Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

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Laripu
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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by Laripu » Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:03 pm

wolfenrook wrote:
Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:21 pm
Do I see a fellow mead maker? :wink:
You do. :D
Secondary FV: As yet unnamed Weizenbock ~7%
Bulk aging: Soodo: Grocery store grape juice wine experiment.
Drinking: Mostly Canadian whisky until I start brewing again.

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by wolfenrook » Mon Feb 12, 2018 12:34 am

Excellent! I'm going to have a go at a braggot one day. :)

So far though, I just had a go at brewing a Saison with nearly an entire jar of heather honey added at the end of the boil. It came out delicious!

Oddly I mostly make the mead for my wife and friends, it's a bit too strong for me. lol That said, I rather enjoy a good single malt or bourbon... lol

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by Laripu » Mon Feb 12, 2018 1:33 am

wolfenrook wrote:
Mon Feb 12, 2018 12:34 am
Excellent! I'm going to have a go at a braggot one day. :)
If you'd like a go at Old 11-ish, here's the recipe. It's for 23 litres. (Units will be mixed, because I'm American. :) Pretty mixed myself.)

10 lbs honey (4.54 kg. cheap commercial honey is ok)
3 pounds light DME (1.4 kg)
4 litres apple juice (commercial, but no preservatives) - refrigerated
4 litres water, boiled, cooled, in a sanitized jug - refrigerated.
Yeast nutrient
1/2 teaspoon Marmite (used as a yeast nutrient)
4 ounces fresh ginger, peeled, sliced. (Start with 5 ounces.) - for primary
4 ounces fresh ginger, peeled, sliced. (Start with 5 ounces = 142g.) - for secondary
4 ounces fresh ginger, peeled, sliced fine. (Start with 5 ounces.) - to make a ginger tea, stirred in at bottling with priming sugar
3 packs Lallemand EC-1118 (champagne yeast) - ferment with two, third is added at bottling.

The night before, boil and cool 4+ litres of water, pour into sanitized jug and refigerate. Also refrigerate apple juice.
On brew day, 15 litres of water in a pot with yeast nutrient, Marmite, 4 ounces sliced ginger. Boil.
After 30 minutes, remove from heat, add DME, stir to dissolve, return to heat, and boil 10 minutes.
Remove from heat, add honey and allow the pot to sit, covered, 15 minutes. (Honey is sanitized, but aromas aren't boiled off.)
Cool. Since your going to add cold water and cold apple juice, it's ok to cool to a higher temperature than pitching temp. How much to cool depends on your refigerator temperature.

Example: 8 litres @ 42°F plus 15 litres @ 85°F gives (8L*42°F+15L*85°F)/23L = 70°F = 21°C. In practise, it will be a bit warmer since the wort has higher gravity than the water and AJ. That gives the wort more heat per degree. Close enough for this, though.

Since the quantity boiled is fairly small, you can use a smallish pot that holds 20L, and cool it by immersion in the sink.

Pour the apple juice into the fermenting vessel. Pour the cooled braggot wort (including ginger)into the FV. Top up with cold water. Stir. Pitch 2 rehydrated packs of the Lallemand yeast. (They're 5g each.) Ferment at room temperature.

After primary fermentation finishes, about two weeks, siphon into a glass secondary FV onto another 4 ounces of peeled sliced ginger.

Four months later, siphon into another glass FV. Four months after that, it's bottling time. Siphon into bottling bucket. Boil 4 ounces of ginger for 30 minutes, cool, and add to the bottling bucket. Add boiled/cooled priming sugar solution, stir well. Rehydrate one 5g packet of yeast and stir that in. Bottle; bottles should be 300 to 360 ml. (Small bottles: see last line below.) Store at room temperature.

This improves with age for a long time. Don't open a bottle for 3 months. It will be even better after 6 months.

It's f**kin' hallucinogenic.
Secondary FV: As yet unnamed Weizenbock ~7%
Bulk aging: Soodo: Grocery store grape juice wine experiment.
Drinking: Mostly Canadian whisky until I start brewing again.

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by wolfenrook » Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:53 am

Thanks for the recipe bud. Sadly I won't be able to make it though, my wife pukes if she gets a strong smell of ginger, she hates it! Makes me sad as I love ginger... She's the same with cinnamon and nutmeg too... So basically some of my favourite spices... lol She was just about able to tolerate it when I made ginger mead as most of the flavour was added post fermentation using ginger flavouring (I did use powdered ginger in it, but it blew out of the airlock...). lol

She didn't overly like the hydromel I made either.... Says it tastes weird, with a twang of ale to it... Uhm yeah, I made it with an ale yeast.... lol Next time I do one I'll use mead yeast.

Oh and next brew will be a stab at brewing a Hobgoblin Gold clone, one of our fave commercial beers.

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by wolfenrook » Wed Feb 14, 2018 10:40 pm

I'm going to put this here, as it's the EXACT brew day process I used on this brew, and somebody new might find it helpful maybe. :)

Figure it might be helpful if I detail my current process, as I have changed it over time, so it's now different from the standard BIAB process. I welcome suggestions etc, but please know that I am quite happy with my process as is, that doesn't mean that I dislike new ideas though. :wink: My current process has been influenced a lot by having to brew in the family kitchen, fitting in around normal meal times etc. It's not the fastest way to do things for sure, but it works way better for me.

So, I start preparation the night before, preparing my brewing water. I do this as I mix water filtered through my RO filter with a much smaller volume of our tap water (our tap water has VERY high alkalinity, TDS and GH. I have found that mixing some back in though adds back the salts I WANT for the brew, without ending up with a high mash pH again. Down the line I will probably phase this out, replacing it with adding the salts back myself, but for now it has been working fine.). It takes a LONG time to get 25 litres of RO filtered water... Doing it on the day I brew just slows me down.

The next day, I try to start at around 8 am. I fill my ACE with the strike water (from the water prepared the night before) in the diner area of the room (where my racks are, we don't eat in there. lol), after making sure the tap is closed, the bazooka is fitted, false bottom in place, back in.... The rest of the water goes into my 33 litre SS pan on the stove to sit and wait. Set my boiler to strike temp and turn it on. Time to weigh my grain. No big scales etc here, just kitchen scales, so I weigh a bit at a time in a large mixing bowl, tipping this into a clean bucket until I have all of my grist prepared.

Once at strike temperature, my co-brewer (my wife) joins me, I turn off the elements, and we dough in. She adds the grain to the BIAB bag in the boiler with a small scoop, I stir whilst she scoops the next lot. Zero dough balls ever, lovely and well stirred in mash. Once it's all in I give it a bit more of a stir (making sure to lift the grain off the bottom of the bag into the water column), check the temp with a thermometer (the boiler one lies...). If all is well (it usually is) on goes the lid, and I wrap the whole thing with airline blankets (this is in addition the insulation fitted to the boiler, in the form of an exercise mat and a layer of reflective bubble wrap stuff). I have found that by wrapping it like this I don't need to heat it back up at all over a 90 minute mash (the temp display on the boiler would have me reheating regularly, but a proper thermometer barely moves, which is why I make sure to turn off the elements). Time to start the mash timer (Beersmith 2 Android app), I stir the mash every 20 minutes, again making sure to get all of the grain off the bottom of the boiler. Whilst it's mashing, I weigh out my hops, and if I need to I label them with the time they go in (sometimes it's pretty obvious, when your bittering addition is huge and the only other addition is a small flavour one... lol). 20 minutes before the end of the mash, I turn the heat on under my 33 litre pan and heat the water in there to 76 degrees. Having done some reading, I wouldn't mind using those 17 minutes of mash out to experiment with recirculation/vorlauf, see if I can get clearer wort from the mash. I can mash in the diner end for the simple reason that there isn't really any steam produced. I fetch the packet of yeast out of the fridge, and put about 250 mls of boiled water into a small sanitised jug to cool.

End of mash, I do a mash out at 76 degrees. I turn up the temperature on my boiler, turn on both elements and stir, a lot, until it hits mash out temp. Off go the elements, back on go the blankets, rest for 10 minutes.

