BIAB#1 on a new 70L setup - Mild

[byronb]

After making three kits in quick succession I've decided to try all-grain. I have a 70L pot with two 2.4kW heating elements from homebrewbuilder, tested last night and the PID calibration needs tweaking but the pot is watertight and I can get a good boil.

Chosen a mild with a small grain bill so I'm not wasting much if it all goes wrong For normal batches I'm planning 23L but this recipe is for 15L with 60% brewhouse efficiency and some rough estimates for losses. If my loss estimates are too high I figure I just get more beer and if my efficiency is much better I can liquor back if needed to meet the OG.

Planning a 1.5L starter of WLP002 on the stir-plate first thing Saturday, 0.36L of that will get pitched on Sunday and the rest split into bottles for future brews.

I'm reading John Palmer's book on water at the moment and haven't decided what treatment to do yet, water is very hard and a Salifert test shows alkalinity around 310ppm. I think treating with CRS will increase chloride and sulphate too much so I'm thinking about boiling. If I boil all of the water calcium will be too low and I don't have gypsum to compensate. Thinking of boiling maybe half the water, diluting with unboiled water, testing alkalinity then using as little CRS as possible. I'll probably test alkalinity on just the boiled water too to see how effective that is.

Recipe below, I'll post some pictures as I go along.

Style: Mild

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 30.50 l
Post Boil Volume: 20.28 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 15.00 l
Bottling Volume: 14.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.035 SG
Estimated Color: 31.5 EBC
Estimated IBU: 17.7 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 78.0 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
2.367 kg Pale Malt, Flagon (5.7 EBC) Grain 1 83.0 %
0.194 kg Pale Crystal Malt (60.0 EBC) Grain 2 6.8 %
0.146 kg Crystal Malt (150.0 EBC) Grain 3 5.1 %
0.097 kg Pale Chocolate Malt (525.0 EBC) Grain 4 3.4 %
0.049 kg Black (Patent) Malt (985.0 EBC) Grain 5 1.7 %
15.78 g Goldings, East Kent [5.80 %] - Boil 90.0 Hop 6 15.4 IBUs
0.25 Items Protafloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 7 -
8.77 g Goldings, East Kent [5.80 %] - Boil 15.0 Hop 8 2.3 IBUs
1.00 Items Servomyces (Boil 10.0 mins) Other 9 -
1.0 pkg English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) [35.49 Yeast 10 -


Mash Schedule: BIAB, Medium Body (68C)
Total Grain Weight: 2.852 kg
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Saccharification Add 32.24 l of water at 70.7 C 68.0 C 75 min
Mash Out Heat to 75.6 C over 7 min 75.6 C 10 min

[byronb]

Yeast starter on the stir plate, 1.55L of water boiled with 170g of light DME for 10 minutes then cooled to 22C in a water bath before pitching WLP002.

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5498/144 ... 9de0_z.jpg

[DaveyT]

God choice for a first bash. Dark beers paper over cracks very well in my experience. Not that you'll have any, mind!
Hope it works out.

[Jocky]

For someone that has just done 3 kits before, the level of thinking and detail you've gone into is impressive. Trust me that after drinking kits your all grain beer will blow your mind when you have that first conditioned taste.

[byronb]

Thanks both. Decided to use 75% boiled water and the remaining of tap water. I expected the finished water to be around 40ppm alkalinity but the Salifert kit measured 108ppm. Still a lot better than the 303ppm I started with and I'm estimating calcium at 100ppm, sulphate at 110ppm and chloride at 67ppm so should work out reasonably well I think.

Bringing the water up to mash temperature now. I need to get a larger bag, the angelhomebrew 70L bag doesn't fit on a homebrewbuilder 70L pot, although the bag itself seems large enough so I might be able to cut the strap and sew something onto it to lengthen.

Water treatment: https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3905/144 ... f1ea_z.jpg
BIAB: https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3856/144 ... a13d_z.jpg
Mash Ingredients: https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3909/146 ... 85fa_z.jpg

[byronb]

About half way through the mash now. Switched the PID down to a single 2.4kW element but the temperature is still varying between 67 and 69, I think connecting a pump to the ball valve and using that to recirculate the wort would help a lot.

Trying to read the mash pH with indicator strips but I think it's outside the range of the test strips.

I can use BBCode now so embedding all of the images.

[byronb]

Boiling now. Pre-boil gravity of 1.026 (1.023@30C), BeerSmith estimated 1.023.

[byronb]

Cooled to 22C and have 18.5L at 1.034 (1.031@32C) now aerating in the fermenter, BeerSmith estimated 15L at 1.035. Looks like I got 71.9% efficiency instead of the 60% estimate, I think boil off rate should be around 4L/hour rather than the 6.81 it's currently set to.

With the relatively small batch size and the false bottom still in the FV I didn't get much of the immersion coil submerged in the wort. After it had cooled to 70C I managed to remove the false bottom. Took around 30 minutes to get to 35C and 80 minutes total for 22C but I'm sure it could do much better. I need to find a way or removing the false bottom after I've removed the bag and before I start the boil.

[Jocky]

About half way through the mash now. Switched the PID down to a single 2.4kW element but the temperature is still varying between 67 and 69, I think connecting a pump to the ball valve and using that to recirculate the wort would help a lot.

It certainly will, but if you have a heating element in there you may as well just give it a good stir to avoid hot spots.

Trying to read the mash pH with indicator strips but I think it's outside the range of the test strips.

Interesting to figure out why you had this issue.

It may be due to boiling quite a lot of your water. Boiling removes CO2 from the water, potentially increasing pH.

[faeyd]

Good job, great pics

[byronb]

Thanks faeyd, looking forward to trying again soon

Jocky, I think you're right about removal of CO2 increasing the alkalinity and it probably didn't help that I kept it overnight in an almost full and sealed bucket. It might explain why the CRS didn't work as well as I was expecting. About 20 pages further into the Water book there's a nice graph showing the ratio of CO2 to total alkalinity. For the next brew I think I might get some gypsum to add calcium and just use as much CRS as I can without boosting the sulphate and chloride too much. Tempting to go with RO water in the long term though.

I haven't got fermentation temperature control completely sorted yet so it's a bit warm at 22C but bubbling away so hopefully the high pH didn't harm it too much.

[Jocky]

RO water would give you a fairly blank slate to work from, but I'd see if you can manage it without, make some good beer and then see if shifting to RO helps. You don't want to change too much from brew to brew or you won't know which change made the difference!

In this case you might just need to add some other acids to being the pH down a little after boiling.

[byronb]

Well I've definitely made beer One week later and it's down to 1.013 (2.9% ABV) and tastes good, I can almost pick out the individual malts. Plan is to let it condition for a week then bottle to 1.5 vols with 40g of dextrose.

[DaveyT]

Looks stunning! Excellent.
Have you tasted it yet?

[byronb]

Yeah, really enjoying it. I know my mash pH was too high and fermenter temperature got up to about 24C but no obvious off flavours that I can taste.

Brewed my first Saison yesterday and have a couple more planned with WLP568 and T-58 yeast while the weather is warm, but I'll definitely make this again when it's cooler.