How much water is needed to make your wort

[mac_1103]

Roughly how much water would you sparge with?

I do half and half, or maybe 60/40. Lots of people do bigger mash and smaller sparge.

Seems easier to do close full volume and just squeeze the bag into the boiler. Probably wont end up with full 20 liters as I'd have to account for water displacement

Even a small volume sparge will increase your overall efficiency by rinsing out some sugars that would have been left in the grain bag no matter how much you squeeze. You can (and should) adjust for losses due to grain absorption (maybe one liter per kilogram of grain, maybe less) and boil off (depends on how vigorously you boil and whether that burco is short and wide or tall and narrow; could be as little as two or three liters per hour or as much as nine or ten). Measure and record all of your volumes. After a few batches you'll know what your own rates are.

 

[Jack_0106]

Where are you planning to ferment? If it's in a cold garage you could brew a lager. If you're fermenting in your living room it's perfect for an ale. Start backwards and try to find a place where the temperature is somewhat constant and then find a yeast suitable for that temperature.

I'll be brewing in my office. The house is around 20C when we are home but during the day when we're not there, and over night the temps when heat isn't on I'd imagine it would drop to around 13-15C. I've never actually checked

 

[Jack_0106]

I do half and half, or maybe 60/40. Lots of people do bigger mash and smaller sparge.

Even a small volume sparge will increase your overall efficiency by rinsing out some sugars that would have been left in the grain bag no matter how much you squeeze. You can (and should) adjust for losses due to grain absorption (maybe one liter per kilogram of grain, maybe less) and boil off (depends on how vigorously you boil and whether that burco is short and wide or tall and narrow; could be as little as two or three liters per hour or as much as nine or ten). Measure and record all of your volumes. After a few batches you'll know what your own rates are.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Stikius]

I'll be brewing in my office. The house is around 20C when we are home but during the day when we're not there, and over night the temps when heat isn't on I'd imagine it would drop to around 13-15C. I've never actually checked

Large temperature swings could potentially be an issue. Mage sure to wrap it with a blanket or something to try to keep it stable. And find a yeast that is happy somewhere in the middle of that temperature range. For a lager I would go for the extremely forgiving Fermentis Saflager s-23.

 

[VikeMan]

The house is around 20C when we are home but during the day when we're not there, and over night the temps when heat isn't on I'd imagine it would drop to around 13-15C. I've never actually checked

I would check. That 20C ambient temperature would be ok for some ales, but not so great (a little high) for others. And a drop to 13-15C is likely to cause some problems. Fermentation temperature control is the thing that makes a lot of brewers' beers go from "meh" to good/very good.

 

[Jack_0106]

I would check. That 20C ambient temperature would be ok for some ales, but not so great (a little high) for others. And a drop to 13-15C is likely to cause some problems. Fermentation temperature control is the thing that makes a lot of brewers' beers go from "meh" to good/very good.

Yeah for my meads, I put 1 gallon fermenter inside a 5 gallon bucket filled with water and a fish tank heater to keep temps stable.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I actually watched a youtube video last night on a smash beer

You might want to have a look at this long piece I wrote about SMaSH elsewhere :
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/smash.96063/

 

[beren]

Aha!! I have managed to source a 30 liter Burco. Need to start researching simple beginner friendly recipes now.

Guinness clones are cake!

 

[Jack_0106]

Guinness clones are cake!

I do love a pint of milk! And if I can get it straight from the tit thats even better

Any recipes you recommend?

 

[beren]

I do love a pint of milk!

It's amusing people talk about it like this. It's 90% pale malt/flaked barley and 10% roasted. I've read it best described as "a blonde in a black skirt." It's also one of the lightest calorie beer there is, other than american light beers. It's nothing like milk unless you overcarb it and make it all foam.

You grind the roasted extra fine and add at the end of the mash or make a cold brew of it a day or 2 before like Guinness does. Use the lactic acid for the real taste, it's good but missing something without it.

It's a pretty standard/generic recipe everywhere.:
https://shop.theelectricbrewery.com/pages/dry-irish-stout

 

[mac_1103]

It's amusing people talk about it like this. It's 90% pale malt/flaked barley and 10% roasted. I've read it best described as "a blonde in a black skirt." It's also one of the lightest calorie beer there is, other than american light beers. It's nothing like milk unless you overcarb it and make it all foam.

I'm also amused when people turn down a sample of my chocolate milk stout because "I don't like Guinness."

 

[Jack_0106]

It's amusing people talk about it like this. It's 90% pale malt/flaked barley and 10% roasted. I've read it best described as "a blonde in a black skirt." It's also one of the lightest calorie beer there is, other than american light beers. It's nothing like milk unless you overcarb it and make it all foam.

You grind the roasted extra fine and add at the end of the mash or make a cold brew of it a day or 2 before like Guinness does. Use the lactic acid for the real taste, it's good but missing something without it.

It's a pretty standard/generic recipe everywhere.:
https://shop.theelectricbrewery.com/pages/dry-irish-stout

Well with regard to Guinness here in Dublin and on draught, its velvety smooth and has an almost creamy texture.

We call it a few things:
Pint of plain
Pint of milk
Pint of cream
Pint of water
black stuff

 

[Jack_0106]

Anywho, I thought I'd update this thread -
I brewed my first BIAB and went with marris otter and Galaxy hops
Recipe was:

• 4.75kg Maris Otter steeped at 65 degrees C for an hour.
• Removed grain bag and boiled wort
• 10 g Galaxy hop leaf at 60 mins
• 30 g Galaxy hop pellet at 15mins
• 65 g Galaxy Hop pellet at 0 mins
• Safale S04

Ran into a problem with my burco though, it wouldn't go past 95 degrees C so if anybody has a workaround for that I'd appreciate it.

Its in the fermenter now 2 days now and going strong. My office smells wonderful

 

[marc1]

Anywho, I thought I'd update this thread -
I brewed my first BIAB and went with marris otter and Galaxy hops
Recipe was:

• 4.75kg Maris Otter steeped at 65 degrees C for an hour
• 10 g Galaxy hop at 60 mins
• 30 g Galaxy hop pellet at 15mins
• 65 g Galaxy Hop pellet at 0 mins
• Safale S04

Ran into a problem with my burco though, it wouldn't go past 95 degrees C so if anybody has a workaround for that I'd appreciate it.

Its in the fermenter now 2 days now and going strong. My office smells wonderful

Congratulations, very exciting! How big of a batch did you end up doing and what was your starting gravity?

 

[Jack_0106]

Congratulations, very exciting! How big of a batch did you end up doing and what was your starting gravity?

I aimed for a 20 liter batch but after evaporation and grain absorption I ended up with a 21 liter batch.

OG came out at 1044 which was a bit lower than I was hoping for. I did think about adding in and around 500g of honey to boost it but decide against it.

 

[marc1]

I aimed for a 20 liter batch but after evaporation and grain absorption I ended up with a 21 liter batch.

OB came out at 1044 which was a bit lower than I was hoping for. I did think about adding in and around 500g of honey to boost it but decide against it.

Well done with the volumes on your first batch.

Going forward you can adjust the efficiency of your recipe down to match what you see or you can try to troubleshoot to raise it.

What efficiency were you using that you were hoping for a higher OG?

 

[Jack_0106]

Well done with the volumes on your first batch.

Going forward you can adjust the efficiency of your recipe down to match what you see or you can try to troubleshoot to raise it.

What efficiency were you using that you were hoping for a higher OG?

Apologies, I aimed for the 20liter batch to fermenter and to account for losses, I started with 26 liters and ended up with 23 liters in the fermenter. I think if I could have got the burco to hit the boil properly, I could have boiled off the excess and had a higher OG

I've no idea about efficiency or how to measure it, I think since I was BIAB I plugged 70% into the recipe calculator but this could totally be wrong as at the moment it means nothing to me except that it relates to how well you extract the sugars. I've yet to fully learn what efficiency is and how it impact the batch or how to tweak it. At the moment, I'm just using the hot water to extract the sugars, boil it, add the hops and whatever I get, I get.

It'll be interesting to see what it finishes at

 

[marc1]

Apologies, I aimed for the 20liter batch to fermenter and to account for losses, I started with 26 liters and ended up with 23 liters in the fermenter. I think if I could have got the burco to hit the boil properly, I could have boiled off the excess and had a higher OG

I've no idea about efficiency or how to measure it, I think since I was BIAB I plugged 70% into the recipe calculator but this could totally be wrong as at the moment it means nothing to me except that it relates to how well you extract the sugars. I've yet to fully learn what efficiency is and how it impact the batch or how to tweak it. At the moment, I'm just using the hot water to extract the sugars, boil it, add the hops and whatever I get, I get.

