How can I improve my brewing technique?

[Jesse93]

Hello guys,

I find most of my home brewed beers OK tasting, but extremely easy to drink and light bodied. Almost like a non-alcoholic beer. I used BIAB.

This is how I usually do;

1. Heat up water in the kettle, ~7-10 degrees celcius above mashing temperature.
2. Add all the grains, stir them gently.
3. Take of the kettle from the heatsource, leave it for 60 minutes.
4. Boil up the wort (with all grains in) again.
5. Remove the BIAB-bag, try to rinse it from all wort. Add it back in.
6. Start a gentle boil, adding first hops etc.
7. Chill the wort after all hop additions.
8. Put it in the fermenter, sprinkle the yeast.
9. Ferment. After 2 weeks I prime and bottle the beer.

My Pale Ale turned out to be the most watered down beer...
(10L into fermenter)
80% Pale malt
15% Munich malt
5% Caramel 60L
10g chinook 60 min
10g chinook 10 min
15g cascade 10 min
10g chinook 0 min
35g cascade 0 min
Safale us-05, 2 weeks fermentation in 17 degrees celcius.
Turned out 5,6% ABV, 38 IBU..

I don't want to make piss water guys Have I missed something?

 

[meatcleaver]

a couple of things...
you didn't say what temp you mash at, but maybe mash at a higher temp?
maybe try a bit (up to 5%) of carapils/maltodextrine?

 

[IslandLizard]

How can I improve my brewing technique?

Read HBT. Read, read, read, and learn.

If it tastes watered down that's probably exactly what it is. Possibly your mash extraction isn't optimal. Do you take gravity readings of your wort after the mash is done?

How is your grist milled? It should be very fine for BIAB.

1. Heat up water in the kettle, ~7-10 degrees celcius above mashing temperature.
The exact mash temperature IS important.

2. Add all the grains, stir them gently.
You need to stir them like it owes you money

3. Take of the kettle from the heatsource, leave it for 60 minutes.
That kettle will cool down. It needs to be kept warm, at or close to your mash temperature. Pack a sleeping bag around it.

4. Boil up the wort (with all grains in) again.
Boil?

5. Remove the BIAB-bag, try to rinse it from all wort. Add it back in.
Squeeze first, then dunk into a bucket with some hot water or pour hot water over it.
What are you adding "back in"? The bag?

6. Start a gentle boil, adding first hops etc.
You need a good rolling boil.

7. Chill the wort after all hop additions.

8. Put it in the fermenter, sprinkle the yeast.
It's better to re-hydrate the yeast before adding to your fermentor.
Good sanitation is important.
You need to aerate/oxygenate your wort well right before or right after pitching. Use a clean and sanitized whisk for now.

9. Ferment. After 2 weeks I prime and bottle the beer.
Take 2 gravity readings 3 days apart. That tells you if the beer is done.

 

[broadbill]

Have I missed something?

Hydrometer readings, temperature readings, how long you mashed, how fine you milled your grains, Details about fermentation (temperature, when did active fermentation start, how long did it go?), Brewhouse efficiency calculations, etc. etc.

You can troubleshoot the process without data on what is happening during the process.

That, and you shouldn't be boiling your grains...

 

[agrazela]

Agreed with all above.

We definitely need to know your mash temp. Do you have other numbers? Weight of grains, Mash pH, original gravity, final gravity?

(At the very least, what temperature did you heat the water to, volume of that water, and weight of grains.)

Pretty sure our working theory here is that you are mashing at too low a temperature (and/or losing too much heat during the mash) and making a too-fermentable wort.

I see your batch size is 10L, how big is your kettle? Would your kettle fit in a pre-warmed oven? That can help reduce loss of heat during the mash.

On a positive note, I think your recipe looks very good!

 

[GQT]

What were the OG anf FG?
US-05 eats up every last bit and can produce extremely dry taste unless you stop it at right time. Well, "dry" and "watery" is not exactly the same, but there might be something in common, depending on perception.
I once let fermentation keep going without sampling beer for FG, and US-05 worked it out from 1060sh to 1003. That was a funny beer: great hoppy smell, nearly no taste at all, but about 8% alcohol.
I always sample beer after that. As soon as the gravity approaches its target value, off we go to the fridge.

 

[Sweetwort-Hopkins]

That recipe does sound delicious!! Hope you can lock it in

 

[Clearwall]

How can I improve my brewing technique?


3. Take of the kettle from the heatsource, leave it for 60 minutes.
That kettle will cool down. It needs to be kept warm, at or close to your mash temperature. Pack a sleeping bag around it.

Ha, this is EXACTLY what I did before I started using a cooler to mash. Funny. Since I brew in the garage, I needed some way to keep it warm. When I first started, I foolishly just kept it on heat and stirred to keep it at the same temp. One day, on a lark, I saw the sleeping bag and thought "hey, why not?" It worked great.

 

[ncbrewer]

I always sample beer after that. As soon as the gravity approaches its target value, off we go to the fridge.

I would add a caution here. Don't do this if bottling - you can easily get bottle bombs.

 

[Jesse93]

Hi all and thanks for your anwers.

