First PM brew (Bavarian Wheat)

[Saintdanmic]

After a fortunate misunderstanding in the ordering process, I am now making my first partial mash. Having helped with batches before but never ordered, I was under the impression that the term for the extract kits which happened to have 12 oz or so of grains was Partial Mash. I now know that I was wrong. Oh well. *Sip, Sip* It's in the direction I want to be anyways.

I hope I'm doing this right. The recipe says to steep for 45-75 minutes. Instead of doing it over the burner, then straining with collander and rinsing said collander, I'm using my modified 5 gallon round cooler for all of that. I figure from what I've read about AG that I should start practicing.

I have a Bavarian Yeast slap pack which doesn't seem to be doing anything yet. If all else fails I have a pack of dry bavarian.

I also purchased some irish moss today, so we'll see how that goes. Right now the average floor temp of my basement is around 70 degrees. So I'll be trying out the tub-of-water-with-frozen-water-bottle technique.

 

[Saintdanmic]

Update: Everything seemed to go smooth. However, I'm not sure if I have an accurate OG. I got 1.03. The recipe says between 1.042 and 1.046.

I did aerate the crap out of it before I took the reading because I wasn't thinking. I'm not sure how much the extra gas in the mix affects the specific gravity. Quite a bit I would think. We'll see. I'm thinking I'll take a reading tomorrow afternoon once the extra air has had time to be purged.

BTW, it smells delicious.

 

[Saintdanmic]

Bottled last night. It smells delicious. I used the cooler with water and frozen water bottles method for temp control. It finished out around 1.01. I'm still trying to figure out what happened with the the original gravity and why it read as 1.03 rather than 1.04ish.

 

[RedSun]

RDWHAHB first, your missed gravity is not a rarity. I, in fact, missed mine very similarly and haven't a clue why. I usually hit right on. Sit back, wait for them to carb and enjoy. It'll be lighter than you expected which means more of them to drink in a day.

-RS

 

[malkore]

well, assuming your grains weren't just specialty grains, its possible that the milling was too coarse, affecting your efficiency.
if they were only specialty grains, you'll get no fermentables out of them unless you had some 2-row in the mash. otherwise you lack the enzymes to extract sugars from the grain.

either way, it was a good learning experience and a step in the right direction to better beer.

 

[paranode]

As for the gravity, what were the grains and what temp were they mashed at?

 

[Saintdanmic]

It was the Berlin Wheat partial mash kit from midwest supplies. I'm not exactly sure about the grains. The recipe says 4 lbs. I had them in my cooler at about 154, which held pretty steady for about an hour. Then I batch sparged with 170 degree. Then added the quart of extract, hops, and boiled.

I never did figure out, if after the wort is cooled, if it gets aerated a bunch. Will all of those microscopic air bubbles in the mix affect the SG?

 

[Saintdanmic]

This batch is pretty effing good. It has a wonderful flavor but not as full as I would have liked. Definitely tastes better than the all extract kits I've sampled. Can really tell that the alcohol on it is lower.

Also I tried the carb tabs. To find out which worked best for me, I put 4 in some bottles, 5 in others, and 6 in a few. None of them has that crisp carbonation that I was expecting. I think I'll still with priming sugar from now on.

The guys at work liked it anyway. Gonna hopefully brew another couple PM's this weekend, prolly American Red Ale and an Oktoberfest.

 

[WBC]

Always do SG measurements without any aeration.
What temp did you condition your bottles at?
How long were the bottles aged?
It takes 2 to 3 weeks and sometimes longer with heavy beers to have good carbonation. I hope you marked the bottles that you put a lot of sugar in as they might explode. Place them in a bucket with a lid loosely attached in case they explode and you will have less mess to clean up. Never put too much sugar in a bottle as you are just asking for a surprize.

 

[Saintdanmic]

Bottles were conditioned around 60-70 degrees (temp of basement) for just over 4 weeks now.

As far as taking OG before aeration: I haven't been doing full boils. So my aeration has been largely due to adding the boiled and cooled water to top off the batch. Using this technique, should I let it sit in primary w/o yeast for a couple hours to let the excess air come to the top before taking my initial reading?

(My extra money is mainly used up by the beer kits. So there hasn't really been a chance to buy aeration equipment.)

 

[kenche]

Saintdanmic,

If you are going to continue on your path of PM, I reccomend taking a gravity reading of the wort you collected from the PM and then doing some quick calcs to figure out how much extract to add to hit your target OG.

The calculations are explained in some more details on this thread