AG#3 Brewday from hell....

[Deebee]

Ihope by me sharing my extremely nasty brew evening i might gain some more help from those that are far better and far more experienced than I.

I had initially thought of doing the brew in several stages as per an earlier thread mashing and sparging on one day, and boiling the next ..........

But the mrs went to bed really early, the kids behaved and i thought why not, Brew time!!

The recipe is a Bitter and twisted clone from Paul at barley bottom, ( Barley Bottom - Homebrew Shop, Homebrew Supplies, Hops, Grains and Sundries) and things started bitterly, and went twisted.. let me explain.

Firstly i dropped the beer Oeselsvekt destroying it... hmm i thought , this could be a problem when coming to measure the OG....

The mash went really well. Hit temperatures and had almost no drop off during the mash time. First wort was recycled for 4 liters then was nice and clear so away i went. it was however running slowly!

The brew length for this is 23 liters and the boil should be for 25... everything was going well until i hit 19 liters and then everything stopped, completely, not a drop from the mash tun dispite there being water there. 25 miniutes it stayed like that and still nothing

Time was getting on, and i am up at 0430 so bed was needed.... so i reverted back to the thread ( link above) heated the wort to 80 degrees held it for 15 minutes and then gently transferred it into the santitsed FV, sealed it up and left it.

So here is the dilema.

I have 6 liters too little wort, and the only measurement equipment i have is a " combined wine and beer oeselsvekt" this starts in a black zone ( for wine) at 15 and comes down in 5 unit increments until it hits 0 from here it it moves into a white zone ( they say for beer) and increases in 10 unit increments until it shows 120

My question here is is this acually ok, i mean is the 0 mark really 1000 and then 10 unit increments ( so 1010 to 1120) if so i have one less thing to worry about. Does anyone know?

Secondly if this does indeed prove to be ok, and the OG is ( expectedly extremely high) is diluting it with boiled water in the boiler an ok thing to do in order to dilute it? If so should i add liter for liter and measure at each stage? i imagine the OG should not be the same pre boil as post, so what should i aim at ( The recipe says expected OG is 1047)

Lastly if i add water and the OG goes under the target, is there a ration of grams sugar pr point gravity i would need to add into the boil in order to bring the OG up.

At present this would likely be a really high ABV beer, and it is not intended to be so and to be honest i want something at around the 4.5 % mark which is what this recipe should be.

I'm boiling at around 5 pm this evening so any help would be great.

I am most interested about the OG measurer though, if i can use the one i have then thats great ( there are no hb shops within 250 miles of me here !)

This was not a good brew day, and the name of the beer is how i feel the evening went.

Can someone help me save the brew please? I am panicing slightly very much here!

Thanks

 

[Mongo64]

I might be wrong, but I'm guessing that you have a hydrometer that is graduated in Brix/Degrees Plato, 0-15. Here's a link to a conversion calculator; hope that helps.
Brewheads.com - Convert Between Brix and Specific Gravity

I would also highly reccomend the use of a computer program like Beersmith to help with the brewing calcualtions. It has many conversion tools as well.
Beersmith has a 30 day trial; here's a link.
BeerSmith Brewing Software, Recipes, Blog, Wiki and Discussion Forum

 

[brrman]

...everything was going well until i hit 19 liters and then everything stopped, completely, not a drop from the mash tun dispite there being water there. 25 miniutes it stayed like that and still nothing

The next time this happens (a stuck sparge) blow back up into the drain to clear it. Usually this will start the sparge again, though you might want to catch the first little bit in a separate container in case it releases some grain bits.

If you suspect that this might happen again you can add 1/4 - 1/2 lb of rice hulls to the mash to keep it from clogging.

With regards to the volume of wort, personally I would add 2 liters of water and boil with that. You are missing 6 liters of the low gravity sparged wort. 6 liters of water would thin the wort too much, but 2 liters of water would thin the wort enough to bring you close to the desired gravity. Then boil, knowing you will not have as much beer, but it should turn out pretty good!

Let us know what you end up doing! (edit - you're in Norway, so 5pm is probably already passed. woops)

 

[Deebee]

I might be wrong, but I'm guessing that you have a hydrometer that is graduated in Brix/Degrees Plato, 0-15. Here's a link to a conversion calculator; hope that helps.
Brewheads.com - Convert Between Brix and Specific Gravity

I would also highly reccomend the use of a computer program like Beersmith to help with the brewing calcualtions. It has many conversion tools as well.
Beersmith has a 30 day trial; here's a link.
BeerSmith Brewing Software, Recipes, Blog, Wiki and Discussion Forum

I have the trial version of beer smith but have no idea how to use it properly. If you might be good enough to just drop me a short how too thats great.

I like the program and shall be buying the full version.

Dave

 

[Deebee]

The next time this happens (a stuck sparge) blow back up into the drain to clear it. Usually this will start the sparge again, though you might want to catch the first little bit in a separate container in case it releases some grain bits.

If you suspect that this might happen again you can add 1/4 - 1/2 lb of rice hulls to the mash to keep it from clogging.

With regards to the volume of wort, personally I would add 2 liters of water and boil with that. You are missing 6 liters of the low gravity sparged wort. 6 liters of water would thin the wort too much, but 2 liters of water would thin the wort enough to bring you close to the desired gravity. Then boil, knowing you will not have as much beer, but it should turn out pretty good!

Let us know what you end up doing! (edit - you're in Norway, so 5pm is probably already passed. woops)

Thanks for the reply.
In the end i ended up adding 2.5 liters of water and reducing the amount of hops ever so slightly.

I had a 90 minute boil and ended up with 18 liters in the FV. there was an awful lot of trub and i didn't want too much going in.

The kit from Paul came with something called PROTOFLOC, a small tablet that you use like Irish most, just drop it in for the last 15 minutes of the boil.

The IC worked a treat and as the water temperature here ( in the cold pipe) is low at themoment it went from boiling to 23 degrees in about 20 minutes.

The cold break was huge and although i was very careful decanting into the FV after 15 minutes it looked as though there was about 3 litres at the bottom, Never seen one this clearly before. That being said the yeast was going after around 6 hours and the cold break rest is now non visable... ie it must have dropped out into the bottom of the FV.

The OG before pitching was 1054 so it will give me something like 5-5.2% ish with the safeale 04 i am using. its fermenting like made right now so i guess 5-7 days before it is finished.

The good thing is that the reduced brew length means that i have still got about 20 litres empty keg capacity!