Updates and Mash Efficiency

I have completed the 3rd 5 gallon brew on the electric brewhouse!  Here is what I have learned so far:

1)  Always make sure your hydrometer/reflectometer is calebrated!!!  Failure to do this has caused me an enormous amount of stress.  On my last two brews I relied on a borrowed reflectometer to take my gravity readings and calculate my mash efficiency.  On the second one (American wheat), there is no doubt that I had problems with the grain bed so I chalked the low numbers up to that.  On the third (vanilla porter) the numbers were also low but I had no grain bed issues.  This prompted me to double check using my trusty (mostly calibrated) hydromenter.  Turns out the reflectometer was low by .013!

2) There is not enough drop between my brew vessels and my pumps.  I am not sure why but while making the vanilla porter, I had several instances of my pumps not priming properly.   This was so frustrating that my head nearly exploded.  This situation caused me to loose more than 1 quart of very concentrated wart while tying to get the pump primed.  It also caused me to have problems with chilling down the wort.  I did not realize that the pump was not primed and I ran it dry for quite some time.  It is a wonder I didn't burn it up!  As a solution I plan to elevate my mash tun by about 2 inches, lower the pumps by 2 inches and do a flip/swap of the pump heads so that the input is once again on the bottom.  In this configuration I have never had my pumps fail to prime.

3) It is important to only use the amount of sparge water necessary to get the boil volume you need.  On my last 3 brews I figured that I had plenty of sparge water so I could just keep adding it until I get the proper boil volume.   WRONG!  The extra water is apparently diluting the run off so that there is a lot of sugar left floating in the MLT when the run off reaches volume.  I am hoping that fixing this problem will increase my mash efficiency by quite a bit...

Efficiency!

I need to brew a few more batches to be sure but it looks like my mash efficiency is coming out at about 82%!!!  Not too bad!!!   It may even turn out to be a bit higher once I figure out what my flow rate needs to be on the HERMS side.  I know it was definitely to high on the American wheat due to the fishers that formed in the grain bed and to low on the vanilla porter because the efficiency was down a bit.  As I said above I also plan to calculate my sparge water volume and stick to it!

4/20/15 Northern Brewer Dry Dock URCA Vanilla Porter - 5Gal - UPDATED!

Recipe Data

Date:  4/19/15

Type of beer: Dry Dock URCA Vanilla Porter

Recipe Author:  Northern Brewer

Batch Size:  5gal

Yeast:  Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast.

Sacch' Rest: 156 for 60 min

Mashout: 168 for 10 min

OG at 75% efficiency:  1.061

Fermentation Temperature:   65-70 F

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Brew Day Data

Starter: 1 liter 70grams light DME 36 hrs stir plate
             Stopped stir plate after 24 hrs
             (used temp controller with heater and fan)

Sacch' Rest: 50 min @ 156
                     15 min raising to mashout temp
Mash-Out:   10 min 168
Sparge:         60 min 165

Pre-Boil Gravity:    1.046

Pre-Boil Volume:    7 gal

Mash Efficiency:   75.4%

Realized OG:  1.060

Actual Post Boil Batch:  5 gal

Pitch Temperature: 68

Yeast Nutrient:  2.5 tbs

Notes:  While adding grain I lost about 6 oz to the floor so the actual mash efficiency was most likely just a bit higher.  I also lost several ounces of highly concentrated wort trying to get the recirculation pump primed.  On this batch I ran the recirculation at a VERY slow rate.  I am thinking it may have been a little two slow...  I love the new recirculation kit from Brew Hardware.

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Fermentation Data

No thermowell on this batch so no detailed temperature info.

After 9 hours there was heavy activity in the air lock and there is a very slight brown tint to the liquid in the air lock.  This leads me to believe that there was really heavy activity over night.  The basement temp is about 64 degrees and I made no attempt with this batch to heat or cool it.  I am hoping that by pitching below 168 degrees will keep the overall temp in the fermenter in a reasonable.  It must have been really crazy at some point during the night because there is at least 5 inches of head space in the brew bucket.

After 34 hours the activity is still pretty strong but there is no head of foam on top of the airlock.

