TETB’s Brewdays

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Well it’s been a long time coming due to other commitment, but today I finally did my third AG brew (woo Hoo).
It was a day of ’firsts’:

• first time doing water treatment (thanks for the advice @strange-steve, @JockyBrewer)
• first time brewing @Galena ’s Best Bitter (thanks for the recipe Mr G)
• first time doing HERMS
• first time using liquid yeast
• first time using my counterflow

and last but not least...

• first (and hopefully last) time making a spectacularly annoying mistake right at the end

It’s a bit late to do a full post now, but here’s a photo of the “TETB counterflow HERMS” in action:

So there are two pumped circuits: the heating circuit (left) circulates water through a temperature controlled kettle, while the mash recirculation circuit (right) pumps hot liquor through the mash tun. Heat exchange is obviously done with the counterflow. Everything worked a treat: temperature control was good to less than 0.1°C and I’m glad to say no pump blockages.

Oh and that mistake at the end...? Well after the boil everything was good, and I was mighty impressed at how much time it saved using the counterflow as a chiller. But as usual I saw there was quite a bit of wort left in the Burco below the level of my take-off filter. “No Problem!” I thought, I’ll bail the rest out and filter it though a kitchen sieve into the FV.... yep... that worked well. Right up to the point where the sieve full of hot hop debris slipped and fell into the FV!! Aaargh! #facepalm Oh well... pour it back, wash out the FV and try again... just what I did NOT need at the end of a long day LoL - lesson learned...

 

[RichardM]

I think I would have just fished the sieve out and left the debris to settle at the bottom of the fermenter.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Time to revive this thread: my apologies, I've been lax about it while I've been waffling on for FAR too long on other parts of the forum :-)

Had a long time over the past few weeks with a few too many distractions from actual brewing, but I'm looking forward to making amends over the next few weeks - in fact that's pretty much unavoidable now, having taken delivery this morning of enough malt, hops and yeast for three full batches of the Good Stuff. That lot should completely occupy my three (so far) Corny kegs, which means I'll have to bottle off my remaining Dunkelweizen that is still going strong since before Christmas).

The order of battle is intended to be as follows:

1. Bohemian Pils (based on Make Your Best Bohemian Pilsner from Beer & Brewing... my first attempt at a lager)
2. Ruby Mild (GH p.165)
3. Yorkshire Bitter (GH p.141)

So today it's been all hands on deck preparing a starter for the first-up Boho Pils. This is the first time I've done a starter - but not the first time I should have done a starter... all down to ignorance on my part I'm afraid, and I should probably thank my lucky stars that I've previously managed to get away with severe under-pitching !

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

5pm: liquid yeast (WLP800) pitched into step 1 of the starter and onto the stir plate. Bubbles are from the air pump. Using a demijohn instead of my 2litre conical flask because I need to build the volume of this bad boy up to 3 litres in order to get the 600bn cells I need for the correct pitch rate.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

7:50pm: still in the lag phase
9:45pm: first visible signs of activity

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Interesting post on the Wyeast site about the importance of oxygen during the lag phase.
It seems the lack of outward signs of activity conceals inward changes going on: the yeast is performing its pre-flight tests and preparing to ignite the main burner:

The lag phase is the time during which the yeast become acclimatized to the wort and prepare to reproduce and consume massive amounts of sugar. As with all phases in the yeast life cycle, nothing is clear-cut. Not all of the yeast undergo the exact same process at the same time but generalizations are possible.

In this phase, oxygen is extremely important. Oxygen is used by yeast for synthesis of sterols and unsaturated fatty acids that are necessary growth factors. Without oxygen, these lipids can’t be biosynthesized and growth will be very limited. The sterols and fatty acids produced are also very important in the structure of the cell membrane and the ability of the yeast to respond to external and internal stresses. Adequate oxygen in the wort when the yeast is pitched is essential to a successful fermentation and long-term health of the culture.

During the lag phase, yeast also take in amino acids, peptides, other proteins, and various nutrients. Internal cellular energy reserves (glycogen) fuel the initial yeast activity until the membrane becomes permeable to the wort sugars.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

On Wednesday I brewed again for the first time in months, due to a whole pile of other stuff going on ®.
As usual I took far too long faffing about and in the end I didn't mash in until 13:00... I've always been good at faffing about, but since I stopped working I've become positively World Class.
However everything went to plan and I'd chilled, pitched and cleaned up by about 18:30. Feeling a bit cocky because this must be the first time I've not forgotten anything - I think it really helped to have a brew sheet and tick everything off as I did it.

