Whirlpool Fever

March 23, 2014Blingadmin

The Players

Since our boil kettle was first constructed last year we followed Kal’s lead and used a Hop Stopper to filter wort. This product works fairly well and prevents both hops and some break material from hitting the chiller and eventually the fermenter. It’s easy to clean with a kitchen sprayer, and is very well constructed.

The Setup

But the Hop Stopper does have some drawbacks:

efficiency: quite a bit of wort is left in the kettle. We use sanitary magnetic drive pumps (like Chugger, US Solar, or March) to transfer wort and these require continuous flow with no air pockets, otherwise the pumps lose prime. When the wort level gets below the Hop Stopper, the hops and hot break clogging the screen prevent wort from getting inside the screen quickly enough, and air gets into the lines instead. Also, because our kettles are quite large, each gallon is less than 1 inch in height, and the bottom is flat (unlike a Sanke keg), which means that when the wort level drops too low for the Hop Stopper, we still have a full gallon or two left.
babysitting: When the wort level gets too low, you either have to leave wort in the kettle or use a spoon to agitate the hop stopper (by pressing down and releasing every second) to let more wort into the screen. This does work, but if you’re trying to control the flow through the pump to hit the right temperature, agitate the Hop Stopper screen, and watch for when air starts to enter the pump intake to prevent loss of prime, you’re likely to screw something up because everything is happening at once. You need five hands, and you’ve only got four, or maybe even just two.
whirlpooling: you can’t easily whirlpool since the Hop Stopper blocks the circulation pattern, and picks up from the center instead of the side. We’re interested in this technique that many traditional breweries use and we’d like to replicate it in our setup.

The Hook

Whirlpooling is the circulation of the wort in the boil kettle after the boil is done to concentrate the hot break, cold break, grain particles, and hop bits into the center of the kettle. Due to the magic of physics and fluid dynamics solid particles will move to the center when the liquid is stirred and then allowed to settle. This leaves clear wort at the sides, and with a side pickup in the kettle, allows you to leave most of the solid stuff behind providing clearer wort and eventually clearer beer.

Second, you can use the whirlpool to provide increased hop aroma and flavor by steeping a separate addition of hops while the whirlpool is circulating. Since during the whirlpool the wort is around 170 – 200°F (82 – 93°C) volatile flavor and aroma compounds are not driven off like they are during the boil. Many traditional UK breweries use this technique to increase the complexity and clarity of their beer. We’d like to try it too.

The Tale

The first step was the removal of the Hop Stopper and the addition of a side pickup. Instead of a traditional dip tube, we decided to use a 90° street elbow and a barb fitting at the bottom outlet of the kettle. Besides the whirlpool benefits, during the cleaning process when recirculating PBW after a brew session, we need to drain all the PBW water from the kettle, which is now easily accomplished by tilting the kettle towards the barb. In short, the new barb fitting allows us to drain almost all liquid from the kettle, whether that’s wort or cleaning water.

Since the barb draws from the side, after the whirlpool has settled all the break material and hops in the center, and only clear wort is left on the sides, we’ll only get clear wort into the fermenter.

Next because we use pumps, we need some mechanism to induce the whirlpool in the kettle. Yes, we could stir vigorously with a spoon, and we’ve tried that, but it doesn’t work as well as you’d think due to the magnesium anode, the heating element, and the thermometer getting in the way during 5 gallon brews. Instead, we constructed a whirlpool arm that attaches to our kettle inlet and is easily removed for increased flexibility.

As you can see, attached to the upper kettle inlet is the new whirlpool arm, which directs the wort along the side of the kettle and induces the actual whirlpool when wort is taken from the kettle and pumped back in. The bottom level of the arm allows us to still brew and whirlpool 5 gallon batches if we want to.

Why did we choose a camlock fitting for the arm? Well, when we’re fly-sparging, wort is continuously draining into the kettle and we need to monitor the gravity to ensure it doesn’t drop below 1.010, which begins to extract undesirable tannins from the grain husks in the mash. The boil kettle inlet is where we collect the sample from, and we need it to be easily accessible, so we’ll only attach the whirlpool arm after the boil is done. Second, allowing the whirlpool arm to be disconnected helps ensure it can be cleaned well.

