I had Quite a successful BrewDay for the OlicanaBrew challenge. 
The water was quite cold and it took a while to get the Buffalo Boiler that’s my HLT upto the right Strike Temp .
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| Buffalo Boiler and PID set to 74˚c |
In went the 16L of liquor followed by the 4.6KG of Maris Otter and 0.5KG of Pilsner Malt, The brew I decided on called for a light body and to be mashed at 64.5˚c, So I the STC1000 to stop pumping above 65˚c as I’m Still fine tuning my Recirculating Mash technique using the immersion Coil in the HLT, it was cold in the shed and I initially overcompensated with a too high HLT temperature until I knocked it down and stirred the mash to get it back to Temp…!.
The Sparge went well and it was back into the Buffalo for the boil.
25g of Columbus added at the start of the Boil another 15G added with 15Minutes left. Irish moss added 5 minutes before the end and then the remaining 10g added at ‘Flame Out’. I decided to pump the wort through the Flatplate cooler back and into the Buffalo to leave some of the cold break material in the copper, Not sure it worked that well so I might just gravity feed straight into FV next time…
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| OG 1.048′ ish |
BeerSmith estimated the OG at 1.042 so it’s slightly over , lets see what it’s FG is …..
The wort was a little on the cool side when I added the Safale US-05 ..Took it till lunchtime to get to temperature.
(ignore the brew name that was the New Years Brew )
But was already bubbling when I checked
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Alright Rich,
Having a good time looking over some of your posts, what a set up!! I’ve never heard of brewpi before but it looks as though it’s giving you some interesting data, although I’m not sure what it all means!
Good to see you have your challenge brew all taken care of, my brew day is scheduled for next Wednesday and I’m really looking forward to it! I see you are making to most of the brewing software your using. I have brew target installed which I’m kind of using sporadically in a rather half arsed way. I don’t have any details about my own system and it’s efficiency inputted into it or anything like that. Would you recommend spending a bit of time getting to grips with that a bit more? Is it a useful tool? Which software are you using?
Cheers rich
Hi Gaz
yep the Brewpi is cool… The last belgian ale that I did, called for a particular White Labs Bastogne brewery yeast (WLP510) that had a more restrained character but they only release it seasonally and I couldn’t get it so I had to use the Trappist yeast (WLP500) and used a profiled ferment initially I kept the brew temperature on the low side to restrain the fruitiness then slowly raised it at the end to keep it going…
I use Beersmith 2 and luckily some if the equipment that I have is close enough with minor tweaking, since I started messing with recirculating mashes, the target OG has been close to the predicted by the program… . For Recipes that I put in from scratch its sometimes hard to know which style to match it to but at least its saved for reference… and I print and keep the brewsheet with any notes I make on the day and the mobile version runs on iphone or ipad and has integration with cloud and has brew timers although I still stick an alarm on my phone 🙂
I’ll have a look at Brew Target see how it compares
Now then!
Ive spent the afternoon on beersmith2 and it seems far more useful than brew target. I’ve used it to plan next weeks brew and had no trouble with it at all, i suppose I’m going to need to monitor the efficiency and evaporations etc of my early brews to make sure that I’ve got it all set up right but it does seem as though it is going to be a helpful tool.
On a different subject, do you use rice hulls when your making your wheat beer?
Hi Gaz
No i’ve not used rice hulls but the last Wheat beer I used the temperature mash, 2 step medium body profile where the mash out raises it to 76˚c ish and then batch sparged. I just had a rummage and came across this wheat beer discussion on jims beer kit http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37204
I did a bit of digging in forums before I took the plunge and bought BeerSmith 2 as it always seemed to win out even when people initially started out favouring programs like Brew Target, the only thing i’ve found is that not all the new hop varieties are there..
Interesting thread, cheers for the link.
Im just having a look at the mash options now and i could perhaps use the double infusion,medium body profile. It looks as though it is probably suited to my set up and the weizen style. The thing i don’t understand is….! it calls for 3 separate additions of water over the 70 or so minutes of mashing but it doesn’t say when to drain the wort. Do i do this before each addition of water or do i let the whole amount build up and run it all off together?
The first addition of water is only 10 l, surely that isn’t even going to cover the grain? This has added a whole new level of confusion!!
Hi Gaz
just looking at the Norther Brewer Witbier AKG recipe and If you change the mash to Double infusion, Medium body. Add the 1st qty of liquor at 55˚c to achieve 50˚c and let it do the protein rest for 1/2 hr then add more liquor at the higher temp of 89.2˚c that should raise the mash to 66.7˚c let that do the saccharine phase for 1/2 hr then add more liquor at 99.5˚c to raise it to 75.6˚c for the mash out and leave it for 10 mins . Start it draining and do a fly sparge with 14.32 l at 75.6˚c (keep adding more water at the same rate as its draining until done…) looking at the graph always helps me visualise it…
Great!
Cheers Rich, really appreciate the help! That makes it makes it much clearer, i was looking at the graph without really thinking about what it meant, now I’ve gone back and looked through it again it seems obvious!
Thanks again, expect to hear from me again soon!
No Problem 🙂