AG#5 Dead Pump IPA

[och29]

I'm going to be updating this throughout the day (partly to give me an idea of my own timings) but first some background: last night while I was heating up about 80 litres of water for a big brewday I realised that both my pumps were dead. I had a leak from a pipe that also damaged two of my three scales. Anyway rather than quit on a brewday I'm going for a 'use it up' brew and reckon it's going to be a far more involved brewday than normal!

Water's heating up...time to decide on a recipe!

[och29]

In an effort to clean up even more I updated my Beersmith inventory and have the following hops open in the freezer:

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87.00 g               Cascade [5.50 %] 
90.00 g               Citra [12.00 %]   
79.00 g               Amarillo Gold [8.50 %]  
54.00 g               Kohatu [7.80 %]
82.00 g               Motueka [7.00 %]

I think this is shaping up to be an IPA with massive aroma!

[och29]

So here it is... a rather ridiculous use up recipe!

Batch size 40l
Est ABV 7.1%
Est IBU 64

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Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
10.00 kg              Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM)            Grain         1        62.5 %        
2.00 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM)    Grain         2        12.5 %        
1.50 kg               Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)             Grain         3        9.4 %         
1.50 kg               Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)             Grain         4        9.4 %         
1.00 kg               White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)               Grain         5        6.3 %         
79.00 g               Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 25.0 min   Hop           6        22.1 IBUs     
54.00 g               Kohatu [7.80 %] - Boil 25.0 min          Hop           7        13.9 IBUs     
90.00 g               Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min          Hop           8        18.6 IBUs     
82.00 g               Motueka [7.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool  25.0 Hop           9        9.5 IBUs      
87.00 g               Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 0.0 Days      Hop           10       0.0 IBUs      

[jaroporter]

mmmm love it! any excuse ey? great chance for some crazy hop combos. good luck with the brewing - hope you don't have to cart 80L about by hand now?!

[och29]

Ok, all ready to go. Overshot my HLT temp as I'm used to having a pump even out the water temp for me so I've got my newly built extraction lid on top to try and cool the water.






Hopefully the water for the mash will move by gravity... not sure about the rest of the day!

[och29]

Mash is one and oh my doughballs! I've always underlet (put the grain in the mash tun and slowly pumped water in from below) and this time is the first time I've ever had doughballs (clumps of grain that are dry in the middle). Anyway it's all ready to go now!


The gravity feed worked for about 35 litres before I switched to using a measuring jug. Mash temp wise I aimed for 66C and ended up with 66.8C which given I normally use a HERMS to keep the mash temp should play in my favour. Temperature is shown in the bottom left:


Not the best insulation in the world but it will have to do!


Depending on temps I might run the mash a little longer than 60 minutes to account for the loss of efficiency compared to my normal... I've compensated for 65% efficiency in the recipe.

[och29]

Ok, so that was a fairly involved process so I'm now heating for the boil.

Anyway, at the end of 60mins the mash tun was at 63.2C (a drop of 5.6C). My temperature probe is in the lower part of the mash tun and doesn't extend that far in so it might have been around 64C on average.


The extractor lid build left me with the centre of a pot lid so I decided to modify it to allow me to 'manually' fly sparge:


The aim is to add water on top of the grain without disrupting the structure of the grain... the grain bed.

I ended up using a spare 100L pot to drain the mash:


It ended up on the floor so I would get a better flow rate.

Looks pretty clear:


First runnings:


(Almost)Final runnings:




I ended up over my predicted preboil gravity but under volume. Unsurprising due to my poor/slow sparge technique. I liquored back to make up my pre-boil volume by adding 5-ish litres of water.

The sweet wort had dropped to about 55C so it's been taking quite a while to get to the boil. When I took the photo it was at 92.1C. You can also see that I've lost 1.3kg since the start and that means roughly 1.3L of water!


and looking amazing!

[och29]

25 mins left on the boil and things are starting to get busy again. Just clocked over to 6L of water lost and time to add the first hops!


Hop rocket is now in StarSan and ready for 72g of hops:


Whirlfloc goes in in 5 mins and then the citra 5 mins after that. Since I was a bit short on all the hops I added in some spare Ahtanum to make up the IBUs.


.... actually they've just gone in... time flies!

[och29]

Right, brewing is over and the fermenter has 43 litres in. Once the boil finished everything went a bit tits up! In an attempt to save water I diverted the output into the HLT. This turned out to be a terrible idea as I ended up using a huge amount of water due to the high ground water temperature and so the 100L HLT overflowed. It decided to do this just as I realised a HopRocket and a plate chiller won't play well when it only has gravity to feed it! Anyway most of the hops ended up back in the boil kettle and eventually the wort was in the fermenter. Given the rush at the end I'm hoping that good oxygenation and 3 packets of S-04 will stave off any wild beasties.



Always important to correct for temperature:


or use a refractometer with ATC!


My new fan performed really well although A LOT of water condensed in the pipe... might need to go with a solid tube. THe boil off was 7.65L, including the hot break that was removed.


Mild chaos and a lot of mopping for future me to deal with!


Pictures of the FV later when hopefully the yeast will have kicked off!

[och29]

Final Vital Stats:

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10.00 kg              Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM)            Grain         5        65.1 %        
1.80 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM)    Grain         6        11.7 %        
1.50 kg               Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)             Grain         7        9.8 %         
1.05 kg               Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)             Grain         8        6.8 %         
1.00 kg               White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)               Grain         9        6.5 %         
63.00 g               Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 25.0 min   Hop           10       18.1 IBUs     
40.00 g               Kohatu [7.80 %] - Boil 25.0 min          Hop           11       10.5 IBUs     
21.00 g               Ahtanum [5.20 %] - Boil 25.0 min         Hop           12       3.7 IBUs      
1.00 Items            Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)        Fining        13       -             
76.00 g               Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min          Hop           14       16.0 IBUs     
72.00 g               Motueka [7.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool  25.0 Hop           15       8.5 IBUs      
3.0 pkg               SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) Yeast         16       -             
87.00 g               Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 0.0 Days      Hop           17       0.0 IBUs     

Mash - 66C for 1hr (light body)
Ferment - 16C once fermentation starts (20C before as per instructions)

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                                  Estimated                       Actual
OG                                 1.066                           1.068
Volume into FV                      45                              43
Total Efficiency                    65%                            63.6%
ABV                                 7.0%
Pre boil gravity                   1.061                          1.059
Pre boil volume                     51                               51 (topped up with ~5L)

[och29]

[och29]

One final one... lots of trub but I'm amazed that I've ended up with something so clear:

[awalker]

Och29 where did you get that nice wood barrel from?

Brew looks good, nice to know you can still make a good beer when all your gear fails.

[AFewTooMany]

Sick setup. As usual on this forum getting brew envy

[och29]

Och29 where did you get that nice wood barrel from?

Brew looks good, nice to know you can still make a good beer when all your gear fails.

https://www.thebarrelmakers.co.uk/depar ... r_barrels/

It's oak rather than chestnut. They also do used barrels but not small enough even for my kit!