unholymess
Active Member
I'm just returning to brewing after a couple years off from getting married, buying a house, moving, etc and am running into an issue with attenuation. With both an ESB and IPA all-grain brew that went nominally well, I can't get past 67% attenuation with yeast that should take me to 73-77% (wyeast 1335). In the hunt to figure out what idiot mistake I'm making, I went looking for brewing practice tests or homework items. Sadly, I'm not finding anything in print or on the web.
I'm looking for tests that might help me fine tune my process with a new rig, water and environment. If you have any ideas, please help a guy out!
One idea I've put together would be to brew an all base-malt beer (American Wheat, Kolsch, etc) that would remove unfermentable grains from the picture. The idea would be to take a 5 gallons recipe, scale it down to 1 or 2* gallons and then brew it a couple different ways to experiment with process changes. The small size would reduce the cost and pain of a possible drain-pour. I'd probably use a dry yeast to eliminate any smack-pack or starter issues - it'd also help eliminate per-batch changes in pitching rates. I'd also take a 1L sample from each and ferment at 80F to get to attenuation quickly just to give me an idea where the base batch _should_ ferment out to.
A couple of tests:
- #1 base run, no changes
- #2 increase mash time by 30min to 90min (use iodine to ensure conversion**)
- #3 drop mash temp 5F
- #4 leave in primary longer than normal (2 weeks instead of racking off at 85-90% attenuation @ 5-7days)
- #5 ferment in basement @ room temp - perhaps heating/cooling in fridge is capping action?
* any magic to scaling a batch down ? Is 1 gallon too small to brew with the same process ?
** how the heck do you guys get a wort sample with out debris in it for an iodine test ?
I'm looking for tests that might help me fine tune my process with a new rig, water and environment. If you have any ideas, please help a guy out!
One idea I've put together would be to brew an all base-malt beer (American Wheat, Kolsch, etc) that would remove unfermentable grains from the picture. The idea would be to take a 5 gallons recipe, scale it down to 1 or 2* gallons and then brew it a couple different ways to experiment with process changes. The small size would reduce the cost and pain of a possible drain-pour. I'd probably use a dry yeast to eliminate any smack-pack or starter issues - it'd also help eliminate per-batch changes in pitching rates. I'd also take a 1L sample from each and ferment at 80F to get to attenuation quickly just to give me an idea where the base batch _should_ ferment out to.
A couple of tests:
- #1 base run, no changes
- #2 increase mash time by 30min to 90min (use iodine to ensure conversion**)
- #3 drop mash temp 5F
- #4 leave in primary longer than normal (2 weeks instead of racking off at 85-90% attenuation @ 5-7days)
- #5 ferment in basement @ room temp - perhaps heating/cooling in fridge is capping action?
* any magic to scaling a batch down ? Is 1 gallon too small to brew with the same process ?
** how the heck do you guys get a wort sample with out debris in it for an iodine test ?