April 11, 2009 Circle City Brew Day

Yakima 728
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It is my "no chill" HDPE cooling tank/fermentor! :mug:

Transferring to it now in fact! You will see it when I get my pics uploaded.
 
FWIW the PID is monitoring the temp of the wort as I transfer it to the "cube" and it began at 189F and is now at about 184F as the last couple gallons are transferred.

This is good to know, because there is a temp. curve on which hop utilization takes place. Anything below 170F is pretty negligible.

This is why I moved my 35 minute hops to 15 min and my 20 minute hops, to the cube. I am assuming about 20 minutes worth of utilization STILL taking place in the cube.
 
The cube is filled, it was 5.5 gallons at 1.040, so 82% eff.

Not to shabby for 4.5 hours this afternoon. SWMBO is cooking some enchiladas for me, the cube is cooling, my starter wort from the boil is cooling so that I can get my 24 hour starter churning. Good brew day!
 
I did what I am going to call a "RWS" It stands for Real Wort Starter.

Basically this is what I did.

Prior to transferring my hot wort to the container, I drained 1 qt into a SS sauce pan. I chilled it in a cold water bath, and took my OG.

Once I did this, I poured the OG sample wort back into the sauce pan and boiled it again to make sure it was good and sterile.

Then cooled in a cool water bath to 65F and transferred to a 1 gal. carboy.

I rehydrated my S-05 as usual in warm water, then transferred it into my 1 gal. carboy to make my 24-hour starter.

No DME, and the yeasties get accustomed to the same worth they are going to get pitched into, tomorrow!
 
I am working on the video now...

Here is a teaser!

P1020440.JPG


P1020441.JPG


P1020442.JPG
 
planenut said:
I don't remember the notches cut out of your mash tun by the handles... Is that new and what is it for?
Click to expand...

Always been there, that is from Brew Beast 1.0, when I had a built in sparge arm.
 
Some quick stats on this brew!

Water needed was 10.25 gallons, this accounts for 1.5 gallons of loss in the system prior to the kettle. It also accounts for .4 gallons lost in the kettle to hops/trub.

The mash temp. varied by about +/- .5F during the 60 minute mash.

Mashout took 20 minutes with the grain bed reaching 167F.

Ran the HLT dry during the sparge

Ran the MLT dry during the sparge, ended up with exactly 7.75 gallons pre-boil at 1.029

Performed a 90 minute boil with the PID set at 70%. This seemed to be necessary with the large starting volume in the BK.

Boil off was at a rate of 1.5gal/hr. The post boil volume was 5.5 gallons at 1.040.

Efficiency was 82% today

Transferred wort at 189F to the HDPE container.

I took a 1 qt. sample of REAL WORT for the OG reading and to create a starter for the yeast. I call this a "RWS"... Real Wort Starter, it is new for me.

This starter will be pitched after 24 hours, once the wort has cooled to 65F.

FWIW, the 1 quart starter has a 1.5" krausen only 3.5 hours after pitching the yeast!

P1020466.JPG
 
Okay, I have never seen this before, but the starter has a 3" krausen on it 6 hours after the pitch! My DME starters generally had a very small krausen, but did the job just fine. Odd, but the krausen has more volume now than the starter itself!
 
Man, that is SUCH a good idea about the RWS... makes total sense and it is a real benefit of no-chill. Congrats on the successful brew- I have been watching your posts in the BIAB thread and waiting for the day to come! I'm stuck in an apartment and itching to start up with all grain, and BIAB is going to make it possible for me.

How does the efficiency compare to your normal brew methods? What sort of mash schedule to you typically do?
 
Well as you can see, I do not do BIAB, but I am trying the no chill method. I generally do a 2qt/lb mash, but I may back that off a little, to say 1.75qt/lb to increase my sparge volume a little.

The RWS is really quite awesome, most of my beers dont start fermenting for 12-24 hours anyway, no chill gave me the excuse to do it really. Now I can get a healthy cell count in there, I will post how quickly it takes off.

