling it every time I walk near it.

I think I'm in love with Centennial hops. This APA pairs Centennial with Amarillo in a medium/dry golden beer with huge hop aroma and flavour and a bread/biscuits malt profile. The malt bill is from Brewing Classic styles, but I felt I had to alter the hopping. I love an APA that slams you straight in the face with dank citrus, hop oils so this one will be hop burst to really bring out the character of 2 of my favourite hops, with a large charge of aroma hops at flameout.


23L, 69% efficiency
OG: 1050
FG: 1010
ABV: 5.2%
IBU: 40 (rager)
SRM: 7.5
IBU:GU 0.81

Single Infusion Mash @67C, 60 minutes, 60 minute boil.

4400g Maris Otter (82.9%)
340g Munich (6.4%)
340g Biscuit (6.4%)
227g Wheat Malt (4.3%)

5g Amarillo 60 mins, 7 IBU
5g Centennial 60 mins, 7 IBU
14g each of Centennial and Amarillo at 15, 10 and 5 minutes for a total of 26 IBU
25g each of Centennial and Amarillo at Flame out.
Protofloc at 15 mins.

Ferment at 18C for 10-14 days, including d-rest.

Up at 7:15am tomorrow for an early-ish start.

 

[johnny_dove]

Looking good, also finding myself craving centennial brews, my next brew will be similar and will use chinook, centennial and cascade :-)

 

[Ceejay]

Ah, the 3 "C's". Classic Citrus Cones.

Mash on at 67C, bang on target. First time for me with a grist with no crystal in it, and the aroma is totally different, almost like sourdough and sweet digestive biscuits. Here's a snap of the grain bill:

And, here are the hops. Just a pinch though, no need to go overboard... :lol:

Just check out the colour of those hops. Rob at www.themaltmiller.co.uk does a fantastic job preparing, storing and shipping these, and you can tell by the colour, aroma and the stickiness they are super-fresh and of the utmost quality. :

 

[Good Ed]

good brewing ceejay, great looking hops :thumb:

 

[johnny_dove]

I like the grain bill. Some wheat for head retention? Wish I had some more fermenters :)

 

[Ceejay]

I think it's primarily there just to add a bit more of that bready/crackery kind of character, but I guess it will help HR as an extra benefit.

Nearly up to the boil now, so must go and see to it :thumb:

 

[Ceejay]

Wort is boiling now, and I've added my 60 minute addition. Thought I'd share a bit more info about my methods and some pics as there seems to be a lot of people looking to get into all grain at the moment.

These couple of photos show the first runnings coming out of the MLT. I recirculated or about 8 litres in total (over half the volume) to get it to run "bright". You'll see that "bright" doesn't mean crystal clear, but it's no longer turbid with bits floating in it. Think cloudy apple juice.

Before:

After:

I've already set my flow rate out of the MLT at roughly 1 litre/min using a stopwatch. Once the "vorlauf" is complete, I start to sparge, setting matching the flow rate from the HLT to the MLT. I'm trying to keep a good inch of liquor on top of the foil, which is there to stop the grain bed from being disturbed. Here's a pic of my 3 tier, gravity fed, plastic brewing system.

And the top of the grain bed:

Here, you can see that I've propped my collection vessel (which also doubles as my bottling bucket) at and angle using two chunky books, and I'm running the wort down the side, so as not to create too much splashing. This is to try and minimise hot-side aeration that can cause off flavours in the finished beer (although I think this has been contested recently). If I wanted to to this better, I'd probably have a reducer on the end of the tap and run it through a long hose to the bottom.

 

[fbsf]

Great pics and walkthrough Ceejay...keep 'em coming! :clap:

 

[Ceejay]

Towards the end of the sparge, when i'm near to collecting my required pre-boil volume (27.5L) I take a couple of gravity readings. I generally stop when my hydrometer says 1.000, as I like to stop way before I hit a temperature corrected 1008, at which point you can start to extract tannins from the grain husks (due to a rising pH). This is why I like to calculate my recipe based on 69% efficiency, so I have plenty to play with.

I've collected at total of 27L at 1046 pre boil gravity. My target was 1045, so I've liquored back by a couple of litres as I know my boil off rate is quite high (13 to 14%). That's 4 extra bottles of beer, just by adding water. Isn't brewing magic?

So, I've carefully transferred the wort into the kettle (making sure my hop stopper is fixed in place) and it's coming up to the boil. It goes through a few changes, when it's near boiling to boiling. These pictures hopefully depict what is meant to happen.

First you get a rocky foam stage, when it's coming up to temperature:

Soon, it starts to get a kind of glossy sheen to it. This is when you need to be on the ball and watching for a boil over. I usually have to turn my kettle off 4 or 5 times before it stops trying to climb out and land me in all sorts of sticky mayhem.

The next picture shows the very beginnings of the hot break. There is a small rupture in the foam.