It'll be interesting to see what it finishes at

No need to apologize!

Getting to a decent boil is good to try to do, but it doesn't have to be a violent boil. You're right, if you had a better boil you probably would have boiled off more wort and been closer to your predicted gravity.

You've got the idea for efficiency.
There's a good description here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/mash-efficiency.726617/#post-10250278

Additionally there's brewhouse efficiency, which also incorporates all losses before the fermenter.

It sounds like you're having fun, enjoy the process and your beer!

 

[Jack_0106]

No need to apologize!

Getting to a decent boil is good to try to do, but it doesn't have to be a violent boil. You're right, if you had a better boil you probably would have boiled off more wort and been closer to your predicted gravity.

You've got the idea for efficiency.
There's a good description here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/mash-efficiency.726617/#post-10250278

Additionally there's brewhouse efficiency, which also incorporates all losses before the fermenter.

It sounds like you're having fun, enjoy the process and your beer!

Oh yeah it was great fun really watching it all come together.

I had a look at some efficiency calcs and it looks like I was more around the 55/60% mark which I guess is not great but I'm not too worried about it on my first run. I would like to get it up to the 70s though for my next batch.

If you've any tips, please send them my way!

 

[marc1]

Oh yeah it was great fun really watching it all come together.

I had a look at some efficiency calcs and it looks like I was more around the 55/60% mark which I guess is not great but I'm not too worried about it on my first run. I would like to get it up to the 70s though for my next batch.

If you've any tips, please send them my way!

A few things you can explore:

Look at your grain crush. With BIAB, you can go finer without clogging things up. This will help the efficiency.

You can also try a longer mash.

For a BIAB mash, you want your bag as big as your pot. The grains should be in the entire volume of water without dead space outside of the bag.

Sparging (rinsing the grains) also increases efficiency. For BIAB you can simply hoist the bag out of your mashing pot when the mash is complete and move the bag and grains to another pot or bucket with water in it. The water doesn't have to be warm. Make sure the grains can swim around loosely while you give it a mix and then you can pull the bag and drain it or squeeze it into the bucket. Dump the sparge water into your main pot.

For accuracy when measuring your OG, make sure your sample is cooled to the calibration temperature of your hydrometer, and check the instructions to make sure you are reading the meniscus correctly. If your wort is off from the calibration temp by some 10s of degrees, you can use an online calculator to adjust for the the offset.

 

[Jack_0106]

A few things you can explore:

Look at your grain crush. With BIAB, you can go finer without clogging things up. This will help the efficiency.

You can also try a longer mash.

For a BIAB mash, you want your bag as big as your pot. The grains should be in the entire volume of water without dead space outside of the bag.

Sparging (rinsing the grains) also increases efficiency. For BIAB you can simply hoist the bag out of your mashing pot when the mash is complete and move the bag and grains to another pot or bucket with water in it. The water doesn't have to be warm. Make sure the grains can swim around loosely while you give it a mix and then you can pull the bag and drain it or squeeze it into the bucket. Dump the sparge water into your main pot.

For accuracy when measuring your OG, make sure your sample is cooled to the calibration temperature of your hydrometer, and check the instructions to make sure you are reading the meniscus correctly. If your wort is off from the calibration temp by some 10s of degrees, you can use an online calculator to adjust for the the offset.

Thanks a mill Marc1!

My beer is sitting at 1.012 after 4 day. I'm going to let it run until the weekend at the minimum maybe either bottle or do a secondary for another week if I don't have a day to dedicate to bottling

 

[VikeMan]

My beer is sitting at 1.012 after 4 day. I'm going to let it run until the weekend at the minimum maybe either bottle or do a secondary for another week if I don't have a day to dedicate to bottling

There's probably no need to transfer to a second fermenter, unless you're planning something unusual.

 

[hotbeer]

Whether or not you transfer your beer to a secondary or not, wait till it's clear before you bottle it. Moving to a secondary doesn't really help it clear faster, IMO. It just gives more potential for oxidation from O2 exposure.

I let my bottles be my secondary fermenter. Carbonating the beer is really just another fermentation process. So putting cleaner beer in the bottles results in less sediment that might make and makes pouring clean beer into a glass more less difficult.

 

[Jack_0106]

Whether or not you transfer your beer to a secondary or not, wait till it's clear before you bottle it. Moving to a secondary doesn't really help it clear faster, IMO. It just gives more potential for oxidation from O2 exposure.

I let my bottles be my secondary fermenter. Carbonating the beer is really just another fermentation process. So putting cleaner beer in the bottles results in less sediment that might make pouring clean beer into a glass more difficult.

Thanks for the tips!

I usually use carbonation drops in the bottles but I don't have enough for this batch.

I'm thinking of just using table sugar but wondering if I can add say 60g of sugar to the wort in the bottling bucket and then fill the bottles or would I be better off doing a tspoon per bottle? I think the latter would be better to avoid infection or oxidation

 

[beren]

Thanks for the tips!

I usually use carbonation drops in the bottles but I don't have enough for this batch.

I'm thinking of just using table sugar but wondering if I can add say 60g of sugar to the wort in the bottling bucket and then fill the bottles or would I be better off doing a tspoon per bottle? I think the latter would be better to avoid infection or oxidation

Always mix sugar with the bulk beer. You’ll never get the same amount of sugar in every bottle doing it by hand plus it will take forever.

 

[Jack_0106]

Always mix sugar with the bulk beer. You’ll never get the same amount of sugar in every bottle doing it by hand plus it will take forever

Yeah I usually bulk back sweeten/carb my ciders but wasn't sure if beer would be different.

So transfer wort to bottling bucket and stir in the sugar? Are there any calculators available for gauging how much sugar to use? I think 65g for 20 liters is a good ball park

 

[Whisky River]

Ran into a problem with my burco though, it wouldn't go past 95 degrees C so if anybody has a workaround for that I'd appreciate it.

I’m not sure if someone else already mentioned it, but boilers loose a tremendous amount of heat to the surrounding air through the exposed surface area of the sides and lid. If you look at pictures of most of the commercially available all in one (AIO) systems like the Grainfather and Brewzilla, they usually have some sort of neoprene jacket around them to help reduce the heat loss. I’m not sure what materials you would have access to there but you can probably find something that won’t melt and is easy to cut to shape to fit around the body of your boiler. That should help a lot with getting the last few degrees to the boil.

 

[mac_1103]

Are there any calculators available for gauging how much sugar to use?

priming calculator

How many volumes of CO2 depends on the type of beer and your personal taste, but 65 grams for 20 liters is kinda low for most styles.

 

[mashdar]

Always mix sugar with the bulk beer. You’ll never get the same amount of sugar in every bottle doing it by hand plus it will take forever.

Mixing is fine, but I've use 0.1g dry scales to measure per-bottle with good results. I imagine drops would also be sufficiently accurate - it was good enough for chem lab? (iirc the chem lab dropper was ~1/25ml per drop)

 

[Stikius]

Always mix sugar with the bulk beer. You’ll never get the same amount of sugar in every bottle doing it by hand plus it will take forever.

I've used carbonation drops and had good results with them. Of course they are not accurate to style, but easy to use and no risk of overpriming/bottlebombs.

Edit: They're really handy to have laying around as well. I usually keg my beer, but bottle any leftovers and usually end up with a few bottles every batch. Really nice to just pop in a carbonation drop in every bottle before capping.

 

[Jack_0106]

I’m not sure if someone else already mentioned it, but boilers loose a tremendous amount of heat to the surrounding air through the exposed surface area of the sides and lid. If you look at pictures of most of the commercially available all in one (AIO) systems like the Grainfather and Brewzilla, they usually have some sort of neoprene jacket around them to help reduce the heat loss. I’m not sure what materials you would have access to there but you can probably find something that won’t melt and is easy to cut to shape to fit around the body of your boiler. That should help a lot with getting the last few degrees to the boil.

It actually wasn't that bad. I dropped a degree over the entire hour mash

 

[Jack_0106]

priming calculator

How many volumes of CO2 depends on the type of beer and your personal taste, but 65 grams for 20 liters is kinda low for most styles.

Okay so messing with the calculator I'm going for 2.5 volumes of CO2 which turns out at around 125g of sugar for 20 liters.

Although I've no idea what I'm doing with the calculator. First time I used it it I got 250g of sugar

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Mixing is fine, but I've use 0.1g dry scales to measure per-bottle with good results.