This is where it gets different... I don't lift and drain the bag. Instead, I run the wort off into the bucket I had the prepared water in, put a lid on and move it to the other end of the room. I then rinse the grain in the bag/sparge, with the water from that 33l pan, still in the boiler. SS colander goes on the rim over the bag, and my wife gently pours the "sparge" water through the colander (she seems to get a higher sparge SG than I do... lol). Once the pan is empty, I take over and give the bag of grain a good dunk and swish. At this point, the sparge liquor has been turned into a milky cloudy mess, so I keep passing the runnings back through the colander until they clear again (vorlauf?). Doing this last brew, I got an SG of 1.026 in the sparge runnings! I drain the boiler again, adding this to my bucket of wort. Grain bag gets rested on a rack over another bucket to drain more. False bottom is removed (I tried leaving it in for the boil, I ended up with MORE trub rather than less).

Now comes time to relocate my ACE to the other side of the room, right in front of the cooker.... I do this, as we have a massive, powerful, extractor hood there that sucks the steam right out of the room. Wort goes back into the boiler, and it gets set to max temp (110 degrees) for the boil, both elements on. As more wort drains from the bag I add this to the wort in the kettle. If I am a little under volume once the bag drain has slowed down to next to nothing (I tend to give it only a gentle squeeze, as a more vigorous one just puts tons of flour into my wort again...), I'll add a bit more RO filtered water. Once a rolling boil is reached, I switch off the 600 watt element, add my bittering hops and start my boil timer (Beersmith 2 Android app). The app beeps when I need to make any hop additions, protafloc, wort chiller or the like (they both go in at 10 mins, 1/4 protafloc tablet first, then the wort chiller, I turn the 600 watt element back on briefly to get the rolling boil back faster). I've gone back to 90 minute boils, as find they work best for me. Also in the last 10 minutes of the boil I fit a short length of cured silicone tubing to the boiler tap, and start repeatedly running boiling wort through it into a jug, sanitise the jug and the tubing, wort goes back into the top of the boiler.
rollingboil.jpg
Whilst the boil is going, I empty out my grain bag, rinse it well, and give it a soak in some percarbonate. I also clean any equipment that I can, wash out the bucket I used for the brewing water and wort and sanitise it with Starsan, as that baby is gonna be my FV. I sanitise the boiler lid too with some Starsan.

End of the boil, I turn the water supply to my immersion chiller on, once the wort has stopped producing steam (usually at or just under 80 degrees C) I put the boiler lid loosely on top. I try to get the wort down to about 19 degrees C as quickly as possible.
coldbreak.jpg
Once it's there, out comes the IC, and the lid goes on properly whilst the wort settles down. Yeast goes into the cooled boiled & cooled water to rehydrate.
Yeast After.jpg
When the time comes, wort gets transferred SLOWLY (tap turned down, so just a thin stream splashes into the FV) into the FV. I make sure it splashes lots, usually producing a big layer of foam in the process. I tip the boiler to get the last dregs out. FV is taken back to the racking in the diner area, yeast is pitched, lid goes on. Blow off tube is fitted, bucket gets lifted onto top shelf of brewing rack. End of the blow of tube goes into a 2 litre water bottle with a bit of Starsan in the bottom.
KettleTrub.jpg
trub.jpg
Equipment gets washed and put away. lol

I am very happy with my efficiency (you'll call me a liar, or try to prove me wrong, if I tell you what the software says I get, so I'll just say it's over 80%.... lol). I'd love to get clearer wort into the boil though, hence I am looking into vorlaufing, and maybe getting a recirculation pump to use during the mash stage.

Most importantly of all, touch wood I've not produced bad beer yet. In fact since I started using these techniques it's actually improved!

It takes time, and it makes my back and arms ache (who needs a gym? lol), so it wouldn't be everybody's idea of a good system for sure.... :lol: It works for me though. YMMV.

So yeah, from my last brew on (Wen's Lunch), that's my typical brew day. No stress, no fuss.

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by wolfenrook » Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:54 pm

Just took a sample to check the specific gravity (1.009, 80% attenuation, so probably the FG).