The fermentation died off to a bubble every minute or so the evening of the 22nd (about 3 days)

As per the instructions from NB I did not rack to secondary until Sunday May the 3rd.  The smell was great and the taste was even better.  There was no sign of the off taste from PH being too high in the mash.  I am guessing this is because of the amount of dark grain in the grain bill.

Monday May the 11th I cut up the Vanilla beans and put them in the secondary.  I was not sure how to handle sanitation so I just soaked the package, scissors and my hands in sanitizer before cutting.  I opened the fermenter lid just enough to dump the bag, then quickly sealed it.

I am scheduled to keg and start carbonation on the 18th.



 


   

American Wheat Fermentation

A little warm but lots of activity!

Bling for the MLT

Last night while replacing the thermometer on the MLT, I remembered that I had bought a small sheet of polished aluminum to mount to the front of my MLT to bling it up a bit and give me a place to put a cut vinyl sticker of my logo.  I think it makes the old cooler look like it almost belongs along side all the stainless.  To add to the effect I am going to replace the small screws with some short fat lag bolts.  I may also put some on the bottom corners.

4/5/15 Northern Brewer American Wheat - 5gal - UPDATED!

Recipe Data

Date:  4/5/15

Type of beer:  American Wheat 

Recipe Author:  Northern Brewer

Batch Size:  5gal

Yeast:  WLP320 American Hefeweisen

Sacch' Rest: 152 for 60 min

Mashout: 170 for 10 min

OG at 75% efficiency:  1.043

Fermentation Temperature:   65-70 F

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Brew Day Data

Starter: 1 liter 70grams light DME 36 hrs stir plate

Sacch' Rest: 10 min 146 (strike temp. too low)
                     50 min 152
Mash-Out:   10 min 168
Sparge:         35 min 170

Pre-Boil Gravity:    1.036

Pre-Boil Volume:    6.6 gal

Mash Efficiency:   80.27!!

Realized OG:  1.050

Actual Post Boil Batch:  4.5 gal

Pitch Temperature: 70

Yeast Nutrient:  2.5 tbs

Notes:  Sunken recirculation hose and to fast recirculation and sparge caused fishers. UPDATE*  the reflectometer was off by .013.  Instead of the OG being low it was a bit more than expected.  I would not have had to boil as long as I did to bring up the gravity.

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Fermentation Data

Initial Thermowell Temperature:  70 F
Ambient temp was about 69 from heaters and brewing

4   Hours Thermowell Temperature:  73 F  (No Airlock Activity)
Ambient temp was about 67 and falling

12 Hours Thermowell Temperature:  71.6 F (Slight Airlock Activity)
Ambient temp was about 65 and falling

30 Hours Thermowell Temperature:  69.8 F  (Extreme Airlock Activity)
Ambient temp was about 63.

38 Hours Thermowell Temperature:  66.8 F  (Low Airlock Activity)
Ambient temp was about 63

After 15 days in the fermenter I the FG was 1.000 which gives me a ABV of 6.56!

The beer was EXTREMELY clear.  I plan to give it about 5 days to carbonate at about 45 degrees. I will set up the carbonation tonight.


Using the thermowell really opened my eyes!  The yeast activity really kept the temperature up.  Last night at about the 26 hour mark I put a small fan blowing on the base of the fermenter and the temperature began to fall within a few minutes.  My guess is that the air was stratifying around the bucket causing heat build up.  I know what to do next time...  I hope the time the fermentation was above 70 degrees did not cause too much ester production.

UPDATE!!!!

Turns out that the reflectometer  I was using was consistently low by .013!!!  I am changing the Data above to reflect this. 

First Brew with New Coil!

