ColoradoXJ13
Well-Known Member
So my brew buddy (Yeast Infection on here) and I did AG #2, a big IPA this weekend, with our new 10-gal MLT and newly cut keggle...went ok, but had some problems. I'll write a book about it here, if you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know. We did this recipe b/c my neighbor who gives me advice did it last weekend, and I am trying to convince him that a single infusion mash in a MLT works as well if not better than his multi-step mash and bucket sparge. We were competing for OG/FG and taste.
Recipe:
1.5 # Great Western 6-row
1.5 # Crystal 75L
14 # Great Western 2-row
4 oz Cascade 6.6% (50 min)
2 oz Centennial 9% (50 min)
4 oz Fuggle 3.9% (10 min)
2 oz Fuggle (2 min)
Yeast harvested and grown from Mountain Sun Brewery (Boulder, CO)
Brew Day:
Put 17 lbs grain in the MLT (10 gallon orange cooler with bulkhead ball valve and SS braid), and added ~5.65 gallons (1.33qt/#) water at~167*F to get a mash temp of ~155*F, we wanted 151*F so we added a little cool water and stirred until it was ~151*F. Lid on, waited 1 hr. No temperature loss!
Vorlaufed until no more husks in runoff (~1/2 gallon, poured back on top of grains), drained all liquid into keggle. Added ~2.5 gallons of water @ 170*F to MLT, stirred, waited a few minutes, vorlaufed and drained into keggle. Repeated with another 1.5 gallons, repeated, still running nice and dark and sugary, repeated again with another 1.5 gallons.
So total water was 5.65 gallons strike water, and ~6 gallons sparge. Collected ~8 gallons of total runoff. Didn't really take/record OGs. but after we started the boil I collected another 1/2 gallon of the runoff and OG was still about 1.03-ish...
Boiled runoff for an hour to reduce volume to about 7 gallons, started hop additions as above, had a couple boil-overs due to lack of attention to keggle, probably lost about 1/2 gallon total
Did all hop additions, in the meantime, was boiling that 1/2 gallon of later runoff on the stove with a pinch of hops to use as primer later...
When boil was over, dropped the wort cooler in the keggle and cooled to ~80*F (note, forgot irish moss addition, oh well...). When cool, tried to auto-siphon into the primary, didn't work particularly well with 12oz of hops in there, so we wrapped a grain bag around the end of the siphon, worked ok, obviously need to build some sort of hop stopper and bulkhead fitting before the next brew session...any cheap/good suggestions?
We only had about 4.6 gallons total wort at 1.073-ish, so added the stuff from the stove and about 1/2 gallon of water, OG now at 1.067ish.
Pitched yeast, was bubbling 1/min last night about 5 hours post pitch, 1/s this morning with 2" krausen.
As far as I can tell, this is about a 60% efficiency...need to improve this as my neighbor had a 1.076 OG/1.011 FG...he beat us on this, but then again, he has been brewing a long long time.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
Recipe:
1.5 # Great Western 6-row
1.5 # Crystal 75L
14 # Great Western 2-row
4 oz Cascade 6.6% (50 min)
2 oz Centennial 9% (50 min)
4 oz Fuggle 3.9% (10 min)
2 oz Fuggle (2 min)
Yeast harvested and grown from Mountain Sun Brewery (Boulder, CO)
Brew Day:
Put 17 lbs grain in the MLT (10 gallon orange cooler with bulkhead ball valve and SS braid), and added ~5.65 gallons (1.33qt/#) water at~167*F to get a mash temp of ~155*F, we wanted 151*F so we added a little cool water and stirred until it was ~151*F. Lid on, waited 1 hr. No temperature loss!
Vorlaufed until no more husks in runoff (~1/2 gallon, poured back on top of grains), drained all liquid into keggle. Added ~2.5 gallons of water @ 170*F to MLT, stirred, waited a few minutes, vorlaufed and drained into keggle. Repeated with another 1.5 gallons, repeated, still running nice and dark and sugary, repeated again with another 1.5 gallons.
So total water was 5.65 gallons strike water, and ~6 gallons sparge. Collected ~8 gallons of total runoff. Didn't really take/record OGs. but after we started the boil I collected another 1/2 gallon of the runoff and OG was still about 1.03-ish...
Boiled runoff for an hour to reduce volume to about 7 gallons, started hop additions as above, had a couple boil-overs due to lack of attention to keggle, probably lost about 1/2 gallon total
Did all hop additions, in the meantime, was boiling that 1/2 gallon of later runoff on the stove with a pinch of hops to use as primer later...
When boil was over, dropped the wort cooler in the keggle and cooled to ~80*F (note, forgot irish moss addition, oh well...). When cool, tried to auto-siphon into the primary, didn't work particularly well with 12oz of hops in there, so we wrapped a grain bag around the end of the siphon, worked ok, obviously need to build some sort of hop stopper and bulkhead fitting before the next brew session...any cheap/good suggestions?
We only had about 4.6 gallons total wort at 1.073-ish, so added the stuff from the stove and about 1/2 gallon of water, OG now at 1.067ish.
Pitched yeast, was bubbling 1/min last night about 5 hours post pitch, 1/s this morning with 2" krausen.
As far as I can tell, this is about a 60% efficiency...need to improve this as my neighbor had a 1.076 OG/1.011 FG...he beat us on this, but then again, he has been brewing a long long time.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance