Neck Oil Clone

[Brewelder]

The grains do seem a little on the large side, or not as crushed as i would have liked to be honest. I don’t have a grinder but i do have a food processor if that would work? Should do.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

The grains do seem a little on the large side, or not as crushed as i would have liked to be honest. I don’t have a grinder but i do have a food processor if that would work? Should do.

I’ve not tried it myself so couldn’t say. I do know that in less than a second my spice grinder reduces coriander seeds to dust so if you do try it be very careful. It might be better to just plan for a longer mash?

 

[Brewelder]

I’ve not tried it myself so couldn’t say. I do know that in less than a second my spice grinder reduces coriander seeds to dust so if you do try it be very careful. It might be better to just plan for a longer mash?

Way to go as my processor is brand new still in box so not sure how good or bad it is

 

[Brewnaldo]

Another thing on this, something I currently have in the planning and its more personal to your circumstances, but its my intention to mash longer as HB says. I have bought a wifi plug which will allow me to program my pre-prepared boiler to come on and heat my strike water to temp as I get up out of my kip. This will mean that the hour or so on a brewday I spend prepping and heating water can instead be sued as an extra (up to) hour mashing and therefore increasing efficiency in the time I have available. Something to consider.

 

[Brewelder]

Another thing on this, something I currently have in the planning and its more personal to your circumstances, but its my intention to mash longer as HB says. I have bought a wifi plug which will allow me to program my pre-prepared boiler to come on and heat my strike water to temp as I get up out of my kip. This will mean that the hour or so on a brewday I spend prepping and heating water can instead be sued as an extra (up to) hour mashing and therefore increasing efficiency in the time I have available. Something to consider.

I have a couple of those but never got round to setting them up, B&Q had a deal on, s for £20 if i remember correctly.

To be honest, i’m not that pushed for time so will just start whenever i get the chance, or pull my self round after a good old english breakfast. But i could see where it wqould be hgandy to have the strike water up to temp.

 

[Brewnaldo]

I have a couple of those but never got round to setting them up, B&Q had a deal on, s for £20 if i remember correctly.

To be honest, i’m not that pushed for time so will just start whenever i get the chance, or pull my self round after a good old english breakfast. But i could see where it wqould be hgandy to have the strike water up to temp.

Yeah I tend to brew between school drop off and pick up. I can fit it in no bother but if I can shoe horn a linger mash into that then it's a big benefit.

 

[Brewelder]

Yeah I tend to brew between school drop off and pick up. I can fit it in no bother but if I can shoe horn a linger mash into that then it's a big benefit.

Update. Brew Day never happened yesterday due to something more important (according to the wife) cropping up, but today is the day and now armed with all the good advice and information gleened from the good memebers on here i am now confident in what i need to do.

I did manage to squeeze in a cleaning session so even though all the equipment was already clean, it’s now cleaner and ready to go. I’ll just have a quick clean down with Starsan before starting this morning and then we’re off.

 

[Brewelder]

One more question before i begin.

In the recipe, at the end of the boil there’s 100gms Nelson Sauvin Hops to be added, how long does that stay in before decanting into the FV?

 

[Brewnaldo]

One more question before i begin.

In the recipe, at the end of the boil there’s 100gms Nelson Sauvin Hops to be added, how long does that stay in before decanting into the FV?

Are you cooling or doing no-chill?

For flameout hops I put them in, turn on the chiller and thats it.

For no chill, there's probably a calculation to be made about how much IBU gets added as the temp slowly drops. There might be someone who can offer that data, but if you chill just chuck them in.

 

[Brewelder]

Are you cooling or doing no-chill?

For flameout hops I put them in, turn on the chiller and thats it.

For no chill, there's probably a calculation to be made about how much IBU gets added as the temp slowly drops. There might be someone who can offer that data, but if you chill just chuck them in.

I will be chilling after the boil, i have one of those coil type chillers.

So at flame out, chuck in the hops, chill down then once at the desired temp, decant into FV?

 

[Brewnaldo]

I will be chilling after the boil, i have one of those coil type chillers.

So at flame out, chuck in the hops, chill down then once at the desired temp, decant into FV?

Yeah exactly that.

 

[Brewelder]

Yeah exactly that.

Cheers mate, appreciate the advice

 

[Brewelder]

Good Morning All,

Well i never actually got round to brew day over the weekend due to other committments, but finally managed to commence the brew yesterday morning. All seemed to go really well with the exception of the amount of wort left after the boil, a very dissappointing 18.5 ltrs.

In summary, this is how it all went.

Filled up the Klarstein Mash Kettle with 20 ltrs of water and brought to a boil, decanted 15 ltrs into a spare bucket to be used for sparging. Wrapped it all up to insulate and keep warm while i added a further 10 litrs of water to the Klarstein and brought that up to 73 degrees.

So far so good and now added the mash to the strike water inside the brew bag and gave it all a good strir to ensure no dough balls. All good and continued to stir every 5 to 10 minutes or so. I also decanted a couple of ltrs of wort and emptied that back into the top of the kettle to try and even out the temeratures. This was done after every stir. All good as the manual thermometer showed a good steady 68 degrees throughout the mash so was well happy with that.
The recipe called for a 60 minute mash, but i gave it 75 before switching the kettle off. I pulled the bag from the kettle and let the residual soaked wort drain back into the kettle for a while before dunking the whole bag into the sparge water. I let that sit for around 15 minutes at 70 degrees and stirred every few minutres to axtract the maximum amount of sugars possible.

