Second brew day. Improvements and learning points

[Craig George]

I asked on here for some help after my first brew day and have implemented some of the suggestions so would just like to give an update on my second brew day and see what I can do from here to improve even further.

Method: BIAB
Type: IPA
expected OG: 1.059
expected FG: 1.010
expected efficiency: 60%
IBUs: 65

Batch size: 8 litres (to fit in 10 litre fermenter)
Grains: 2.5kg maris otter
Hops: Citra & Amarillo (5g of each at 60 min), Citra & Amarillo (10g of each at 10 min), Citra & Amarillo (15g of each 3 day dry hop)

I only have a 12 Litre kettle at the minute so some messing around is needed to maximise the batch size.

I filled the kettle to 12 litres with bottled water and added 4g gypsum to take the water profile to: 71 Calcium, 4 Magnesium, 11 Sodium, 14 Chloride, 151 Sulphate, 36 Bicarbonate. I got as close as possible to the 'light and hoppy' water profile on brewers friend.

Removed 1/4 of the kettle water into another pan. Heated to a strike temp of 77°C and added the grains, mixed up until it had no dough balls, this took the temp down to 66°C. I put the kettle in a warm oven to keep the temperature constant. Checked after half an hour and it had dropped 1°C so I added some hot water, stirred and put it back in the oven. Once the full hour was over, I took the kettle out of the oven, lifted out the bag and set it on a strainer above the kettle. I then poured 77°C sparge water over the grain and set the bag aside once it had drained. The kettle was around 9 litres at this point so I topped it up to 11 litres for the boil.

Once the boil had started, I added the 10g of hops in a hop bag. With 10 mins to go, I added the 20g hops in a hop bag. Once the 60 minute boil was up, I removed both hop bags and put the kettle in a sink with ice packs and cold water.

Pitched half a pack of US05 yeast at 18°C, shook the fermenter to oxygenate and put on the airlock. A few people mentioned temperature control in my last post so I have added a stick on thermometer to the fermenter. I tested this previously with various temperatures of water and a proper thermometer to check the accuracy.

Fermentation started after 1 day. Increased considerably after 2 days and the temperature rose to around 22-23°C so I put a wet towel over the fermentor and it brought the temperature down to around 18-19°C.

So far, everything is going well. My actual OG ended up being 1.072, so my efficiency was around 75% rather than 60%. The abv will probably be increased to around 8% and IBU will be around 60.

Apart from the obvious reduction in grain bill for the next batch to allow for the increased efficiency, what do you think I could improve on?

 

[Craig George]

Just to add, everything used post boil was sanitised with star san

 

[Kharnynb]

doing well.

You could have skipped the warm water after 30 minutes, it 99% likely does not affect the end product in any way as it would have been mostly mashed anyway.

are you dry-hopping? I see no whirlpool/last minute additions that would be common for ipa.(edit, nvm, saw the dryhop now)

living in liverpool, you could likely have used your tap water for most brewing except maybe lager.

rehydrating the yeast in boiled, then cooled to 30 degree

 

[Craig George]

Yes, I'd imagine I could use tap water but our water is slightly hard with 130ppm Bicarbonate. For the sake of £2, I decided to use bottled so that I could get closer to the brewers friend water profile. I don't really know how much difference it will make so I might do two batches exactly the same but one with tap an one with bottled water and see if there's any noticeable difference.

How would you rehydrate the yeast? Just put it in some water?

 

[tgolanos]

How would you rehydrate the yeast? Just put it in some water?

Mix a little DME with water and add your yeast. I boil the water/DME mix in the microwave to sanitize - do not boil your yeast! That's all there is to it.

One more thing to keep in mind as you learn the process is that your temperature strip won't tell you the exact temperature. Fermentation causes heat, so if your strip says 18°, the beer is likely at ~22°. You can counter this by bringing your temps down slightly more. The towel was a good idea; putting your fermenter into swamp cooler would probably put you right in range.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

The kettle was around 9 litres at this point so I topped it up to 11 litres for the boil.

Your process sounds decent. Since you are working in a sparge, I would increase your sparge water instead of just adding water to the kettle. Once you figure out the grain absorption of your process (mostly a factor of your grain crush and bag draining...I think) it is fairly easy to calculate both your mash and sparge water volumes. Your efficiency was decent, but sparging vs topping up should boost that a little.

From my understanding, the recommended way to pitch dry yeast these days is to sprinkle it on top of the wort after aeration. Don't mix it in and don't rehydrate. You will see conflicting advice on this. Since dried yeast are pretty tough, do what works for you.

P.S. A thermometer stuck to the side if your fermenter will be very close to the actual temperature of the beer inside.

 

[Kharnynb]

don't use dme in rehydrating, you're not trying to feed the yeast, you are trying to make they yeast cells fill with water before they go into a high sugar enviroment, dme would just reduce the effect.

boil some water, put it in a clean jam jar (about 2 dl), cover with cling film and let cool to 30 degrees Celcius, then add the yeast and swirl a bit to mix and let stand for 15 minutes.

 

[Craig George]

Your process sounds decent. Since you are working in a sparge, I would increase your sparge water instead of just adding water to the kettle.

The reason for adding water to the kettle instead of sparging with extra water is because the bag is sat in a colander which is resting in the kettle. I sparge until the kettle is full but then the removal of the colander and grain bag makes the wort level in the kettle drop due to the displacement of the grain and colander. I suppose the way around it is to measure the volume in the kettle once the grain bag has been removed and then sparge the right volume into a bucket and then add that liquid to the kettle.