The Finale

We don’t actually have a finale yet since we haven’t tried the whirlpool arm in a full brew. But we have tried the kettle outlet barb fitting, and it works great. We’ll definitely let you know how the whirlpool arm performs in the next brew. Stay tuned!

IPA Take Two

March 12, 2014Uncategorizedadmin

We brewed this IPA the first time back in November and we didn’t Brew It Right™. Time to fix that.

Last Time

November’s grain bill was too sweet and wasn’t balanced by the hops. When racking to secondary and tasting the hydrometer sample, we said:

Wow, what an awful taste.  First off, too sweet, and the aroma hops (mostly Cluster) just don’t work with the sweetness of the malt.  Maybe it will get better with time, but we certainly know what we won’t do in the future: pair a large amount of Golden Promise with late-addition Cluster.

The beer got better with age, but was never particularly good. This time, we’re making some changes:

Maris Otter instead Golden Promise – GP is a sweeter malt, but we’d like complexity without the sweetness, thus the MO. We’re sure GP is appropriate in some beers, just not in this one.
No Cluster – not clean enough of a finishing hop, at least in the large quantities used in IPAs. While we know of some very popular lighter beers that use late-addition Cluster, it’s just not right for this IPA. This time we’ll go with more traditional finishing hops.
Add some wheat malt – makes the beer a little lighter and gives better head. Plus we’ve got some we need to use.

The Brew

ipa2-mill — A splash of flaked maize makes a great picture

This time we decided to try batch sparging in an attempt to save time during the brew day. We usually fly-sparge on our system, and that takes anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes, so we were looking to speed things up and make the brew day a bit shorter.

In a typical batch sparge, you drain the entire mash tun for the first batch. Then you add more hot water, let it sit for about 15 or 20 minutes, and drain again for the second batch. The combination of first and second batches makes your final boil volume.

Our first batch clocked in at 5.25 gallons and 13.75 Plato. The second batch was 3.25 gallons at 6.5 Plato. With these batches combined, we began the boil with 8.5 gallons at 11 Plato (1.042 SG). This was right on the target of a final 5.5 gallons at 1.066 SG, but since our boil-off rate is about 2 gallons per hour, we needed to boil off a gallon of wort.

30 minutes later we added the first bittering hops and an hour after that, our boil was done. 5 gallons went into the fermenter at 1.066 SG, yielding about 70% efficiency.

Did Batch Sparging save time?

No, it did not. Two things prevented batch sparging from saving time over fly-sparging:

more wort, lower gravity: fly sparging seems to result in a more concentrated wort, which means we can start the boil right away. Batch sparging seems to yield more wort at a lower gravity, which means we have to spend 30 – 40 minutes boiling off water before we can start adding hops.
rest between batches: batch sparging guides usually say to wait between batches and let the water leach more sugars out of the grain. That takes an additional 20 minutes.

So besides the time spent draining the mash tun (15 minutes) you add another hour for resting and boil-off, and batch sparging doesn’t save us any time. But it was a bit easier, and we didn’t have to monitor the gravity near the end of the sparge to avoid tannin extraction.

Into the Secondary

We’re somewhat slow writing up each brew, so this IPA is already being dry-hopped in secondary. You see, we’ve got a friendly competition coming up where this IPA will be pitted against 15 commercial hoppy beers, so we’re under the gun. Final gravity into secondary was 1.016 SG for an ABV of 6.5%, which was right on target. We’d planned to dry-hop with Willamette and Ahtanum, but after trying valiantly to drink an Ahtanum dry-hopped Kolsch at a local brewery, we sprinted away from this combination. Luckily our freezer had a half-ounce each of Simcoe and Amarillo, both excellent IPA dry-hops.

When it’s done, we’ll do a proper tasting and give you all the details.

American Amber Tasting

February 19, 2014Recipe, Reviewsadmin

Earlier this year we brewed a Bock as our first attempt at a lager. If you don’t remember, we split the batch and pitched half with US-05 to create an American Amber ale. Today we’re going to taste that.

Appearance: this brew was actually kegged and carbonated in late January, so it’s long-since crystal clear. Color is a spot-on reddish-amber. Pours with a nice foamy head, not too dense, which gradually falls back. Some lacing is present, but not as much as our Rye IPA.

Smell: all spice, no fruit, but not overpowering. This is expected due to the use of “noble” Saaz and Hallertau hops which tend to have a spicy character. Since this batch was not drop-hopped, no aroma explodes out of the glass like you’d get with an American IPA.

