What are you brewing?

[nzbrewer]

Since this is the most popular thread on the RealBeer.co.nz forum I thought I would start it here just to see what happens

[Mike Neilson]

If you mashed @ 65, 90 mins would be spot on for conversion, that extra 3L could probably be around 5 points in efficentcy but I figure if you fly sparged and stopped @ 28L and hit all your numbers that you were expecting im guessing it would be the efficentcy that would be down. what do you have plugged into beer smith for your brewhouse efficencty? as to get 1.065 out of 5.8kgs of grain could be a push with .8% of it being unmalted as its harder to fully convert. Did you adjust your IBUs for the lower SG???

[Mark Kessell]

i set my brew house efficiency at 75%.
i certainly hit my volumes.
and remember i said to you be fore, my mash wort was 1.087 at 53 degrees, and the sparge was at 1.030...


mmm... no. i do need a bit of a training session on beersmith to be fair.

[Mike Neilson]

Your sparge should of started at that (depending on liquar to grist ratio) spiked lower say by 20 points after say half your mash water is out then progressively got lower all the way down to 1.010 or 1.020. But my thinking is this you had 5.9kg of grain you batch size was 23L (total in kettle after boiled, not volume into fermenter) in my broken homebrew brain that equates to around 70% efficientcy, see I reacon you have your batch size @ 20L and Brewhouse effientcy @ 75% which would make it bang on for first calcs SG. So all in all it probably isnt practice which is probably more refreshing than a simple brew calc error, make you batch size 23L if you want 20 into fermentor for low hopped ales and 25L for high hopped ales and 70% for brew house efficientcy and I reacon your brew days are going to be simple as!!

[Mark Kessell]

ahhh - so you include the total volume after the boil is complete?
so, if my boil volume is 28L, and i expect to lose 6L to evaporation, my batch size is 22L and not 20L (as i'll lose 2 to kettle trub post boil).

i might change those numbers, and see what comes out, given the gravities that i've got thus far.

[Mark Kessell]

btw - dropping to 65% brewhouse efficiency, and i smash my numbers...

[Mike Neilson]

Good Shit Guv!! see what your IIPA comes out at then??

[Matthew]

Just changed my brewhaus eff to 65%. All my numbers are now bang on too.

[denimglen]

Just about to start the sparge on this.

eIPA

Batch Size: 20.00 L
Boil Size: 29.02 L
Estimated OG: 1.063 SG
Estimated Color: 11.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 60.0 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69.00 %
Boil Time: 65 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------

4.97 kg .Pale Malt, Golden Promise (Bairds) 86.51 %
0.21 kg .Caraamber (Weyermann) 3.66 %
0.21 kg .Crystal, Pale (Bairds) (50.8 SRM) 3.59 %
0.21 kg .Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) 3.59 %
0.15 kg .Crystal, Dark (Bairds) (121.8 SRM) 2.65 %

60 min Mash In 66.0 C

50.00 gm .Target [9.00 %] (60 min)
45.00 gm .Fuggles [4.20 %] (10 min)
45.00 gm .East Kent Goldings [4.70 %]

1 Pkgs London ESB Ale (Wyeast Labs #.1968) Yeast-Ale

20.00 gm .East Kent Goldings [4.70 %] (Dry Hop)
20.00 gm .Fuggles [4.30 %] (Dry Hop)

[Martin Bridges]

Just about to start sparging on my re-brew of Tasty McDole's APA. An awesome beer (in fact award-winning!) last time round, let's hope I can replicate it on the new system.

Had a wee taste of the hydro sample for Oh To Be In England too - right where I want it. It's currently sitting at 1.014 after 3.5 days so I'm going to let it warm up slightly over the next couple of days (should dry out a little further and clean up any diacetyl) then keg it. No dry-hops for this one, I need it in the fridge! Anyway, the hop character was tasting pretty good in the sample, so I think it'll be fine.

[Martin Bridges]

Brew went really well. Tried an immersion chiller for the first time (thanks for the lend Reviled!) and it brought the wort down to pitching temp in just over an hour. The 2nd Gen 1272 yeast I had in the fridge burst into life as soon as I took it out - passed the smell check so it should be OK. Over-achieved on the efficiency again - aiming for 1.052, got 1.055. Wort looks nice and clear, tastes awesome. All in all, a good day.

I fancy a beer but I need to climb up on the roof first (to check out a possible leak). Think I'll wait until I've done that before I hit the kegs.

[denimglen]

Mate, grab yourself a pump to go with the chiller to get a whirlpool going and you can cut that down to about 15 minutes in winter and about 25 - 30 in summer.

I heart my WPC.

[Mark Kessell]

brewed my 1st IIPA yesterday, and it was interesting to say the least.
i only have a 32L mash tun, so with a brew that has 10KG of grains, i ended up using 2 tuns to try and get the desired wort.

i split the malt bill exactly down the middle, with both tuns having exactly half of each type of grain.
coordinating the mashing and sparging was challenging to say the least.

trying to get 33L into a 40L boil kettle (thats actually the size of about a 35L pot), was interesting.
both tuns had 1.090 - 1.095 main wort, and both were running off at about 1.045 - 1.050 (if i remember correctly), which is high by all accounts. so the wort was nice and strong.

ended up with a 30L boil though. so a bit down. wasn't sure if my transfer pot was going to be able to handle 33L. so cut it a bit short.

i added 3g of calcium sulphate, and 2g of epsom salts to each mash tun.
when in the boil kettle, i added another 6g and 4g respectively, and 750g of dextrose.

for some reason the boil was a bit too soft today. only managed to boil off 3L in 90 mins. can only put that down to gas bottle being less than 25% full at the time.

still. was boiling ok. chilled it down, and will probavly end up with about 17L of drinkable beer (i hope).
pitched 19g of US-05. and it's currently sitting at around 20 - 21 degrees. going to get a small bath and submerge the base of the fermenter, and get that temp down a couple degrees.

the official OG was 1.092, and the entire process was a little dodgy to be fair. so hopefully it works out. now just hoping attenuation is as high as it was in my 1st AG (about 80-85%), and the FG ends at about 1.015 or even lower).