My eff. runs about 80-85%, BIAB I hear is close to 70%, which is not bad considering the simplicity

My starter, 12 hours after pitching, has a 6" krausen on it. :drunk:

P1020467.JPG
 
Krausen is dropping on the starter and the fermentor is reaching 77F 14 hours after transferring to it.
 
I will easily be able to pitch within 24 hours... the starter is ready and the wort is cooled.

BTW I used my PID to keep my PBW wash in the kettle up at 150F for a couple hours... WOW shiney!!!
 
Dunno, done starters before with dry yeast and never had a real krausen, it was freaky, I almost needed a blow off!
 
The Pol said:
Well as you can see, I do not do BIAB, but I am trying the no chill method. I generally do a 2qt/lb mash, but I may back that off a little, to say 1.75qt/lb to increase my sparge volume a little.
Click to expand...

Ah.. I saw the 2qt/lb and couldn't see your sparge volume anywhere, so I thought you had done a "no sparge" BIAB-style mash along with the no chill, for the full aussie effect. :D I'll be trying it out as soon as I have fermenter space.
 
Yeah, I have the HERMS, so I doubt I will ever do BIAB... the HERMS is already there and so easy to hit temps and times with.
 
Pitched my yeast... 22 hours after the end of the boil it reached pitching temps.

Now, time to watch the show.
 
Yeap, been shaking it periodically as I walked past it all day...

Probably a total of 5 minutes of shaking, then pitched, then shook again.
 
5.5 hours after pitching, the HDPE fermentor is bubbling away at 68F.

So far my evil plan it working! :D
 
So, you moved all your late additions 20 minutes later? Was going to experiment with this as well. I'm thinking of doing a pale ale with just 1 oz FWH then 2 oz in the "cube."

Glad you had a good brew day. One of my march's quit working and in my fiddling with it, I dry fired my RIMS element :( I disassembled the head on the pump and put it back together and it worked fine. Strange. Haven't tried the element again, but box said it can survive being dry fired (it's a "sand" element).
 
I am VERY scared of dry firing my elements... AHHHH.

The brew day was spot on... between the spreadsheets and the accuracy of ProMash, I hit my target volume spot on and overshot my OG by ONE point. Not bad.

I bet your element is fine, what happened to your pump?

I am getting one bubble/5 seconds 28 hours after transferring 189F wort to the HDPE fermentor.

Yes, I adjusted my hops as such...

FHW- still FWH
90 minute addition- still 90 minute addition
35 minute addition - moved to 15 minutes
20 minute addition - moved to "cube"
My hops below 20 minutes were already moved to FWH in this recipe.

I am basically "assuming" 20 minutes of utilization in the HDPE container... we will see how close I am!
 
The Pol said:
I bet your element is fine, what happened to your pump?
Click to expand...

No clue. It sounded like something was "lodged" in it. I took it apart and put it back together and it worked fine for recirculating chilling water.

Now if my stuff from US plastics would actually find it's way to my house, I'm going to test "no-chill".
 
US Plastics is good... they did have a shipping issue when I ordered. The CAP for the fermentor came here about a week before the vessel did :)

Today the ferment is rockin... uploading a video now!
 
Care to share the part# for the HDPE fermenter? That is one snazzy looking fermenter, even for chill-first brewing. I like the idea it could be sanitized with boiling hot water.

And what size bung is that?
 
FWIW, I ran my mill at .038" gap. I was too scared to tighten it up. The lauter was capable of running at full open, so I am not SO scared now. I will be running it at .035 on the next batch and noting any eff. differences. I will tighten it .003" at a time to be safe.
 
The Pol said:
Nice, they have great products, I assume that you then plan to transfer to another vessel to ferment.
Click to expand...