It's easier and more accurate to make up a sugar concentrate and then use a pipette to add it to each bottle - it allows you to adjust the amount you add which is useful if eg like I do, you have a mix of 500ml and 330ml bottles, the latter need a bit more sugar per volume of beer to get the carbonation to come out right.

 

[Jack_0106]

It's easier and more accurate to make up a sugar concentrate and then use a pipette to add it to each bottle - it allows you to adjust the amount you add which is useful if eg like I do, you have a mix of 500ml and 330ml bottles, the latter need a bit more sugar per volume of beer to get the carbonation to come out right.

All of my bottles are 500ml - would making up a dissolved sugar solution not dilute the beer? Doing a bit of googling I've read its anywhere from .25 to a full teaspoon per 500ml bottle.

I've measuring spoons that are marked, .25, .5 and 1 teaspoon so it seems easiest to just add that to each bottle. it takes the fear of oxidation and wort dilution out of it. Alternatively, a teaspoon of sugar weighs ~4 grams. I've 40 bottles so 40*4=160g of sugar to bulk prime the work and then fill bottles?

 

[VikeMan]

would making up a dissolved sugar solution not dilute the beer?

Yes, it does. Every carbonation calculator I've seen (including my own) happily ignores this (among other things they ignore), because although the added sugar increases ABV, that's offset (partially, usually) by the dilution. But IMO it's a good practice to use as little water as possible when making a priming sugar solution, because it's not just ethanol that's being diluted.

ETA: If you really want to know what's going on with the ABV after sugar carbonating, there's the FruitCalc spreadsheet. It's main purpose is predicting ABV changes after fruit additions, but two of the "fruits" available in the dropdowns are sugar and water.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

All of my bottles are 500ml - would making up a dissolved sugar solution not dilute the beer? Doing a bit of googling I've read its anywhere from .25 to a full teaspoon per 500ml bottle.

You can make concentrated sugar solutions, I'm typically adding somewhere around 1.5-2ml in 500ml, the dilution is minimal but it's so much more convenient and quick than handling solid sugar.

 

[Jack_0106]

You can make concentrated sugar solutions, I'm typically adding somewhere around 1.5-2ml in 500ml, the dilution is minimal but it's so much more convenient and quick than handling solid sugar.

Whats your recipe for the sugar solution?

 

[Whisky River]

It actually wasn't that bad. I dropped a degree over the entire hour mash

Glad to hear your mash temps were good, but if you are having trouble reaching 100c and getting a good strong boil the insulation should help with that.

 

[hotbeer]

would making up a dissolved sugar solution not dilute the beer?

Usually I'm mixing almost equal amounts by weight of water and sugar. And that's going to have a SG that is very much higher than whatever your OG of the beer was. The yeast make alcohol along with the CO2 that carbonates your beer. So if anything your ABV goes up. Not much though since you aren't tossing much in.

So for a 5 gallon (19 litres) batch of beer I might use 124 grams of sugar to get it to 2.5 Vols. So a 1/2 cup of water (about 124ml) added to 5 gallons of beer is only going to be a fraction of a percent, 0.66% of the total volume. Are you sure any of your other measurements were that close?

And certainly that little bit more ABV that the almost 50/50 water sugar solution makes won't amount to anything much since the volume you are adding it to is so great.

 

[Jack_0106]

Usually I'm mixing almost equal amounts by weight of water and sugar. And that's going to have a SG that is very much higher than whatever your OG of the beer was. The yeast make alcohol along with the CO2 that carbonates your beer. So if anything your ABV goes up. Not much though since you aren't tossing much in.

So for a 5 gallon (19 litres) batch of beer I might use 124 grams of sugar to get it to 2.5 Vols. So a 1/2 cup of water (about 124ml) added to 5 gallons of beer is only going to be a fraction of a percent, 0.66% of the total volume. Are you sure any of your other measurements were that close?

And certainly that little bit more ABV that the almost 50/50 water sugar solution makes won't amount to anything much since the volume you are adding it to is so great.

That's really great stuff, thanks a million!

I used galaxy hops during the process but I've got maybe 100 grams each of Willamette and cascade and I'm considering putting a 2 gallon into a 2 carboys and dry hopping to see what it comes out like.

I'd end up with 3 gallons of the original, 1 gallon of dry hopped Willamette and 1 gallon of dry hopped cascade. Do you think it's worth doing?