MasterOfTheWellHung
Member
Soooo, I decided to try my hand at all grain with a BIAB cream ale based off of BierMucher's Cream of Three Crops recipe using Death Brewer's excellent BIAB instructions. However the best laid plans of mice and men...
Here's what I was aiming for.
5 gal final batch size
Grains:
6# 2 row pale malt
1# flaked maize
0.5 # flaked rice
12 oz clover honey at end of boil
Hops:
0.5 oz Cascade whole hops 7.4 AA 60 minutes
0.5 oz Willamette whole hops 4.8 AA 10 minutes
1/4 tsp Irish Moss 10 minutes
My mash went well. 2.6 gallons water, 163 strike temp, 153 after dough in. So far so good. After 20 minutes I checked again temp 158, yikes, I wanted to mash low for a dry beer, my target was 150. I stirred and gradually added small amounts cold water to get down to 150 (about 2 liters added). Let it mash for 90 minutes and it came down to 147 at end of mash. Ok, still within tolerances. I sparged using the tea bag method with 3 gallons at 170. Because I am stovetop brewing I opted to divide my wort between two 20 L kettles. My stove normally has no problem bringing 3.5 to 4 gallons to a boil but I guess dividing between 2 burners neither one got as hot as I would have liked so it took a long time to get both slowly boiling. Then Murphy's law took hold.
I had divided my 1 oz hops bags into two bowls intending to save half of each for another beer. Instead I dumped one bowl into each pot doubling my hop bill. I didn't realize this until moments after adding the Willamette flavoring hops. I flamed out 10 minutes later completely forgetting my irish moss. I had thought, as I was going, that my boil off was going to be more than planned but after cooling I only had 3.5 gallons wort, way less than anticipated. (I spilled a little while cooling in the bathtub) It was at 1.055 well above my target 1.040. I crunched the numbers by hand and with BeerSmith and got 69% efficiency, not too bad for a first try. I diluted to 5 gallons with cold water that I poured into my brew kettle with all the hops and trub to try to get as much out of it as I could and then siphoned into my fermenter. I hit 1.040 spot on at 5 gallons. I don't think this will be a cream ale with all those hops but it might make a very light colored APA. Here are my questions.
1. Did I mess it up by adding top off water to an all grain brew? I haven't seen any AG recipes calling for top off water.
2. Did I mess up by running my top off water through the trub and hops? I thought it might extract a little more sugar but now am second guessing that I just added a bunch of extra trub to my fermenter. Definitely going to secondary this one.
3. I have two yeast options - I could ferment on the cake from a moose drool clone done with white labs british ale yeast or I could use a packet of Safale 05 dry yeast, not sure which to do with this.
At least it will be beer. I think I will RDWHAHB while it cools a little more and then pitch later this afternoon.
Here's what I was aiming for.
5 gal final batch size
Grains:
6# 2 row pale malt
1# flaked maize
0.5 # flaked rice
12 oz clover honey at end of boil
Hops:
0.5 oz Cascade whole hops 7.4 AA 60 minutes
0.5 oz Willamette whole hops 4.8 AA 10 minutes
1/4 tsp Irish Moss 10 minutes
My mash went well. 2.6 gallons water, 163 strike temp, 153 after dough in. So far so good. After 20 minutes I checked again temp 158, yikes, I wanted to mash low for a dry beer, my target was 150. I stirred and gradually added small amounts cold water to get down to 150 (about 2 liters added). Let it mash for 90 minutes and it came down to 147 at end of mash. Ok, still within tolerances. I sparged using the tea bag method with 3 gallons at 170. Because I am stovetop brewing I opted to divide my wort between two 20 L kettles. My stove normally has no problem bringing 3.5 to 4 gallons to a boil but I guess dividing between 2 burners neither one got as hot as I would have liked so it took a long time to get both slowly boiling. Then Murphy's law took hold.
I had divided my 1 oz hops bags into two bowls intending to save half of each for another beer. Instead I dumped one bowl into each pot doubling my hop bill. I didn't realize this until moments after adding the Willamette flavoring hops. I flamed out 10 minutes later completely forgetting my irish moss. I had thought, as I was going, that my boil off was going to be more than planned but after cooling I only had 3.5 gallons wort, way less than anticipated. (I spilled a little while cooling in the bathtub) It was at 1.055 well above my target 1.040. I crunched the numbers by hand and with BeerSmith and got 69% efficiency, not too bad for a first try. I diluted to 5 gallons with cold water that I poured into my brew kettle with all the hops and trub to try to get as much out of it as I could and then siphoned into my fermenter. I hit 1.040 spot on at 5 gallons. I don't think this will be a cream ale with all those hops but it might make a very light colored APA. Here are my questions.
1. Did I mess it up by adding top off water to an all grain brew? I haven't seen any AG recipes calling for top off water.
2. Did I mess up by running my top off water through the trub and hops? I thought it might extract a little more sugar but now am second guessing that I just added a bunch of extra trub to my fermenter. Definitely going to secondary this one.
3. I have two yeast options - I could ferment on the cake from a moose drool clone done with white labs british ale yeast or I could use a packet of Safale 05 dry yeast, not sure which to do with this.
At least it will be beer. I think I will RDWHAHB while it cools a little more and then pitch later this afternoon.