Taste: good taste, great bitterness for the style, and very easy drinking. Spicy notes from the hops, no overpowering caramel flavors or cloying sweetness from the extra crystal we tossed in. We think it’s well-balanced towards the bitter side.

Mouthfeel: there’s room for improvement here. The brew finished at 1.024 SG, likely due to the higher mash temperature. Next time, we’d keep the mash temps around 150 – 151F for less body.

Temperature Zones

A HERMS system (like we have) has multiple temperature zones. First you’ve got the mash tun itself, and second you have the Heat EXchanger (HEX) in your Hot Liquor Tank. They are not always the same temperature, and that means that both zones can affect the fermentability and mouthfeel of your beer.

If you’ll recall, mashing at a lower temperature (like 148F) increases fermentability because it favors the beta-amylase enzyme, which breaks starches into simpler sugars that yeast convert to alcohol. Higher mash temperatures (like 154F) favor alpha-amylase, which breaks starches into larger chunks that yeast cannot process as easily. Thus, higher mash temperature yields a less fermentable wort, and more unfermentable sugars, which create a fuller-tasting beer.

So, if your mash tun is at 149F and your HEX coil is at 154F, you’ll be getting starch conversion in both places, but quite possibly favoring different enzymes. You need to keep the temperature between the mash and the HEX as close as possible to ensure the mash profile is consistent. This is how we got more mouthfeel and less ABV on this brew without intending to.

For the future brews, we’ll try to hit mash temps more precisely, and reduce flow rates through the HEX to ensure that the wort in the coils isn’t a higher temperature than the mash itself.

Land of Pils

February 17, 2014Lager, Reviewsadmin

While recently in the Czech Republic, Brew It Right™ was clearly required to sample various Moravian brews and provide a full report. This task was not taken lightly and required considerable sacrifice and concentration. Obviously, almost all of the beer in Czech pubs are lagers, so you’ll find a precious few taps pouring ale unless it’s a hefeweizen.

First, a glossary:

Ležák – lager
Světlý – light
Pšeničné – wheat (usually hefeweizen)
Pivovar – brewery
Černé – black, meaning dark or dunkel
Tmavý – dark; see Černé
Kvasnicový – yeasty, unfiltered
Polotmavý – amber or gold

Copy this list to your phone and take it with you. Or just do what we did; order one of everything on the list and try it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

The Standout

While the local Starobrno brewery is great and their Starobrno Černé is (in our opinion) one of the better tasting regional brews in Moravia, the brewery is actually owned by Heineken. So if you’re trying to stay away from anything macro-related, they aren’t what you’re looking for.

Instead, try the Hotel Pegas in Brno, a hotel and restaurant with its own brewery. Walk in and copper brew kettles are already on display right behind the bar. And the beer is actually quite good, showing more variety than you’ll find in a lot of the pubs. Pegas gets bonus points for attempting the only ale (besides hefeweizen) we found: a special porter. But we’re deducting some of those points because it’s served in a smaller glass than any of the other brews, and after a week of lager we really, really wanted a full glass of ale. The food is pretty good good too, though in typical outside-of-Prague Czech fashion, vegetables are nowhere to be found unless pickled.

Another to look for is Pivovar Poutnik which makes a couple pilsners. For a respite from pilsner, try the Černé (dark) from Velkopopovický Kozel (though owned by Pilsner Urquell/SAB Miller). Beware that many of the regional or local breweries (like Kozel or Starobrno) are all owned by international conglomerates, but many still make good beer.

Homebrew

Of course we had to try and find a homebrew shop, and found one we did: Pivo Ogar. Unfortunately we got there five minutes late, but we did see a shelf of homebrew stuff and some sacks of malt behind the counter. No kits though…

Rye IPA Tasting

January 12, 2014Recipe, Reviewsadmin

Forever ago (well, mid December), we brewed a Rye IPA with 61% pale malt, 18% rye malt, 14% Crystal 60L, and 7% Thomas Fawcett Amber, with CTZ for bittering and Citra for the finish. It was supposed to be a double IPA, but ended up with 7% ABV, so not quite. But it’s maturing well.

