Questions on my first all grain batch

[KLMtheReal]

Hello guys, 3 days ago I did my first BIAB brew after a year of prehopped kits, counting more than 13 batches of every style, except lagers/pilsners etc.

I brewed a double American IPA for the first competition in my city, just so I can test my luck, and for the fun itself!

But as every noob, I have some questions, so sorry for the long post.

The recipe I came up with goes like:

Batch size: 27 litres

7kg Pale ale malt
1kg Biscuit
1kg Munich I
0.5kg Wheat

50g magnum (for bitterness)
100g+100g citra/mosaic (for aroma)
100g+100g citra/mosaic (double dry hopping)

The yeast I used was Mangrove's M44 US West Coast

Now here's what we did and what happened..

-we added 44 litres (39+5 for sparge beforehand) in the kettle and heated it up to 71°C. We also added 1.5 tbsp CaCl2 and 1.5 tsp phosphoric acid 85% (the water tap has a chlorine carbon filter). After adding the grains the temp got around 66°C, mashed for 60' at this temperature.

- then we did a mashout for 10' @ 75°C and then strained the bag. We brought the wort to a boil, then we added 50g magnum for bitterness, with no other addition during the boil. 15' before flameout we added the immersion chiller in the wort for sanitation and 1 tbsp Irish moss.

-then, we wanted to add 100g + 100g citra/mosaic for aroma at 75°C for 30', but knowing so little we used our chiller for 5 minutes, resulting in a ~50ish °C wort. We heated it up again and added the hops.

-30' later we chilled the wort as fast as we could, in order to minimize as much DMS as possible. Brought the wort to 19°C and did some whirlpooling with the spoon. We let it rest for 10 minutes.

After sanitizing all of the equipment, we started siphoning the wort into the fermenter. The first 10 litres where clean as a kit wort, but then we saw flakes and haziness. We thought to ourselves that all of this can't be trub so we racked it anyway when we reached the 27 litre mark, the kettle still had around 10cm of stuff in it. The auto siphon stopped racking so we threw the rest away. It looked like wort at the time but the next day when it dried out it was full of hop matter and possibly grain trub.

The resulting OG was around 1068 instead of the estimated 1072. We pitched the yeast @ 19°C.

Today is Day 3 and the airlock bubbles away like crazy. The whole house smells from the hops, it's a really clean and strong aroma. It's like we dryhopped already haha. After the vigorous fermentation I intend to add 50g of citra and 50g mosaic in the primary, and after 5 days another 100 grams of the same addition in the secondary (that's a lot of hops lol). Then I will do a 4 day cold crash w/gelatin and bottle away. The contest is in early December.

My questions are:

1) Could the reheating of the wort for hop addition result in damaging the beer? Mainly for the proteins/DMS etc

2) Is there any chance we could've racked only trub in the end, throwing away wort? It would suck to have 10litres worth of trub in the fermenter, throwing away actual beer. I was really stressing about it.

Again, I apologize for this long post, but I wanted to be as detailed as possible about the procedure. Cheers!

 

[wilserbrewer]

1, I don’t think re heating your wort will have any major detrimental effect.
2. W/ 44 liters of total brewing water, my guess is that you had a substantial amount of wort left in the kettle.

Not sure about volume, but you mention 10 cm left In The kettle.

W/ all grain, you will get what appears to be a mass of trub, but one must understand it is a flaky protein that looks larger than it really is, and settles to a small fraction with time.

Some folks ferment the whole kettle, trub and all and claim to be no worse for it.

No need to fear the kettle dregs thinking it is going to ruin your beer, it won’t !

Yes, unfortunately you likely discarded some pints, but you made beer and hopefully learned a bit

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

Suck up every drop out the the kettle. The Trub will settle in the fermenter to an inch or two. Then rack off that as normal.

You cant get grains in the trub unless you missed the bag mashing in or you have a hole in the bag....or a really crappy bag. Otherwise what you see is normal.

Your auto siphon stopped working because as the liquid gets lower in the kettle you loose pressure. My guess is your kettle wasnt that much higher than the vessel your were siphoning into. Auto siphons dont clog

Noob worries.
Enjoy your smelly house

 

[KLMtheReal]

1, I don’t think re heating your wort will have any major detrimental effect.
2. W/ 44 liters of total brewing water, my guess is that you had a substantial amount of wort left in the kettle.

Not sure about volume, but you mention 10 cm left In The kettle.

W/ all grain, you will get what appears to be a mass of trub, but one must understand it is a flaky protein that looks larger than it really is, and settles to a small fraction with time.

Some folks ferment the whole kettle, trub and all and claim to be no worse for it.

No need to fear the kettle dregs thinking it is going to ruin your beer, it won’t !

Yes, unfortunately you likely discarded some pints, but you made beer and hopefully learned a bit

Suck up every drop out the the kettle. The Trub will settle in the fermenter to an inch or two. Then rack off that as normal.

You cant get grains in the trub unless you missed the bag mashing in or you have a hole in the bag....or a really crappy bag. Otherwise what you see is normal.

Your auto siphon stopped working because as the liquid gets lower in the kettle you loose pressure. My guess is your kettle wasnt that much higher than the vessel your were siphoning into. Auto siphons dont clog

Noob worries.
Enjoy your smelly house

Oh darn... It seems I should put less water, maybe skip the 5 lt sparge compensation.. I was also concerned about letting all that hop sediment get into the fermenter, fearing it would leave a grassy flavour to the finished beer. Thanks a lot guys!

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

You mention a secondary...skip it. Secondaries are a thing of the past and only introduce oxygen and possible infection...leave in primary the whole time.

 

[RM-MN]

You did good and you will have beer. Things you could have done differently is skip the mash out. It isn't needed for BIAB nor for batch sparging and I'm beginning to question the need for it for fly sparging.

I dump the entire boil kettle of wort into the fermenter. It looks like a lot of gunk but when the yeast get done with it and you let it settle out for a period of time it will compact down and you get more beer.

As mentioned above, skip the secondary. When the fermentation has ended the yeast will clump up and begin to settle out. If you rack to secondary you break up the clumps of yeast and have to start that process over.

 

[KLMtheReal]

Thanks guys, I have an update. Yesterday I put my first dry hop addition. I sanitized 2 hop bags, 50g citra + 50g mosaic and used 2 shot glasses as a means to submerge the bags in there. Today (Day 5) bubbling has considerably slowed down and I tried to taste a sample from the fermenter's spigot. The resulting beer I got was full of gunk and hop matter. I barely wet my lips and threw it away. Could this be just from dry hopping matter? Or did I rack that much trub from the kettle plus the yeast cake? I'm really stressing out about ending up with 20 litres of beer instead of 27
Cheers

EDIT: I just used my phone's flash and found 2 inches of trub. So I guess we're safe for now

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

Thanks guys, I have an update. Yesterday I put my first dry hop addition. I sanitized 2 hop bags, 50g citra + 50g mosaic and used 2 shot glasses as a means to submerge the bags in there. Today (Day 5) bubbling has considerably slowed down and I tried to taste a sample from the fermenter's spigot. The resulting beer I got was full of gunk and hop matter. I barely wet my lips and threw it away. Could this be just from dry hopping matter? Or did I rack that much trub from the kettle plus the yeast cake? I'm really stressing out about ending up with 20 litres of beer instead of 27
Cheers

EDIT: I just used my phone's flash and found 2 inches of trub. So I guess we're safe for now

LOL..If you drank the trub and think thats what your beer will taste like youll never brew again. This is the perfect example of " Relax young grasshopper"

Yeast has a disgusting bitter flavor. Even after the beer is finished fermenting the yeast need time to settle. That where cold crashing and gelatin come in.

If your beer looks brown and murky thats yeast. Your beer will NEVER taste good with yeast floating around in it.

Now that I think it arent buckets with spigots only used for secondaries? How can you get clear beer when the spigot is on the bottom. Even if the spigot was up a couple inches it seems like it would still suck up some trub? Or be up so high it wastes beer? Never used a bucket with a spigot

 

[KLMtheReal]

LOL..If you drank the trub and think thats what your beer will taste like youll never brew again. This is the perfect example of " Relax young grasshopper"

Yeast has a disgusting bitter flavor. Even after the beer is finished fermenting the yeast need time to settle. That where cold crashing and gelatin come in.

If your beer looks brown and murky thats yeast. Your beer will NEVER taste good with yeast floating around in it.

Now that I think it arent buckets with spigots only used for secondaries? How can you get clear beer when the spigot is on the bottom. Even if the spigot was up a couple inches it seems like it would still suck up some trub? Or be up so high it wastes beer? Never used a bucket with a spigot

I'll definitely rack to secondary using my autoshiphon lol. After dry hopping in the secondary for 5 days I intend to transfer the beer really carefully to a third fermenter for cold crashing, in order to get rid of the hop bags. The only thing I don't know for sure is if I have to let the beer reach room temp before bottling..

 

[RM-MN]

I'll definitely rack to secondary using my autoshiphon lol. After dry hopping in the secondary for 5 days I intend to transfer the beer really carefully to a third fermenter for cold crashing, in order to get rid of the hop bags. The only thing I don't know for sure is if I have to let the beer reach room temp before bottling..

That sounds like the perfect opportunity to get oxidated beer. Leave the beer in the primary fermenter. Do your dry hop there. Cold crash there too. Then carefully siphon to the bottling bucket, leaving as much trub in the fermenter as possible. Let it set in the bottling bucket for 15 to 30 minutes and any trub you transferred will settle out again.

You can bottle the beer cold but it won't carbonate until it has warmed up again.

 

[KLMtheReal]

That sounds like the perfect opportunity to get oxidated beer. Leave the beer in the primary fermenter. Do your dry hop there. Cold crash there too. Then carefully siphon to the bottling bucket, leaving as much trub in the fermenter as possible. Let it set in the bottling bucket for 15 to 30 minutes and any trub you transferred will settle out again.

You can bottle the beer cold but it won't carbonate until it has warmed up again.

I dryhopped yesterday, and will dryhop again on Monday. The first addition is going to be 10 days in there, plus 4 days during cold crash. If the beer doesn't get any grassy off flavors, I'm down to do everything in the primary.

 

[KLMtheReal]

Second Update. After consideration we decided to do everything in the primary. Today I added the second dry hop addition. I used a clean and sanitized spaghetti fork to take out the hop bags, threw away the hops, thoroughly cleaned and sanitized both bags and shotglasses that were used as weight, added the last hop pellets and submerged them in the fermenter. I also took a gravity reading, it's 1016 so it's ready. I tasted the sample and it's really delicious already, no sweetness whatsoever and really smooth! Will leave alone until Thursday where I will take out the bags again and start the cold crash, the fridge runs at 0C.

Another question: How long does it take for the beer to form chill haze? How long should I wait to add gelatin?

Cheers!

 

[KLMtheReal]

Final update guys.. yesterday we bottled the beer after 4 days of cold crashing with gelatin. It came out really clean, with an amberish color. I bottled cold so I can minimize any chill haze proteins getting back in the beer. After bottling I kept a sample of 200ml approximately that I kept in the fridge so I can see if it's going to be clear. The potential problem is, that after 450g of hops total (200g of double hopping), I don't know if it has the desired hop "punch" I was expecting. Yes, the bittering was not harsh, the aroma was there, but nothing that I would expect. Do you guys think that after carbonation and steeping in the bottles for some weeks the hopping will really sparkle? Or I messed the beer up with cold crashing?

Cheers!

 

[RM-MN]

Your hop aroma is carried to the nose by convective current from the warm beer but at the moment your beer is cold so no convection. The second is by the bubbles of CO2 in the head of your beer that pop when your nose gets close. You won't have that until the beer is carbonated and poured into a glass.

 

[KLMtheReal]

Guys, one last update as promised. Since my last comment in this thread we brewed more than 200lt of beer we brewed some barleywine, an imperial stout, a session ale and my very first lager (doppelbock)! In the American IPA competition we scored 12th out of 30 entries. We didn't made it to the finals, the main complaint being that the beer was lacking aroma and bitterness. Since it was our first all grain I can't complain! I thank you all guys for your great tips, even if we didn't make it to the finals we surely have some pints worth drinking! Here's a picture

Cheers!