Foley67
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- Oct 18, 2020
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Hello all,
I completed my first brew day at the weekend after getting a Klarstein Brauheld Pro 35L and a bunch of ingredients for my birthday!
It went far from perfect and it'd be nice to figure out what I could do better from some more experienced members here. Highlighted where things went wrong below and where I could do with some advice.
Of course, since it was my first time I decided to do something easy, with a simple malt and hop bill - a NEIPA
- specifically a recipe by Verdant for their Even Sharks Need Water
I also decided that instead of making the full 19L batch that I had ingredients for, i'd try just brewing 4.5L as I didn't want 19L of potentially bad first brew beer.
I freshly milled the malt, and added it all, including some rinsed oat husks to the kettle at the strike temp, brought it down to mash temp, put the lid on and begin recirculating through the pump.
Straight away the small brew volume caused issues as it seems that half the time the water level wasn't high enough to reach the tap and get through the pump! This at least taught me that I need a bigger batch next time!
Let the pump just recirculate when it could anyway, then when the mashing complete, raising the grain basket and started sparging with water at the sparge temp. It did seem that the water was taking a long long time to drain through the mash, so not sure if my grains were ground too fine?
Once that was all done, I took a gravity reading, hoping it would be close to the pre-boil gravity but I was a bit off, hitting 1.030 instead of 1.043. I guess this was down to efficiency, and either the mill fineness being off, the pump not working perfectly or both or something else entirely! Any ideas?
Plowed on anyway to the boil. Got up to boiling temp but I think about 5-10 minutes on (I wasn't looking at the timer), there was a power surge and the machine went off. Moved to another socket and we were back, but started the boil from scratch, boiling for 60 minutes.
We then dropped the temp to hop stand/whirlpool temp and added the hops for that stage, and spun occasionally for the 30 minutes specified in the recipe. We went to put on the circulation pump here, but it seemed like the pumps electrics were fried with the surge! So no pump here at this stage. A circulation pump should be used in the whirlpool right?
Should note that after everything was all done, we checked there were no blockages in the pump or tap and we were able to force move air and water through it fine, so think it is the electrics gone. Oh well, still early enough for a replacement!
We then switched off the kettle, and inserted a cooling coil connected to a cold water pump. We got to about 20C before measuring the gravity, and discovered that something majorly went wrong as we were at a gravity of 1.12 instead of the expected 1.066! I think this was down to boiling for too long or not enough water getting through the mash at the sparge stage. We tried to make the best of it and diluted down to 1.066.
Dropped temp down to 18C, into fermenter, and added the yeast before moving to a temperature controlled fridge where it's now fermenting away nicely.
So yes, far from perfect as expected for a first time but hopefully it goes better next time if I:
Have a big enough brew volume that the pump can always be used.
Ensure that the mill is fine enough to get good efficiency and ensure the pre-boil wort is at correct gravity.
Ensure that the pre-boil volume is correct (never even checked this the first time). if this is too low, can you just continue sparging? Or will this just dilute and technically drop efficiency?
Don't boil for too long!
Any other obvious solutions to the issues I faced?
Thanks all!
I completed my first brew day at the weekend after getting a Klarstein Brauheld Pro 35L and a bunch of ingredients for my birthday!
It went far from perfect and it'd be nice to figure out what I could do better from some more experienced members here. Highlighted where things went wrong below and where I could do with some advice.
Of course, since it was my first time I decided to do something easy, with a simple malt and hop bill - a NEIPA
- specifically a recipe by Verdant for their Even Sharks Need WaterI also decided that instead of making the full 19L batch that I had ingredients for, i'd try just brewing 4.5L as I didn't want 19L of potentially bad first brew beer.
I freshly milled the malt, and added it all, including some rinsed oat husks to the kettle at the strike temp, brought it down to mash temp, put the lid on and begin recirculating through the pump.
Straight away the small brew volume caused issues as it seems that half the time the water level wasn't high enough to reach the tap and get through the pump! This at least taught me that I need a bigger batch next time!
Let the pump just recirculate when it could anyway, then when the mashing complete, raising the grain basket and started sparging with water at the sparge temp. It did seem that the water was taking a long long time to drain through the mash, so not sure if my grains were ground too fine?
Once that was all done, I took a gravity reading, hoping it would be close to the pre-boil gravity but I was a bit off, hitting 1.030 instead of 1.043. I guess this was down to efficiency, and either the mill fineness being off, the pump not working perfectly or both or something else entirely! Any ideas?
Plowed on anyway to the boil. Got up to boiling temp but I think about 5-10 minutes on (I wasn't looking at the timer), there was a power surge and the machine went off. Moved to another socket and we were back, but started the boil from scratch, boiling for 60 minutes.
We then dropped the temp to hop stand/whirlpool temp and added the hops for that stage, and spun occasionally for the 30 minutes specified in the recipe. We went to put on the circulation pump here, but it seemed like the pumps electrics were fried with the surge! So no pump here at this stage. A circulation pump should be used in the whirlpool right?
Should note that after everything was all done, we checked there were no blockages in the pump or tap and we were able to force move air and water through it fine, so think it is the electrics gone. Oh well, still early enough for a replacement!
We then switched off the kettle, and inserted a cooling coil connected to a cold water pump. We got to about 20C before measuring the gravity, and discovered that something majorly went wrong as we were at a gravity of 1.12 instead of the expected 1.066! I think this was down to boiling for too long or not enough water getting through the mash at the sparge stage. We tried to make the best of it and diluted down to 1.066.
Dropped temp down to 18C, into fermenter, and added the yeast before moving to a temperature controlled fridge where it's now fermenting away nicely.
So yes, far from perfect as expected for a first time but hopefully it goes better next time if I:
Have a big enough brew volume that the pump can always be used.
Ensure that the mill is fine enough to get good efficiency and ensure the pre-boil wort is at correct gravity.
Ensure that the pre-boil volume is correct (never even checked this the first time). if this is too low, can you just continue sparging? Or will this just dilute and technically drop efficiency?
Don't boil for too long!
Any other obvious solutions to the issues I faced?
Thanks all!