So this was my first attempt at a lager: a Bohemian Pilsner based loosely on the recipe here: Brew Your Best Bohemian Pilsner.

• 4.6kg weyermann floor malted bohemian pilsner malt
• 200g carapils (dextrine for head retention)
• 200g acidulated malt
• 100g of Saaz (5.1% alpha) at 60, 30, 15 and 0 mins
• step mash with rests at 56, 61, 68 and 75 degrees; sparge water acidulates with 5ml of CRS
• water additions: 75% RO+DI, a scrap of Camden and 0.05g/l calcium chloride
• WLP800 - about a litre of starter, as discussed above

I was pleased to find Saaz at such a high alpha, especially after having read @DocAnna's tribulations with her 'hop soup'.

The acidulated malt seems to have worked well to bring down the mash pH - if anything, maybe just a touch less would have done the job. This is 15 mins into the mash. I find it very hard to read these indicator papers accurately - I'd guess 5.2 maybe?

The mash was a long-delayed opportunity to log the temperature at various depths of the grain bed. I've already posted about that in another thread so I'll just show the main graph here:

I was ridiculously happy to hit the planned OG on the nose at 1052, which I think gives me a brewhouse efficiency of just under 72%

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Update after 4.5 days at 10ºC it's going nicely and is down to 1035 from the original 1052.
The aroma is different to what I'm used to: a bit 'Bohemian'

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Well, as planned I did the GH Ruby Mild today - slightly stressy and it felt like a rather long day after I’d finished clearing up, then done tea, then cleared up after that :-) Still, the satisfaction of having another nice full FV on the go balances all that out.

I don’t know if you sometimes have brewdays like these, but today seemed to be one where I just kept making stupid little mistakes. I think the first one was when I was wondering why the Burco seemed to be taking a while to fill, and then realising it might be connected to why my foot suddenly seemed to be getting a bit wet (aaargh!)

The mash was a bit of a ‘mare. I couldn’t work out why I kept getting bubbles in the recirculation pump, but I finally realised it was because the liquor was running though more slowly than the pump was draining the sump - hmmm. Tipping the mash tun up a bit helped, but it must have been while I was doing that, that cock-up no.2 occurred: dislodging the temperature sensor in the HERMS kettle. This was more serious as meant that the temperature went too high - and by the time I noticed, the top of the mash bed was up to 69° (eeek!). Quickly poured in a litre of cold water though which rescued the situation - and also fixed the issue with the scavenging recirculation pump (should have thought to do it earlier). Anyhow fortunately it seems there wasn’t too much harm done because I overshot the OG by a couple of points at the end of the day.

Fortunately the boil was uneventful, but I did on the spur of the moment decide to put some of my mash tun insulation around the Burco - which worked really well. Don’t know why I’ve never thought to do it before, and it clearly worked: normally I need 40% power to the element to maintain the boil, but with the insulation today it only needed 30%; so this is probably something I’ll do again.

The day was nearly done but I still managed to find time to fit in one more cockup. Let’s just say that counterflow chillers work better when you remember to turn the cold water tap on....

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

A few photos I didn't get round to uploading yesterday :-)

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Watching my fermentation temperatures... Boho Pils in the chilled cabinet; Ruby Mild on the heater.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

DPD man has just delivered a large box with my WinExpert kit - I wasn’t expecting it to be so heavy... I guess that’s a good sign

 

[user 18729]

DPD man has just delivered a large box with my WinExpert kit - I wasn’t expecting it to be so heavy... I guess that’s a good sign
View attachment 48326

Exciting!

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

More to add to my vast collection of packaging materials - I've heard DPD are wondering whether they should open a depot next to my house....

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Essential brew day equipment

 

[user 18729]

A few photos I didn't get round to uploading yesterday :-)

View attachment 48091View attachment 48092View attachment 48093View attachment 48094View attachment 48095

How did you get on with the temp probe mod on your counterflow?

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

How did you get on with the temp probe mod on your counterflow?

Seems to be working well, thanks mate!

it’s a bit hard to see, but I’ve put one temp sensor Tee piece at the mash input, and the other at the mash output...

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I’ve switched the PID controller over so it’s being driven by the mash input temp.
There’s a risk of temp swings with it like that... seems to be working alright, but I’m watching it carefully!

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

At 15 mins into the mash, I’m really quite surprised how much cooler the mash outflow is than the inflow (2°); even though the tun is well insulated, and everything was equalised to the strike temp