Appearance: since it’s still recently dry-hopped, there’s still a few bits of pellet hops floating around, and there’s a haze from the rye. In our experience, Biofine Clear (which we always add to secondary) takes a while to do it’s thing, especially at the 45F that our kegerator is set to. Color is dark gold, almost amber but without any red; still within the bounds of IPA. The head falls back slowly, has great lacing, and sticks to the glass.

Smell: not as much hop aroma as expected; the malt dominates. The Thomas Fawcett Amber causes the rye to recede to the background enough that it’s hard to pick out, and this was supposed to be a rye-forward beer. The dry-hopping with Citra and Cascade didn’t do as much for the aroma as we thought it would, but you can still detect fruity notes that pair well enough with the Amber malt.

Taste: can we say Thomas Fawcett Amber? We had some to use up, but it’s very easy to pick out, and next time we’ll use less of it. In any case, the taste is pleasantly bitter, and the dry-hops contributed more flavor than we thought they would: 1/2oz Citra for 7 days, and 1oz Cascade for 2 days.

Mouthfeel: very smooth and heavier on the body, though it finished at 1.016 SG. It’s not as carbonated as we’d like, but that’s OK.

Next time: we’d use less Fawcett Amber malt since its character dominates and this was supposed to be a rye beer. We’d also up the bittering hop additions and reduce the Crystal 60, as the beer was a bit too sweet for our tastes before adding the dry-hops. Even so, this is still a good beer, just not what we were expecting. We’ll still have a great time drinking 10 gallons of it.

Spring Time is Lager Time

January 5, 2014Lager, Recipeadmin

We’ve never brewed a lager here at BIR because we didn’t have a proper fermentation and lagering chamber. But now we have chest freezer and an Auber Instruments dual-stage temperature controller, and we can lager with the best of them (hah!).

Mini Review: Lager and Ale

You probably know this already, so feel free to skip ahead if you’re bored. Beer is often divided into two large groups: lager and ale. While they each developed distinctive styles over time, only one thing really separates them: yeast.

Ale yeast likes to be warm (mid 60s) but if too warm, it produces bad flavors, and if too cold, it just goes to sleep. It’s also referred to as “top-fermenting” since it stays quite active, produces a lot of krausen, and tends to be caught in the foam. Ale yeast produces more esters and these often contribute much of the flavor associated with classic ale styles. Total time from “grain to glass” can be as little as two weeks.

Lager, on the other hand, likes to be quite cool (upper 40s to lower 50s) while fermenting and works much more slowly. After primary fermentation is done, the beer may only be 40% to 60% fermented, and usually contains by-products of the fermentation process that smell like rotten eggs (sulphur) or butterscotch (diacetyl) or green apple (acetaldehyde). This requires a long, cold lagering (from German, “to store”) period during which the yeast clean up all these by-products, and all the haze-causing proteins clump together, drop out, and produce soft-flavored crystal-clear beer. Unlike ales, a lager takes at least 8 to 12 weeks to be ready, often longer.

Dear God, 2 Months?!!

Yeah, that’s right. I hope it’s worth it. But we had 7 pounds of Briess Light Munich and some Saaz to use up, and brewing a Bock beer was the best way to do it. But even more importantly, we have to perfect our lager process in preparation for our Holy Grail: National Bohemian Beer. We don’t want to screw that up, so this brew is a test run. One of us started the drinking life in Baltimore and hooked the rest of us on Natty Boh, and 2014 is the year we’re gonna clone it. Say hello to a summer keg party.

The Recipe

We started out with a 5 gallon recipe just to use up the Light Munich, Saaz, and Victory. But why brew 5 gallons when 10 is just as easy?

Name: Bock
Batch size: 10 gallons
Expected OG: 1.072
Expected FG: 1.016
Mash: 75m @ 151F at 1.5 qt/lb

 14 lbs Briess Bonlander Munich (2-row)
  7 lbs Briess Light Munich 10L (6-row)
3.5 lbs Briess Victory 28L
  2 lbs Muntons Light Crystal 60L
  1 lb  Briess Caramel 20L
3 oz Saaz 2.9% AA @ 90m
1 oz German Hallertau 4.1% AA @ 90M
1 oz Saaz 2.9% AA @ 10m
Whirlfloc @ 10m

5 gallons: 2 packs Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager
5 gallons: 1 pack rehydrated US-05

Side note: all Continental Munich malt (ie, European) is made from 2-row barley. Standard US Munich is made from 6-row barley, so to create the most authentic Bock try to find some 2-row, either European or domestic. It happens that Briess Bonlander Munich is just the malt we’re looking for…

The Brew

The Caramel 20 and one pound of the Light Crystal weren’t in the original recipe, but once the overpowering smell of biscuits hit us we panicked and dumped them into the mash. All the base malts (Victory, Bonlander Munich, and Light Munich) have quite a bit of biscuit or cracker flavor and smell, and some of that carries into the finished beer. We really, really hope this isn’t a Biscuit Bomb.

