First BIAB AG IPA - An autopsy of disaster

[Gomas]

well if you get clear, drinkable session beer, then it has to be considered a success!

I always sparge, but I took advice my old boss who was a northerner ran a brewery and I guess he was big on getting maximum efficiency out of his grains. If you need to, to up the volume, just drain your runnings, then put water of the desired temperature into your grain bag in the boiler and mix about a bit. It's always worked for me!

Also don't be too concerned about the clarity of your wort post boil, it will clear massively from there in the FV and bottles. In fact, the main thing at that stage for clarity is chilling the wort quickly. I usually use Irish Moss, but my last brew, I forgot it and 3 weeks on it's still pouring almost completely clear from the bottles.

 

[chuff76]

Delighted to get home last night and it was bubbling away like a good un, with luck I will end up with beer.

I'm also interested to see how quickly it ferments with the new snazzy yeast - I read threads on here of ferments completely finishing in a few days/a week, but on all the kits I've ever done they took way longer - 3, 4, 5 weeks not uncommon.

I plan to hit it with a heavy dry hop - That Simcoe is just incredible stuff, can't get enough of the smell mm

I won't bother with adding spraymalt to buffer the ABV and will just chalk it up to experience. Have bought a bag in case I ever need it in future.

So whatever comes out of that FV, it is AG ! well, mostly, apart from 250g of dextrose :)

 

[Covrich]

I don't think I have ever had a fermentation take more than 10 days.. 5 weeks seems odd.. are you going by gravity or an airlock..? sometimes airlocks can bubble every so often with gas escaping rather than fermenting..

 

[Spapro]

Delighted to get home last night and it was bubbling away like a good un, with luck I will end up with beer.

I'm also interested to see how quickly it ferments with the new snazzy yeast - I read threads on here of ferments completely finishing in a few days/a week, but on all the kits I've ever done they took way longer - 3, 4, 5 weeks not uncommon.

I plan to hit it with a heavy dry hop - That Simcoe is just incredible stuff, can't get enough of the smell mm

I won't bother with adding spraymalt to buffer the ABV and will just chalk it up to experience. Have bought a bag in case I ever need it in future.

So whatever comes out of that FV, it is AG ! well, mostly, apart from 250g of dextrose :)

I found kits can sometimes take 2-4 weeks to ferment out fully, or sometimes get stuck halfway through - Nightmare !

Since moving to all grain its almost irrelevant which yeast I use, even with dried gervin or US05 or safaleO4 all seem to ferment out in about a week, but I leave them for at least 2 for the yeast to clean up after itself before bottling.

Pleased to hear yours is fermenting well, and yes Simcoe is a very, very nice hop.

 

[Simonh82]

I was originally looking a Burco, but got the other as I wanted 40l for the biggest batch I could manage. With the cutouts, will it still achieve what's needed from the boil or will I need to butcher the electronics? I spent the time wishing I'd gone for gas burners instead

The boil serves four main purposes, some of which will be affected by the cut outs.

It creates the hot break and gets the protein to start coagulating. This should be fine with the cut outs.

A vigourous boil drives off DMS, a chemical that can leave a cooked sweetcorn flavour in beer. For this a vigorous boil is apparently needed. When I was extract brewing on a weak electric hob I needed to keep the lid partly on to maintain a boil. I think the combination of weak boil and lid half on definitely lead to DMS flavours in some beers. You may be fine if you extend the boil on yours. Saying that, there are also some interesting experiments on brulosophy.com about boil time and DMS flavour. They found a 30 min boil produced a beer that couldn't be reliably distinguished from one with a 90 min boil.

Another feature of the boil is hop isomorisation. The bitter compounds in hops become soluble in water over 80°C. This shouldn't be affected by the cut outs but if you need to extend the boil you will get more bitter beer than planned.

The boil also acts to reduces wort volume and concentrate the sugars to your target specific gravity. Boil loses take a bit if time to dial in and your overall loses going in to the fermenter are also affected by dead space and hop absorption. All of this takes a while and a few brews to figure out.

Personally, I would spend a couple of hours modifying your boiler to avoid frustration and delays in what can already be a long process. The first thing to try which doesn't require any parts is just moving the thermal cut out sensor off the element. You can find instructions here http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=34075 and here http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42675 for slightly different models. I think you can also bypass the thermal fuse but try this first. The thermal fuse is a blow once thing so it doesn't sound like that's the problem.

Good luck.

