An Introduction to 3V Brewing: From a layman's perspective.

Get advice on making beer from raw ingredients (malt, hops, water and yeast)
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Kyle_T
Mild King
Posts: 560
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 12:08 pm
Location: Essex

An Introduction to 3V Brewing: From a layman's perspective.

Post by Kyle_T » Fri Jul 18, 2014 8:06 pm

Hello brewers and brewessess,

This will be my second attempt at a 'How-To' guide (The first being a kit one) on brewing with a new 3V system, it will include the recipe I made on the day, what I ended up with and a couple of the mistakes made along the way.

To begin with, there is more than one way you can brew with a 3V system, it doesn't have to be a 3 Tier Gravity system, as you will see by mine and my mates, we use a hybrid 2 Tier, part gravity and part pump/manual labour system.

Admittedly most of the system we put together was store bought...in fact all of it was I think so we did virtually no work on it at all apart from drilling a few holes and screwing some bits together, it was more to showcase what you can buy from the growing number of homebrew suppliers.

I shall include a list of all the suppliers I used and a special thanks goes to all of them for their brilliant delivery service and customer satisfaction.

But anyway, time to get on with the show, as you can see from the picture below this is the completed system we made, it has a 50L Hot Liquor Tank with a sight glass and 2.3Kw kettle element, powered by a STC-1000 Temperature Control Unit, a 38.5L Insulated Thermopot Mash Tun with Rotating Sparge Arm and a 50L Boiler on a 7.5Kw Propane gas burner, it also has a 12V DC Solar pump but we didn't actually use this on the Brewday:

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Note: On the day we changed the way the HLT was standing on the plastic crate by using a wooden set of steps, a quick and effective temporary method.

The other equipment involved on the day was:

2 x 25L Fermenting Buckets.
2 x 25L Wine Fermenters.
2 x 2L Plastic Measuring Jugs.
1 x Plastic Mash Paddle.
1 x Plastic Trial Jar.
1 x Beer Hydrometer.
1 x Digital Thermometer.

So, onto Step 1: The recipe.

As some of you will know I have a special place in my brew calendar for Milds and that was the chosen brew for this day, I had the recipe ready to go and I will condense the timeline to remove some of the problems we had on our day, this was the recipe chosen for the day and how it should of come out:

'Big Brute Mild'

All Grain - 23 Litres.
Style: Mild
OG: 1.041
FG: 1.009
IBU: 16
SRM: 18
ABV: 4.2%
Balance: 0.38

Grain Bill:

3.0kg Mild Ale Malt (75.7%)
0.38kg Crystal Malt - Dark (9.6%)
0.34kg Invert Sugar (8.6%)
0.15kg Flaked Maize (3.8%)
88g Chocolate Malt (2.2%)

68 deg/c mash for 90 minutes.
60 minute boil time.

Hop Bill:

20g Fuggles Leaf 6.2% AA @ 60 minutes: IBU: 12
15g Goldings (EK) Leaf 6.5% AA @ 10 minutes: IBU: 4

Misc:

3g Irish Moss @ 10 minutes.

Yeast:

Gervin GV-12 English Ale Yeast 11g

Note: Didn't have 400g of crystal only 382g so upped the chocolate malt from 75g to 88g to compensate.

One little piece of advice that I was given recently is to weight your grains out the day before along with the hops and if possible, fix your HLT to a timer and fill it the night before so it is pre heated for the brewing day, so, using a little brewers licence we shall go for that method.

Step 2: 12 Hours before B-Day, 19:00.

I didn't sterilise anything this time, just made sure it was well rinsed, dried and cleaned.

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Filled up to 45 Litres and set on a timer for 05:30, the picture below is the STC-1000 heating the HLT to 76deg/c for my strike temp on Brewday:

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Step 3: B-Day, 07:00.

By some simple calculations and testing you will have worked out the dead space in your mash tun, the loss left behind at the end and the mash liquor you will need for your ratio, I went with 2.5L/Kg, so by some simple maths, 3.63 x 2.5 = 9.07 + 4.1 = 13.17 or 13.2L rounded up (Because I am lazy) and heated to my chosen strike temp it was time to get going.

The chosen method for this task today was a new one to me called under letting, this involves filling the mash tun from the bottom up with the grain already in the tun, compared to the more traditional manner of filling the tun with your mash liquor and then pouring the grain mix in and stirring.

My tun has the added benefit of a false bottom so what I did was drain my mash liquor until it reached the false bottom, let it sit for 5 minutes or so to preheat, poured in the grain mix and then carried on draining the remainder of the mash liquor and stirring the grain until I was happy with the mash thickness.

In hindsight I should have preheated the tun for longer as it affected my mash temp closer to the end.

This is during the under let:

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Step 3: The Mash, 07:10

The beginning of the mash, mash temp was 0.5deg higher but that really isn't an issue:

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Left sealed and undisturbed for 90 minutes.

Step 4: End of mash and the Sparge, 08:40.

As you can see the temp had lost a fair bit during the mash and I reckon this is my fault through not preheating it enough beforehand and this was followed by the beginning of the sparge with the liquor heated up to 80deg/c, this is the point where you collect your first runnings and refilled them through the tun during the sparge, this is due to it being full of loose bits of grain, usually a few litres will do and then it should run clear:

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The benefit of the way our system works is once you match your flow rates, it pretty much controls itself, with the HLT up high enough, the sparge arm span all the way to nothing, herein lies my second mistake, I got distracted whilst during the sparge and before I knew it, the sight glass was completely empty.