And a few minutes after (can be as long as 15 minutes), the foam almost completely subsides, as all the proteins that make up the foam sink back into the wort. You can see, I get a good rolling boil, thanks to a 3KW Backersafe element.

Switching off the kettle momentarily reveals the extent of the hot break:

This is what you want; the proteins have coagulated and dropped out of solution. Now is the time to add your 60 minute addition and start timing 60 minutes. :thumb:

 

[Ceejay]

Next up, I've added my 60 min addition, and I'm down to 15 mins. 15 min hop addition in, along with half a protofloc tablet and in with the immersion chiller, so it becomes sanitized in the boil.

I'm "hop bursting" this beer, so I've got further additions at 10 and 5 minutes. After 60 minutes is all done, I add my final, large charge of Amarillo and Centennial, 25g a piece, switch off the kettle and start up the immersion chiller. This is what it all looks like. Can you smell it?

I'm trying to chill the wort down as fast as I can, so I have my sanitize paddle in there, so i can stir the wort around the chiller and get faster cooling, whilst also being able to measure the temperature of the entire wort, not just one, static spot. Around 40C i stopped stirring for a bit to see if I could see a cold break. And sure enough, here it is in stages:

You can see the wort on the top starting to clear as the hops and trub drop to the bottom. Anyway, I've continued to stir and reached a temp of 18C. I like to pitch cold on all my beers, so as not to produce esters, fusel alcohols etc. I'm now letting it rest for 30 mins, doing a bit of cleaning up and writing this while the hops and trub all settle down at the bottom of the kettle. Once I start running off the wort into the fermenter, this should all pack down, and I'll get clear, bright wort. That's the theory, anyway.

I've been soaking the fermenter in a solution of Oxyclean since this morning, and rinsed it thouroughly. I mixed up a solution of Videne to around 1.6 ml per litre (slightly over recommended 12.5ppm, but it's no rinse up to 24ppm), chucked 500ml into the fermenter and given it a good shake, to coat and sanitise the whole of the inside. I'll pour this out before I run the wort into it. :thumb:

 

[Ceejay]

After 30 mins, I let the tap rip and transferred 20 litres of wort into the FV. Why only 20 litres? I think my boil off rate was pretty high, getting on 15% and there's a lot of hops in there, soaking up a lot of wort. This is what's left in the kettle:

And this is what we have:

20L @ OG of 1058, which explains the slightly short volume out of the kettle, and probably means my initial reading into the kettle was a bit out. Got my starter in this 2L conical flask, which was just beginning to show signs of fermentation, meaning most of the growth will have occurred.

I pitched, then added a further 2L of boiled and cooled water to give me 22L @ 1052. It's going to sit at 19C for 10 days now and then I'll batch prime to 2.5 volumes and add some Cascade Hop Aroma Oil to boost up the aroma.

Cheers! : Now I have to clean the house and go to my kayaking club! No beers for me tonight...

 

[carl_saint]

Great stuff! I wanna try a hop burst soon!

 

[WelshPaul]

Looks good. Can anyone explain to me what a "hop burst" is? I like strongly hopped US ales but have not heard that phrase before.

 

[carl_saint]

Hop bursting is a technique where all hops are added late, with 30 minutes or less left in the boil.

Hops contain lots of oils that impart aroma and taste into the final beer. However, when added early in the boil, most of these volatile oils boil off. Thus the oils from bittering hops added early in the boil tend to boil off and the hops only contribute to the bitterness of the beer.

By adding more hops later in the boil, you can still achieve the same bitterness but also keep around more oils and get more hop aroma and flavor in the beer. Brewers do this by adding a "burst" of hops around the 30 or 40 minute mark of the boil, and continuing to add lots of hops until the end of the boil.

Since the bittering hops are added later in the boil, they add more aroma and flavor, but less alpha acids, so more are needed to achieve the same bitterness.

 

[WelshPaul]

Ah, right. I already do that, I just call it late hopping. :)

 

[Good Ed]

nice brewing :thumb:

just a point on the Videne, for no rinse it is 1.25ml per litre

 

[mattybabsy]

was bout to say the same about the videne- jsut think you left out the decimal. Just in case someone is wanting to learn the AG way!

but yeah, looks great! im doin an iipa nxt wk- ibu of over 100- hopefully should work out well

 

[johnny_dove]

Impressively clear wort before and after boiling. I use biab and my stuff is not near as clear as this...Also nice to see the trub so dry, ie not much sacrificed to get it so clear Boil off not a big issue since water can be replaced / not affecting total gravity. This hot side aeration, that may not be any issue, only something to avoid before boiling? Since you are stirring while cooling, it can't be a worry post boil?

 

[joe1002]

Excellent post CeeJay :thumb:

I really hope you mean 1.6ml /l for the videne :pray: which as you say is a bit on the high side for a no rinse solution.

 

[Dieseljockey]

Well done.. :thumb: looks a good brew day with no problems... :clap: