Advice request on first All-Grain

[hybrid3y3]

Greetings from blighty, I've been tinkering with Beer kits for the past year and have finally decided to kick it up a notch and start All Grain.

I'm building the following mash tun (http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-Your-Own-Brewery-for-Under-100-STEP-1-/) on the grounds that I have some spare buckets that have to be used for something before I bring more brewing kit in the flat.

I'm going to modify a 33L stainless pot (add tap and hop strainer) to use as my boiler, and my brother (plumber) is going to bend me up a good sized wort chiller.

Anyway, on to the advise part of this post. I've found an interesting recipe on the home brew site I mainly use for my purchases (http://www.brewuk.co.uk). Have bought all the necessaries and am preparing for the brew.

Stuart Howe's Hop Witte/Blanche de Houblon a highly hopped Belgian Style Wit beer.

For 25 litres.

O.G. 1060
P.G. 1018
ABV 5.46%

Liquor: (if using water treatment):
180ppm calcium
250ppm Chloride
300ppm Suplhate
Remove any carbonates and bicarbonates
Mash liquor = 14.5 litres
Sparge = 18 litres

Grist:

3.00kg Low Colour Pale ale malt (2 EBC or less)
1.8kg Wheat malt
400g Torrified Wheat
100g Rolled Oats

(assumes 75% effeciency)

Hops:
Start of boil 10g any hop with alpha of around 10%
End of boil 200g Hallertauer Hersbrucker, 100g Cluster, 75g Magnum

Method:
Mash temp 50oC 20 mins stand, 62oC 20 Min stand, 65oC 20 min stand and 68oC 20 min stand
Sparge temp 75oC 1.5 hr run off run blade through bed every 5 minutes
Boil 45 minutes as vigorously as possible
Leave hops to sit in wort after heater off for an hour before transferring to FV. Fit cover to kettle while you do this.
Crash cool to 25oC ASAP after stand

Fermentation and conditioning:
Yeast = Wyeast Belgian Wit 3944

Fermentation temp 25oC
Should ferment in 7 days
Condition for 7 days at 4oC (or less if possible)
Fine and bottle with 1ml fresh yeast and 15g/litre glucose monohydrate in a strong bottle.

Warm condition for a week at 25c then cellar for a week.

Now the question is, with regards to the mash method... I read the instruction as mash @ 50oC, stand for 20mins then raise to 62oC, etc. Now as I have a plastic mash tun and raising the temp sounds like a pain in the ... what do you guys and gals reckon the effect would be if I just mashed @ 60oC for 80mins?

 

[snowveil]

60*c will be too low a temperature to get much conversion, so if you're going to be mashing with one temperature I'd recommend going for 65-67*c instead and letting that rest for an hour. Keep in mind that when you add your water and grains to the mash tun it will settle down to a lower temperature, so you'll want to "strike" the grains with the water with probably 75*c water instead. Stir like crazy, and take temperature readings throughout the mash to make sure your temperature has settled. Keep a tray of ice cubes on hand in case the temperature is too high...you can bring it down a few degrees pretty easily this way. It's also a good idea to preheat your mash tun with hot water prior to conducting your mash as the walls of your tun will absorb a lot of heat from your strike water if you don't do this.

I'd ignore the water adjustments at this stage especially if you don't have a water quality report on the water you're using. I'd also not worry about adding fresh yeast at bottling time...by the time your fermentation is finished you should still have plenty of yeast in suspension to carbonate.

Otherwise it looks pretty good...good luck and remember to rdwhahb

 

[hybrid3y3]

Thanks for the advice,

I was planning on using bottled spring water, as the stuff that comes through the tap is chlorinated and very very chalky. Better (barely) suited to a porter or dark beers than a belgian wit style. The profile of the bottled stuff is:

pH 7.4
NO3 <5
Cal 6
Ca 30
Mg 5
Fl <0.8
Na 6.1
K <1

I'm planning to leave it in the primary for 2 weeks @ room temp (22oC) then up into the loft for 2 weeks for a cold(er) maturation... Living in a flat makes it challenging to follow the 4oC conditioning advice. If I kick up the cake a little during bottling will there be enough yeast in suspension to carbonate?

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

There's always yeast in live beer, unless you filter it out, you kill it (by way of pasteurization or chemical addition), or by aging out (and that takes a LONG time!).

As far as a pale ale, I've always done single step mash, at 153F (= 67C).

M_C

Thanks for the advice,

I was planning on using bottled spring water, as the stuff that comes through the tap is chlorinated and very very chalky. Better (barely) suited to a porter or dark beers than a belgian wit style. The profile of the bottled stuff is:



I'm planning to leave it in the primary for 2 weeks @ room temp (22oC) then up into the loft for 2 weeks for a cold(er) maturation... Living in a flat makes it challenging to follow the 4oC conditioning advice. If I kick up the cake a little during bottling will there be enough yeast in suspension to carbonate?

 

[snowveil]

There should be plenty of viable yeast in suspension when you bottle, so don't even worry about kicking up the yeast cake.

The water you've got looks pretty similar to my tap but it doesn't report the SO4 or Cl so I'd still be hesitant to make water adjustments, especially considering those are two of the main areas that are being influenced by the adjustments. For your first AG I'd say keep it simple and focus more on your temperatures than worrying about water adjustments just yet.

 

[gio]

oops

 

[hybrid3y3]

Well, after a number of false starts, equipment issues and SWMBO cancelling my brew days with the ol can we just... routine. I finally managed to get this one done =).

My cobbled together Mash Ton worked well, only lost 2oC over the course of an hour. I Lautered / Recirculated the wort before sparging (due to the false bottom) flow rate for that part of the process was reasonable. Problems started when i started to batch sparge... just couldn't get a decent flow rate and an hour later resorted to getting a big ol spoon in to agitate the grain and get the wort out. Collected 30L and measured the O.G at this point at 1.040, after the boil (and the spoon came back into play here to deal with the 385g of hops clogging up the drain) i had managed to get 22l out (after squeezing the hops out for every last precious drop!) which when cooled to 24oC (just love my wort chiller) measured in at 1.058. So not far off the 1.060 projected =).

 

[jangelj]

wow, how did this turn out? It sounds delicious with all those late hop additions.

 

[hybrid3y3]

It's been carbing for a week... i had the first pint straight from my bottling bucket, the second 6 days after carbing. It's fsking good! The only reason this hoppy wit monster will last 2 weeks is it's my primary takealong to a BBQ in 2 weeks time!

So... yeah, it turned out really really well.