Step 5: The Pre-Boil Begins, 09:00.

As I massively over sparged it pushed my boil to the limits, ended up with 46L, but in a normal case, I just sparge until I collect 30L in my fermenting buckets for a 90 minute boil, my boil took me 2.5 hours all told:

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The next photo is the hot break, my understanding of this (being a bit thick) is it's all the crap and bad stuff that floats up just before the boil begins and drops back into the wort, at this point I like to skim as much as I can off as I think it gives you a clearer beer at the end:

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Step 6: The Boil, 09:45.

The following photographs are the actual boil, 90 minute hops and 10 minute hop additions, at the 10 minute mark I also throw in 1 teaspoon of Irish Moss and my Immersion Coil Chiller:

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Step 7: Gas off, 20 minute rest and chill, 11:15:

This part is pretty straight forward, the 20 minute rest is for what I believe is called the cold break, all the proteins raise to the surface, clump together and then settle in a mass at the bottom of the boiler along with the spent hops, on average it take about 35 minutes to chill a standard 23L brew:

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I forgot to take a photo of the cold break but I will try and get one next time.

Step 8: Transfer to Primary Fermenter and Hydrometer Reading, 12:10:

This is the time when your wort has been chilled to around an even 20deg/c that you can begin to transfer to your fermenter, I usually drain off a litre or so just to let the trub at the bottom settle and begin to filter, the litre I drain off is gently returned to the boiler to be filtered again, I also collect a 100ml sample and test it with my hydrometer:

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After this last step is done I clean down the equipment and move the fermenter to a stable temperature area and pitch the yeast, this time I did my first 200ml yeast starter but didn't photograph that either, after 7 days a couple of further hydrometer tests I will transfer it to my polypin ready for conditioning.

All done and dusted by 13:00.

This was what I collected after my mistakes and took home, as I mentioned before, I have taken out the added time in the guide to give a rough timeline of events for a standard 23L Brewday without the mistakes I made and you should end up with the original recipe figures at the top of the page if all goes well:

'Big Brute Mild'

All Grain - 30 Litres.
Style: Mild
OG: 1.036
FG: 1.008
IBU: 13
SRM: 15
ABV: 3.7%
Balance: 0.37

Grain Bill:

3.0kg Mild Ale Malt (75.7%)
0.38kg Crystal Malt - Dark (9.6%)
0.34kg Invert Sugar (8.6%)
0.15kg Flaked Maize (3.8%)
88g Chocolate Malt (2.2%)


68 deg/c mash for 90 minutes.
90 minute boil time.

Hop Bill:

20g Fuggles Leaf 6.2% AA @ 90 minutes: IBU: 11
15g Goldings (EK) Leaf 6.5% AA @ 10 minutes: IBU: 3

Misc:

3g Irish Moss @ 10 minutes.

Yeast:

Gervin GV-12 English Ale Yeast Starter 200ml.


I apologise for waffling on somewhat but I have tried to include as much detail as possible but I'm sure I have forgotten a few bits along the way, I hope you have enjoyed reading it despite its length and it will have been of some use to people either looking at a 3V system or someone just starting out on one.

Many Thanks

Kyle
My Ridleys' Brewery Blog:
http://www.theessexbrewer.wordpress.com

TenbobdaN1

Re: An Introduction to 3V Brewing: From a layman's perspecti

Post by TenbobdaN1 » Fri Oct 24, 2014 5:28 pm

Hi Kyle_T

Love your 3V system - it's a bit more sophisticated than mine as I have a plastic HLT ( an old electrim boiler) but very similar, even down to the set of steps! I use them to load the HLT as I don't have any pumps yet. My most treasured HB possession is my 50L stainless steel boiler- a godsend! Biggest problem for me is at the end of the brewday when I have to lift a 23L FV into my incubator. It's a 2 person lift so I have to wait for the wife to help me! Very interesting use of Flaked Maize in your mild. I bought some for use in lager but seeing your recipe I'm tempted to use it for mild and will probably base my recipe on yours. What was the final verdict? Would you make any further changes?
Cheers
Tenbobdan, Warwickshire, England
Drinking - Hornet Bitter ( clone of Tim Taylor Landlord)
Maturing - Youngs Double Chocolate Stout
FV - Exmoor Gold

User avatar
Kyle_T
Mild King
Posts: 560
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 12:08 pm
Location: Essex

Re: An Introduction to 3V Brewing: From a layman's perspecti

Post by Kyle_T » Fri Oct 24, 2014 5:36 pm

Hello mate,

Glad you like the system. I have one pump that I use for transfers just to cut out that part of the heavy lifting. I altered it slight to have 400g of dark crystal and 80g of Chocolate but other than that I haven't changed it and I'm on my 3rd lot of it so far. Give it 3 weeks to condition and you get a full bodied, easy drinking beer with a pretty decent punch of caramel. Good if you have a sweet tooth. Seems to go down a storm amongst friends and family.

Any other questions feel free to ask.

Cheers
My Ridleys' Brewery Blog:
http://www.theessexbrewer.wordpress.com

dave_h
Tippler
Posts: 23
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2018 2:21 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: An Introduction to 3V Brewing: From a layman's perspective.

Post by dave_h » Thu Sep 06, 2018 5:16 pm

Looks like a great system!

Im not an electrician but my understanding is that the stc 1000 is 10amp, and on a 240v circuit the max is 2.4kW and you are running very close to that for a long time. Nothing is getting hot? It might be worth looking into?

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