I use a 24L kettle. Mashingtemperature for that pale ale was 67 degrees C before I removed the kettle.
I fill the kettle with 15 litres of water, around 1 litre boil off during the process. Usually leave 10-11 to the fermentor. I guess the grains (which are fine milled). I pour hot water over the BIAB-bag to extract the last sugars from the grains into a bucket and then pour them back in.
OG on the pale ale was 1.054, FG 1.014. Then its also bottle conditioned with a layer of trub in the bottle, maybe the yeast has worked down the FG even more...

Maybe I should keep the kettle on the stove for next brew. The water here is very soft, I might also need to compensate with minerals.
I have a brown ale in the secondary now, but it seemed more full-bodied when I took a taste sample, I don't know why though.

 

[agrazela]

67°C comes out to 152°F mash temp, so no problem there. Although there's still the likely possibility that you're dropping a few degrees over that 60min.

Attenuation 74% ADF (1.054 to 1.014)...I'd expect a bit more attenuation than that from US-05 at that mash temp.

So, now I'm wondering if it was fully fermented before getting bottled...how's your carbonation level compared to what you expected? Tell us more about your fermentation temperatures. And final gravity checking routine.

BTW, I see the percentages, but what was the weight of your grain? Oops, I see you say you "guess" the grains, as in guess the weights?

 

[IslandLizard]

I'd say in addition to reading HBT, read How to Brew. Just don't do secondaries for now, and don't "proof" your yeast (with sugar or anything esle), it needs to be simply re-hydrated, instructions on Safale's website.

You've got the gist, but there's a lot of detail you need to pay attention to.

• After the mash is done, a good sparge of that bag of grains rinses out the sugars, don't skip that step.
• You need to know how many kilos of grain you're mashing, the total volume of wort collected right before the boil. Measure the gravity of that wort (at room temps). That is you your pre-boil gravity, which should be close to the one you calculated. If it's less then that you either have too much volume, not enough extraction/conversion or you overestimate your mash efficiency. Start with estimating that at 80% for BIAB.

 

[Jesse93]

67°C comes out to 152°F mash temp, so no problem there. Although there's still the likely possibility that you're dropping a few degrees over that 60min.

Attenuation 74% ADF (1.054 to 1.014)...I'd expect a bit more attenuation than that from US-05 at that mash temp.

So, now I'm wondering if it was fully fermented before getting bottled...how's your carbonation level compared to what you expected? Tell us more about your fermentation temperatures. And final gravity checking routine.

BTW, I see the percentages, but what was the weight of your grain? Oops, I see you say you "guess" the grains, as in guess the weights?

3.36kg total. It was fullt fermented, and the carbonation went just as I wanted it after two weeks in bottles. The fermentation temperature was 17 degrees celcius for 15 days and 2 days in room temperature (20 to 21 degrees).

 

[Jesse93]

I'd say in addition to reading HBT, read How to Brew. Just don't do secondaries for now, and don't "proof" your yeast (with sugar or anything esle), it needs to be simply re-hydrated, instructions on Safale's website.

You've got the gist, but there's a lot of detail you need to pay attention to.

• After the mash is done, a good sparge of that bag of grains rinses out the sugars, don't skip that step.
• You need to know how many kilos of grain you're mashing, the total volume of wort collected right before the boil. Measure the gravity of that wort (at room temps). That is you your pre-boil gravity, which should be close to the one you calculated. If it's less then that you either have too much volume, not enough extraction/conversion or you overestimate your mash efficiency. Start with estimating that at 80% for BIAB.

I use BrewTarget and had the efficiency set to 70%. I'm not sure why I should know the weight of the grains when I can set up an estimation of OG, FG, ABV etc in the software (although, I have the weight measurment but I don't know what to do with it).

 

[Yooper]

I didn't understand one thing- you don't boil the grains, right? You remove the grainbag before raising the heat to boiling.

 

[Bellybuster]

Hello guys,

4. Boil up the wort (with all grains in) again.

you really boil with the grains still in???? There's why your beer isn't spectacular

 

[GQT]

Don't do this if bottling - you can easily get bottle bombs.

After a few (3-5) days at nearly zero (centigrade) the yeast more or less settles down. Then it is just a question of accurate bottling (make sure none of the slurry is sucked into bottles), and voila.
You might be right, anyway. With less flocculent strains there will be some risk.

 

[IslandLizard]

I use BrewTarget and had the efficiency set to 70%. I'm not sure why I should know the weight of the grains when I can set up an estimation of OG, FG, ABV etc in the software (although, I have the weight measurment but I don't know what to do with it).

The weight of your dry grains determines the maximum gravity you can attain after mashing and sparging. Mash efficiency is a large fraction thereof (hopefully), like 80%.

You enter the weight of all the different grains you use for the recipe into BrewTarget and it will estimate your gravities, like pre-boil, OG (after boil), FG (yeast, grist & mash temp dependent), various volumes, among other useful data like IBU, ABV, etc.

 

[Jesse93]

I didn't understand one thing- you don't boil the grains, right? You remove the grainbag before raising the heat to boiling.

Not boiling but heating up to 78 degrees. My misstake It was a couple of months ago since I spoke english.

 

[Jesse93]

Maybe the things I need to focus more on

• Keep the kettle on the heat source instead
• Better sparge

Maybe this will give me a more full-bodied beer.
Thanks for your advices!!!