Sunday April 5th was my first brew day using the new HERMS coil.  I did a Norther Brewer American Wheat kit.  I picked this kit because I wanted to try a wheat beer and also because of the simple grain bill for calculating efficiency.  The coil worked as expected but my first solo brew day brought to light some issues:

1. The MLT must be preheated.  I am guessing that with my previous outdoor brews the temperature was warmer which negated the need.  This time it caused me to come out low.  The initial temperature came out at about 146 instead of 152.  It took nearly 10 minutes of recirculation to bring it up to where it should have been. I plan to go about 6 degrees over in the future and stir it with the lid off until it reaches temperature. 
2. I still can not see into the MLT to place the recirculation hose properly.  Due to this and my unfamiliarity with the new high flow fittings, I managed to allow tunneling in the grain bed which brought my pre-boil mash efficiency down to 53 %!  The bad part is that I was not checking gravity readings in the boil kettle until it was too late. It also turns out that I did not have enough DME to make up the difference... When I pulled the MLT to empty and clean it, I discovered that the recirculation hose end was nearly half way buried in the grain bed.   To solve these issues I am going to purchase a clamp on mirror for the racking above the MLT and also will replace the hose with the recirculating mash kit from brewhardware.com. 
3. Recirculation must be done much slower.  After examining the grain bed during clean up it appeared that there were fishers caused from putting too much pull from the bottom side.  I plan to run at about 20% valve open next time.  
4. I did not account for the extra volume required for the new coil and the loss that occurred when I was connecting hoses.  This caused me to under estimate the amount of sparge water required. I kind of freaked when I was within .5 gallons of completing the sparge and the pump ran dry....
5. The body thermometer in the MLT seems to stick.  Flicking on the glass sometimes fixes the problem, sometimes not.  I plan to calibrate my spare and replace it. 
6. Even though I slowed my sparge considerably, it still only took about 35 minutes.  I am sure this did not help my efficiency and may have contributed to pulling the recirculation hose down into the grain bed.  Next time I know what to expect and will do a better job timing this process. 
7. It is VERY difficult to control the flow from the pumps using the ball valves.  When sparging I had the output pump set with the valve open by about 10% but the flow was apparently still to strong and the sparge ended about 20 minutes too soon!  I am going to take the advice I found in an online forum and start with the valve completely closed and move it about 1 degree at a time until I get a trickle in the boil kettle.
8. Even though the basement stays around 64 degrees , once the 70 degree wort was in the fermenter and pitched, the temperature very quickly went up to about 73.  I am guessing this was due to yeast activity.  I had never noticed this before because I had no way to directly monitor the internal fermenter temperature.  With the new thermowell and controller it is easy.  I now know that I need to bring the wort down to a maximum of 65 degrees before pitching.
9. I need about 25 lbs of ice to quickly cool the wort.  I had about 10 pounds and three small frozen water bottles.  This was not enough so I had to drain off 2/3 of the HLT water and refill with cold water from the sink.  Still I was only able to get it down to about 70 including the 20 minutes I let it settle out after the whirlpool.

Things that went well:

1. After reading quite a bit about water profiles I decided to use 1/3 filtered un-softened water.  I have not had a water test done but I know for a fact that our local water is extremely hard.  I know this because I once decided to brew with filtered un-softened tap water.  The result was so many deposits on the equipment, especially the boil kettle, that it took me a whole day to clean it all.   Rather than adding water salts back in to completely softened water, I thought this might be a good option.  We will see how it affects the beer but I do know that there were no deposits on my elements or the kettles.
2. I now know for sure that my boil-off rate when running the element at 80% is about 16% per hour.  In my previous tests I changed the setting a lot to try and find a boil level I was comfortable with.  Now I have a good base.
3. The MLT temperature held steady during the entire mash with only about .5 degree variance once I got everything dialed.  A 3.5 degree higher temperature in the HLT seems to be perfect.  Because my temperature controller does not allow less than 1 degree changes I will have to make the decision for the individual brew if I want it to be .5 above or below my mark.
4. It took about 15 minutes using the coil to bring the MLT up to mash-out at 168 degrees.  I learned that it is best to just set the HLT temperature controller to 175 and leave it.  It seems that the heat exchanger looses a bit if efficiency as the temperatures get higher so 7 degrees is not too much.  I plan next time to simply leave the lid off the HLT while rigging for sparge and adding a little ice to it if necessary to bring it down to 170 before starting.
5. The whirlpool seemed to work great.  The hot and cold break along with the Irish Moss collected in a nice cone in the middle of the boil kettle.

When I checked the fermenter this morning it was gently bubbling.  I am hoping that by this evening it will be in full swing and the ambient temp in my basement brings the temperature down a couple degrees....