This time we took gravity readings during the mash with the hydrometer, which proved inconclusive. The first reading about 10 minutes after the mash started was around 15 Plato, then up to 16 Plato, then back to 15. You’d think that as the mash progressed and the water leached more sugars out of the grain, that the gravity would increase, but we didn’t find that to be the case this time. An experiment for later?

Overall the brew went smoothly, except for one thing: where do you put the grains when it’s below zero outside? We’ve got a compost heap, but it was rock-solid. Thankfully, draining all the left-over hot water from the mash tun and dumping it onto the compost thawed it enough to dig a hole into which all the grain fit. That still meant a couple trips outside in negative degree weather, which sucked.

We ended up with two kegs full of 1.066 gravity wort. Both got some Fermcap S. One got aerated with pure O2 for about 30 seconds, and then was pitched with a packet of rehydrated US-05. We’re hoping it’ll turn into a nice American Amber ale, which we can compare to the Bock. But given the time a lager takes, we might just drink it before that.

For the second keg, we aerated for one minute with pure O2 since we’ve read that lager yeast wants more oxygen than ale yeast does. Then we pitched two smack-packs of Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager and tossed it into the chest freezer set to 50 degrees. We’ll keep it here for three weeks before transferring to secondary for the two-month lagering period at 40 degrees, and hopefully it’ll be ready around late March, just in time for Bock season.

Treat Your Aeration Stone Well

Imagine our surprise when we came down to the brewery the other day and found our aeration stone covered in mold. Yikes! During aeration the stone is immersed in wort and apparently rinsing it off is not an adequate cleaning strategy. Lesson learned; before the brew we scrubbed it off, boiled it for 10 minutes, soaked it in PBW for a couple hours, and then StarSan. After the brew we boiled it again, and we’re storing it in an open plastic bag instead of a closed one, to allow it to completely dry out between brews.

PSA: Fermcap S is not God

December 18, 2013Blingadmin

Jubelale Backstory

A while back we brewed a Deschutes Jubelale 2009 clone, and it is great. It’s different than it should be, but in a really good way: it’s darker and stoutier, almost like a Russian Imperial Stout, but with less alcohol and not quite as bitter. Why?

It finished really, really high at 1.024, eight points above where it should have been. In a lighter beer that gravity would taste very out of balance, but it works great in darker ones. But like always, when something doesn’t turn out like you expect, you need a post-mortem.

The first reason for the high finish could be lack of oxygen in the wort. After you pitch the yeast they need replenish their nutrient reserves before they are healthy enough to reproduce and begin fermenting the wort. That requires oxygen, but most of the oxygen is driven off during the boil. This is why you’re told to rock the fermenter or pour the hot wort back and forth between buckets. Here, we pump the beer through a strainer into the keg, which apparently doesn’t work that well. This hasn’t been a huge problem until now, but we need to step it up.

The second reason is likely inconsistent fermentation temperature. Since the refrigerator with the two-stage controller is currently our kegerator, we’re running a bit under-staffed in the temperature control department for fermentation. All we’ve got is our styrofoam Son of Fermentation Chiller hooked up to an old thermostat wired for cooling, but not for heat. Come winter the basement temperature drops below optimal for ale yeast during the later stages of fermentation, leading to higher final gravities. We need to do better.

Double Rye IPA

So when we brewed another beer last week, we stepped up our game with an aeration stone and oxygen regulator and Bernzomatic O2 canister. Two 15 second bursts are all it takes to get more oxygen than 5 minutes of bucket rocking can do, giving the yeast a great start in life. Then we add some Fermcap S to keep the krausen down since we ferment in kegs. Imagine our surprise the next day when we find this:

And that is why Fermcap S is not God. No amount of Fermcap will prevent an overfilled keg, an overly active fermentation, and really happy yeast from becoming a volcano. Clean-up was not fun. Next time we’ll just put less wort in the kegs.