Smells lovely, tastes lovely. Tiny bit hazy, but should settle out more over time. No banana so far, fingers crossed it stays that way.
WensGravity.jpg

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by wolfenrook » Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:14 am

The haze is clearing nicely. Probably be bottling this today (waiting on a delivery of bottles from DPD).
IMG_20180222_143025.jpg

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by dbambrick996 » Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:30 pm

Be interested to see how this turns out with dried yeast.

Going for a triple tomorrow and using lellemand abbay.

Would love to find a good Belgian dry yeast strain that comes somewhat close to liquid

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by wolfenrook » Fri Feb 23, 2018 7:03 pm

Close to liquid? Tall order that... lol Samples have been delicious though.

That's Wen's Lunch bottled and put away to condition, and what a faff! I decided to try bottling straight from secondary, and prime using a sugar solution and a syringe into the bottles... Somewhere along the line something was measuring wrong, either the jug or my syringe. I dissolved the sugar into 200 mls of boiled water, then divided 200/43 (estimating 43 bottled). Finished bottling, find the jug says I still have 100mls left, which obviously was impossible..... Anyway, ended up opening them back up to add the rest, plus a carb drop each for some bottles as ran out of solution too soon... No winning on that one... I'm not worried about over-carbonation though, they're in PET and been a Patersbier it'll survive fine been a bit fizzy. Last time I bottle prime rather than batch priming though, what a sticky faff!

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by Laripu » Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:07 am

dbambrick996 wrote:
Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:30 pm
Be interested to see how this turns out with dried yeast.

Going for a triple tomorrow and using lellemand abbay.

Would love to find a good Belgian dry yeast strain that comes somewhat close to liquid
I've used Lallemand yeasts Abbaye and Belle Saison. Both produced reasonable beer, but to my taste, the saison yeast was closer to style. On the other hand, the one I made with Abbaye was a gruit beer, so maybe the herbs masked the Belgian character. I'll try the Abbaye again one day, because I do prefer strong beer.
Secondary FV: As yet unnamed Weizenbock ~7%
Bulk aging: Soodo: Grocery store grape juice wine experiment.
Drinking: Mostly Canadian whisky until I start brewing again.

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by Manngold » Sat Feb 24, 2018 4:36 am

Wolfen, I would have only bottle primed if I could have placed a carb drop in all. AFAIK you could have made your sugar solution and added it directly to the FV before bottling. Just make sure you have a sanitised paddle to give it a nice mix.

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by wolfenrook » Sat Feb 24, 2018 10:01 am

I usually do batch prime Manngold. I didn't this time for 2 reasons really. My "bottling bucket" was in use as an FV (my original bottling bucket the tap is too high up so I end up leaving too much beer behind) and I couldn't prime in the secondary bucket as there was a thin layer of yeast settled onto the bottom that would have ended up stirred up.

I'm not a big fan of carb drops to be honest. I used them in a brew when I first started brewing, and found they tended to leave me with pretty flat beer even using 2 or 3 of them in a 500 mls bottle. I get much better results using corn sugar (I tried using normal sugar, but found it made my beer taste like there was cider in it).

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by Manngold » Sat Feb 24, 2018 10:16 am

That's odd. I don't use plastic bottles anymore, but have found the Crossmyloof carb drops to give me good results.

I will be batch priming today anyway, even though I don't always. I basically find that it sometimes extends my bottling day too much.

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by wolfenrook » Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:10 pm

The main thing that extends my bottling day these days is doing everything myself. My wife used to help by sanitising the bottles and putting the caps on once I filled the bottles, but the last few brews she's skived off... She still drinks most of the beer though... lol On the flip side, it's much better organised......

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Re: Wen's Lunch (Patersbier) AG BIAB #8

Post by Laripu » Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:18 pm

wolfenrook wrote:
Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:10 pm
lol On the flip side, it's much better organised......
I also prefer the 'spousal unit' and the dogs to be out of the kitchen when I'm working there.

I'm much more efficient when I don't have furry things in my way ... Or the dogs, either. ;)
Last edited by Laripu on Sat Feb 24, 2018 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Secondary FV: As yet unnamed Weizenbock ~7%
Bulk aging: Soodo: Grocery store grape juice wine experiment.
Drinking: Mostly Canadian whisky until I start brewing again.

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