 

[chuff76]

I don't think I have ever had a fermentation take more than 10 days.. 5 weeks seems odd.. are you going by gravity or an airlock..? sometimes airlocks can bubble every so often with gas escaping rather than fermenting..

I like the airlock, but purely for fun - it's no more than a rough indicator of activity and I always sample for the specific gravity :)

 

[chuff76]

I found kits can sometimes take 2-4 weeks to ferment out fully, or sometimes get stuck halfway through - Nightmare !

Since moving to all grain its almost irrelevant which yeast I use, even with dried gervin or US05 or safaleO4 all seem to ferment out in about a week, but I leave them for at least 2 for the yeast to clean up after itself before bottling.

Pleased to hear yours is fermenting well, and yes Simcoe is a very, very nice hop.

Glad it's not just me with the kits, I actually just had my first ever failure with (un)lucky number 7 - The fermentation never really kicked off and it missed its FG by a mile and just wouldnt budge - I poured the lot away at the weekend, what a travesty!

I think my FV has always suffered from ambient temperature swings in the kitchen which I'm trying to minimise now I'm doing it a bit more seriously - My first AG is wrapped up like a baby right now, stay warm my pretty, stay warm.

 

[chuff76]

The boil serves four main purposes, some of which will be affected by the cut outs.

It creates the hot break and gets the protein to start coagulating. This should be fine with the cut outs.

A vigour boil drives off DMS, a chemical that can leave a cooked sweetcorn flavour in beer. For this a vigorous boil is apparently needed. When I was extract brewing on a weak electric hob I needed to keep the lid partly on to maintain a boil. I think the combination of weak boil and lid half on definitely lead to DMS flavours in some beers. You may be fine if you extend the boil on yours. Saying that, there are also some interesting experiments on brulosophy.com about boil time and DMS flavour. They found a 30 min boil produced a beer that couldn't be reliably distinguished from one with a 90 min boil.

Another feature of the boil is hop isomorisation. The bitter compounds in hops become soluble in water over 80°C. This shouldn't be affected by the cut outs but if you need to extend the boil you will get more bitter beer than planned.

The boil also acts to reduces wort volume and concentrate the sugars to your target specific gravity. Boil loses take a bit if time to dial in and your overall loses going in to the fermenter are also affected by dead space and hop absorption. All of this takes a while and a few brews to figure out.

Personally, I would spend a couple of hours modifying your boiler to avoid frustration and delays in what can already be a long process. The first thing to try which doesn't require any parts is just moving the thermal cut out sensor off the element. You can find instructions here http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=34075 and here http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42675 for slightly different models. I think you can also bypass the thermal fuse but try this first. The thermal fuse is a blow once thing so it doesn't sound like that's the problem.

Good luck.

Amazing info there Simon, thanks :thumb: I can't wait to see what I end up with as I had a silly long boil but luckily I aimed for quite a modest IBU 60 so if it's increased I might get away with it - Not that I'm likely to know too much, my palate is untrained and often just says 'mm BEER'.

My thermometer insisted that even despite the cutouts, I never dropped below 99 degrees throughout the entire boil and I sure had a lot of hot break globules floating about.

I'll read up about modding the boiler and see if it's within my range of abilities, ideally without burning the house down - I had heard that this can significantly reduce the lifespan of the boiler but again, anecdotal forum talk is my only evidence. Guess it wont last forever anyway and I actually dropped it quite heavily on cleanup and now I have a slightly non-circular opening and imperfectly fitting lid

 

[chuff76]

Checked this after a week, down to 1.020. Thought I'd leave it a bit longer before dry hopping.
Checked tonight, still 1.020. What the hell.... This is exactly what happened to my last beer. We got down to 1.020 and would go no further, I tried all kinds to fix it and ended up pouring the lot away instead of priming 40 bottle bombs..

This was all looking a bit fishy, so calibrated my refractometer again. 1.000 water, but 1.020 beer.
So I got out my trusty hydrometer.
1.008

So, my beer is fine. In fact it's fermented, 60g of hops now in there in a muslin bag. I've calculated the ABV as just a smudge below 5%. And it tastes really quite good, better than any uncarbed green beer I've tasted before. Maybe a bit more on the bitter side as expected from the longer boil but I'm now very hopeful indeed!

So, happiness, tempered with the realisation that I've got a knackered and unreliable refractometer and I almost certainly poured away 23 litres of probably absolutely fine double ipa last weekend