On the temperature front, we have a 7 cubic foot chest freezer on-deck and a slightly more affordable controller with support for a heater on the way. Stay tuned to see how that comes together.

Each time we get a bit closer to Brewing it Right. So will you!

Bonus Bitter Update

December 3, 2013British, Recipeadmin

A few weeks ago we brewed a Jubelale 2009 clone which we partigyled into a Bonus Bitter. The beer started at 1.036, finished at 1.008 for 3.6% ABV, and is indeed a nice, light, easy-drinking bitter. But there was a flavor problem: good bitterness at the front and maltiness at the back, but a huge black hole of nothing in the middle. It’s hard to describe; the initial bitterness changes to a slightly tannic taste without any body at all (like a glass of bitter water) before the final malt appears. What can plug that hole?

Brown sugar just happens to have the right flavor profile to complement the tannic note and add some body to the hole in the middle. The molasses notes are just a bonus, but still to style as British brewers often use various brown sugars, caramels, or molasses for color and flavor. The only question was how much to add…

A solution of 3 parts boiling water to 1 part sugar was made, whisking the sugar until completely dissolved. Three 6oz glasses of the beer were poured. The first was the control with no sugar added. The second received one teaspoon of sugar solution, and the third glass two teaspoons. Results indicated that one teaspoon was the best amount; it was a noticeable improvement over no sugar at all, while two teaspoons was too sweet. Calculating from one teaspoon per 6 ounces to the 4 gallon batch gave about 1.75 cups for the whole keg.

Problem solved.

I would drink Centennial dry-hopped Bud Light

December 1, 2013Reviewsadmin

Want to know what hops actually taste like? Try this experiment: dry-hop Bud Light. Many have done this before, but Brew It Right wants some input too. The concept is easy; buy some Bud Light, drop-hop it, wait 5 days, and drink it! Obviously it’s slightly more difficult, so learn from our mistakes:

Bud Light uses twist-off caps. Re-capping with new crimp-style caps fails for half the bottles, so instead, try to re-twist the original caps using a towel to get a good grip. Failure to seal has two problems. First, the Bud will foam on contact with the hops and may come out the top, which leads to the second problem: the beer will be flat and you won’t get much flavor or aroma.
Use around 0.1 to 0.2 ounces of hops per bottle, that’s usually a couple pellets per bottle. This gives a good balance between aroma, flavor, and bitterness without creating grassy or tea-bag flavors.
After you’ve re-capped the bottles and the foam settles down, swirl the bottles a bit to make sure the hops don’t stay at the top.
Label your bottles and your glasses when tasting, otherwise you might mix things up and all will be for naught. Masking tape works well, but you can class it up with blue painters tape for extra style points!
Use a small strainer to filter out any hop bits when pouring into the tasting glasses. You want to sip the beer, not chew hops.

Due to #1, only the Simcoe, Centennial, and the Amarillo bottles held pressure, which made the flavor and aroma crisp and very apparent. The others were muted and muddled, and pretty worthless for testing. If you haven’t done this before, it’s very surprising how well the hops come through. Centennial had a definite fruit smell and very clean flavor, while Simcoe had resin/earthy/pine notes. While doing this you can just imagine what beer you can brew that will work well with the various hops.

And as it turns out, Bud Light goes very, very well with Centennial…

Winter Series: Deschutes Jubelale 2009

November 20, 2013Hops, Recipeadmin

It’s getting down to the wire to brew Winter beers that need anything more than a week or two of aging. What to brew? Jubelale! Brew It Right™ hasn’t brewed often with dark crystal, so the use of Crystal 80 and Crystal 160 in this recipe intrigues us. But first, a diversion…

Amps are Everything

And here we ain’t got that many. The house service is 100 amps and the main electrical panel is almost that many years old. Just kidding. But it’s so bad that you can’t run any 30+ amp continuous load (brewing, clothes dryer, air conditioner) without the main 100A breaker getting really hot and eventually tripping, causing a major brewing bummer. So we use this:

how to cool your main breaker down — Ghetto Amp Booster!