Once i was happy with the sparge and pulled the grain bag and let drain again, then emptied the sparged wort into the Klarstein and started to bring it up to boil and this is where i had an issue. My kettle is an older analogue style thermostat type and i really struggled to hold a rolling boil. It was more of a vigourous boil in my humble opinion, please tell me if i’m wrong (video below) If i turned the thermostat slightly down in an attemot to control the boil the thermostat clicked of and the element stopped heating. If i then turned the thermostat back to get the element working again it was too high (in my opinion)

The recipe called for a 60 minute boil with hop additions at 30, 15 and flame out, this was done and towards the end the chiller coil was also added and set up ready.
At flame out i gave the wort a good stir and added the hops, started running cold water through the chiller and left that to do it’s thing.

Once chilled down to around 30 degrees and started to tear down all the equipment and decanted the wort into the fermenter and discovered i had only 18.5 (ish) ltrs of wwort, very dissappointing indeed and not sure what i can do to rectify this issue as this is now the second time i’ve came up short. I followed the recipe and added around 25-26 ltrs of wort before the boil, i’ve lost around 7 ltrs boil off which is high.

At 30 degrees it was too warm to add the yeast so that is going in now as the wort in the FV has come down to an acceptible 22 degrees.

OG taken after decanting into FV was 1.042 and that was at 30 degrees so accounting for temperature differential then i won’t be far off the desired 1.045 as per recipe so i’m happy with that, just gutted at the lack of wort.

If there’s anyone out there that can help with the boil issue then please let me know. Can the analogue dial be replaced with a more accurate digital version?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I’m afraid I can’t advise on your Klarstein modification but if all else fails you can just add a little more sparge water to make up the difference, if it won’t all fit then just top-up during the boil.

Alternatively, “liquor-back” by adding some water to the fermenter to make up the volume required. This will obviously affect the OG so you need to account for this and if you’re not getting the efficiency, add a little extra grain to the mash as discussed earlier.

 

[Brewelder]

I’m afraid I can’t advise on your Klarstein modification but if all else fails you can just add a little more sparge water to make up the difference, if it won’t all fit then just top-up during the boil.

Alternatively, “liquor-back” by adding some water to the fermenter to make up the volume required. This will obviously affect the OG so you need to account for this and if you’re not getting the efficiency, add a little extra grain to the mash as discussed earlier.

Yeah, understand all that mate, and you are right, im at the max level in the kettle ss it is so can’t add more. That said i guess i could increase the sparge and keep some back to use as top up? Better than just adding water.

 

[Sandimas]

That boil does look a bit vigorous to me.

But you only lost water (steam) so topping it back up shouldn't be an issue. Your lower OG is probably a separate issue, you're getting a lower mash efficiency than the recipe. This happens to all of us, AG recipes are at best approximations because we all get different efficiencies due to method and equipment. They can vary greatly, many recipes are calculated at 75% but I only got 68% originally with BIAB, but that went up to 73% when I changed grain supplier. Once you've done a few brews you can work out what efficiency you are getting and compensate with more/less grain in the recipe, but of course kits are fixed-volume so you might need to get a bit of extra base malt to do the adjustment.

 

[Brewelder]

That boil does look a bit vigorous to me.

But you only lost water (steam) so topping it back up shouldn't be an issue. Your lower OG is probably a separate issue, you're getting a lower mash efficiency than the recipe. This happens to all of us, AG recipes are at best approximations because we all get different efficiencies due to method and equipment. They can vary greatly, many recipes are calculated at 75% but I only got 68% originally with BIAB, but that went up to 73% when I changed grain supplier. Once you've done a few brews you can work out what efficiency you are getting and compensate with more/less grain in the recipe, but of course kits are fixed-volume so you might need to get a bit of extra base malt to do the adjustment.

Ahh!!! I see. Never thought of it like that, the evaporation is water so can be topped back up. Now that makes sense and as for the efficiency!!! I haven’t even tried to work that out even though i know there are online tools to do it for you. I’ll sit down later and maybe plug all the details in and see what surprise i get.

Getting back to the boil issue, when is the best time to add the water? During the boil as it evaporates?

 

[Brewelder]

Ahh!!! I see. Never thought of it like that, the evaporation is water so can be topped back up. Now that makes sense and as for the efficiency!!! I haven’t even tried to work that out even though i know there are online tools to do it for you. I’ll sit down later and maybe plug all the details in and see what surprise i get.

Getting back to the boil issue, when is the best time to add the water? During the boil as it evaporates?

Just plugged the data into an efficiency calculator on Brewers Friend and got 62.07, wow, how shocking is that!!!

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Just plugged the data into an efficiency calculator on Brewers Friend and got 62.07, wow, how shocking is that!!!

If you got your OG with 18.5 litres I think your efficiency is 66% which is not far off what you might expect for BIAB. A finer grain crush/a longer mash might help as will a better sparge. If you do go for a finer crush on the grain I would advise a roller grain mill rather than a food processor because you want those grain husks whole to help loosen the grain bed. The cutting blades of a food processor will chop these into tiny pieces and you might end up with a stuck mash/sparge.

Adding water to the boil - yes just top up periodically as the water level drops, there’s no specific timing or approach to this except perhaps smaller frequent additions are likely to have less of a cooling effect maybe?

 

[Nottsbeer]

I'm going to make this comment and then run....but did you squeeze the bag after your sparge? I squeeze as much as I can to get the last drop of wort out, others suggest not to. As I don't dunk sparge it may not make as much difference to you, but always worth a go to increase efficiency.

Knowing my efficiency is around 70%, when I recently bought an AG kit I on purposely got a kit for a volume a few litres bigger than my planned brew, popped the info into an app and worked out water volumes etc for a slighly smaller volume. All worked perfectly. Glad you're making progress, am sure you'll have a great tasting beer in a few weeks time