Yes. I bought one of these too:

EZ-Strainers™ - US Plastic Corporation

My plan is to:
-drain about 1-2 quarts hot wort into a small HDPE jug I have. put in fridge.
-drain rest ( 5 gallon or so) into container.
-when small amount is cooled, pitch my yeast.
-next day (or two) when 5 gal is cooled, put strainer on my bucket and dump wort through it. Since I'll probably be cube hoping , this should strain some of that out. It will also help get any break that didn't whirlpool out and help some with aeration.
-Add my yeast infected small batch

The strainer may not help much as leaving the hops in primary is not a big deal, but it was cheap.

I'm thinking this will cut some time off my brew day, but mostly frustration. I'm paranoid about cleaning my plate chiller so I recycle PBW, rinse water, star-san though it and store it in my oven. Not to mention the mess of tubing when I'm chilling and having to use hopbags so it doesn't get clogged. Hopbags are a PITA to clean if you forget about them and leave them overnight!
 
The Pol said:
I did what I am going to call a "RWS" It stands for Real Wort Starter.

Basically this is what I did.

Prior to transferring my hot wort to the container, I drained 1 qt into a SS sauce pan. I chilled it in a cold water bath, and took my OG.

Once I did this, I poured the OG sample wort back into the sauce pan and boiled it again to make sure it was good and sterile.

Then cooled in a cool water bath to 65F and transferred to a 1 gal. carboy.

I rehydrated my S-05 as usual in warm water, then transferred it into my 1 gal. carboy to make my 24-hour starter.

No DME, and the yeasties get accustomed to the same worth they are going to get pitched into, tomorrow!
Click to expand...

Pol, just curious, why did you make a starter for the S-05 vs just re-hydrating the dry yeast prior to pitching? was it to reduce possibility of adaption issues in the fermenter?

What was the OG of your RWS?

I was thinking (OMG) , I have a refractometer and could take readings during the latter half of the boil cycle and pull the RWS amount when it reached ~1.040 and cool in the sanitized starter flask. That would reduce a couple of the steps you went through.
 
rcrabb22 said:
Pol, just curious, why did you make a starter for the S-05 vs just re-hydrating the dry yeast prior to pitching? was it to reduce possibility of adaption issues in the fermenter?

What was the OG of your RWS?

I was thinking (OMG) , I have a refractometer and could take readings during the latter half of the boil cycle and pull the RWS amount when it reached ~1.040 and cool in the sanitized starter flask. That would reduce a couple of the steps you went through.
Click to expand...

I pulled my RWS after the boil, because it was 1.040 OG AFTER the boil anyway. I made the starter because I did a "no chill" brew day and wanted to get a nice healthy yeast starter into the wort after the 24 hour cooling period. Trying to reduce any lag time.

Since the brew was cooling for 24 hours, seemed like a no brainer to go ahead and make a 24 hour starter for this brew. It was fermenting 5.5 hours after pitching the starter.
 
Pol, Your actions make perfect sense to me.

This thread prompted me to re-read the March-April BYO article on the Aussie brewing methods and it stated the wort could be kept in a properly sanitized cube for "several" weeks prior to pitching the yeast. The article did advise to chill the cube if you weren't pitching yeast right away to reduce wort color darkening.
 
I am hoping to pave the way for more U.S. no chill brewers... experimenting with the late hop additions etc. to make it less of a guessing game since it is not a widely used method here.

I like that ProMash gives me the PRE-boil gravity so that in most cases I can choose to use the PRE boil wort of POST boil wort depending on the planned OG of the beer. This way I can keep my starters around 1.035-1.050.
 
Corrected gravity reading on 4-19-09 is 1.007

That is about 82% attenuation.

As for the flavor... well... I can taste the botulism and there is a very distinct flavor like cooked corn in it!

P1020480.JPG
 
FWIW... I am JOKING. This hydro sample tastes JUST like all of the other CCB Haus Ales I brewed. All of the numbers match for attenuation and such. I don't see a reason to ever chill my beer again, thus far.

Darn, I REALLY love cooked corn!
 

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