Replacement breakers on eBay are obviously used and quite possibly just as bad as the one existing one. Once the HLT or boil kettle is at temperature everything is fine, but it’s the 40 minute continuous load ramp-up that makes the panel contemplate self-immolation. We’re going to upgrade to 200A service this winter, but we’ll have to reach deep into some paychecks for it.

The Recipe

Expected OG: 1.069
Expected FG: 1.016
Mash: 60m @ 152F at 1.3 qt/lb

10.65 lbs Rahr Pale 2-Row
1.42 lbs UK Extra Dark Crystal 160L
1.00 lb Thomas Fawcett Amber
0.71 lbs Briess Caramel 80L
0.16 lbs Briess Carapils
0.08 oz Roasted Barley 300L

0.6 oz Galena 13.9% AA @ 60m
0.5 oz Cascade 6.8% AA @ 60m
0.5 oz Willamette 5.3% AA @ 60m
1.0 oz UK Fuggles 5.7% AA @ 30m
0.7 oz UK Goldings 5.0% AA @ 0m
1.0 oz UK Goldings 5.0% AA dry hop
0.5 oz Cascade 6.8% AA dry hop
Whirlfloc @ 10m

White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale

The Thomas Fawcett Amber was lying around, and we really had to use it up. We also substituted Fuggles for Tettnanger because we had them lying around, and we really had to use them up.

The Brew

Dough-in landed the mash at 150F instead of the 152F we were hoping for. Since there are a couple variables involved in maintaining mash temperatures (thermal mass of the water and grain, pump speed, ambient temperature, etc), each brew works out a bit differently until you get to know your system well. How long that takes depends on how often you brew.

The Brew It Right system has two active temperature probes during the mash: one in the HLT and a second on the HERMS coil exit. The center of the mash usually reads about 2 degrees cooler than the HERMS coil exit, which usually reads about 2 degrees lower than the HLT. Yes, you can speed up your pumps to bring the mash closer to HLT temperature, but that also means the wort doesn’t spend as much time in the HERMS coil and doesn’t pick up as much heat from the HLT. So you need to reach a happy equilibrium, figure out a standard pump speed and HLT/MLT temperature differentials, write them down, and keep using them.

After adjusting temperatures and reaching the right mash temperature of 152F, sparge first runnings were about 14 Plato (1.056) and didn’t drop, resulting in 7.3 gallons at 14 Plato. Since the last runnings were obviously nowhere near 1.010 (which starts extracting tannins from the grain husks) why waste a ton of great wort? Partigyle it! After filling the boil kettle, the left-over Jubelale mash got topped off with two pounds of Maris Otter and a half pound of wheat malt, was left to sit for about an hour around 148F, and then drained off into a bucket for the second beer.

It was boiled. Hops were added. Whirlfloc not forgotten. Chilled and kegged to 75F, yeast dumped, dropped into the fermentation chamber. The final gravity was 1.068, just shy of where it should be. Adding a bit more wort and boiling longer before starting the hop clock would have bumped the gravity up to the recipe’s 1.069, but that takes time and there wasn’t enough of it with another brew on deck. All in all, a pretty successful night.

Bonus Bitter

It’s a crime to waste good wort. We had 7 gallons of 1.027 wort just sitting in a bucket from the Jubelale mash and extra grain. Time to brew number two… Since it’s also a crime to waste good hops, the left-over Jubelale hops formed the backbone of this beer: 0.4 oz Galena at 60 minutes followed by 0.5 oz Willamette at 15 minutes for around 30 IBU. After Whirlfloc and yeast nutrient at 10 minutes, we kegged about 4.5 gallons at 1.038 gravity and pitched a pack of Nottingham yeast straight into the wort. Ideally it ferments down to 1.010 or lower for a light, dry bitter around 3.5% ABV. It added a total of 1.5 hours to the brew day; not bad for another 5 gallons of beer.

Vent Times Two?

In a previous post we installed a second vent fan; how well did it work for this brew? Not as well as we hoped, but much better than we feared. The vent still doesn’t trap all the steam from the boil kettle during a particularly vigorous boil, but the amount of condensation on the top and sides of the vent is hugely reduced. Next time we’ll try repositioning the pots with the boil kettle in the middle, centered between both fans.

If you hadn’t guessed, your brewery is a never-ending project demanding continuous improvement. That’s how you Brew It Right.