Home Brew Forum

*** EDITED To add gravities etc ***

Hi guys,

I thought I would make my first Brewday report / post. This time I was half organised and so managed to brew and take pictures – multitasking! I did however encounter a number of problems during the Brewday but hopefully none that will make it one for the drain. A good learning exercise though and I do feel I am getting close to having it sorted and working well.

I am a fan of clone brewing, I think it gives us something to aim at and is good at understanding the different styles of beer and what ingredients/brewing processes are needed to achieve them.

This time its everyone’s favourite overpriced bottled beer Leffe Blonde!



I did a fair bit of Googling and settled on the following fairly standard recipe.

Leffe Blone Clone

Batch size 5 UK Gallons
Expected efficiency 75%

Fermentables
Wyermann Premiere Pilsner Malt – 5000g
Dingemans Belgian Aromatic Malt – 250g
Thomas Fawcett Pale Wheat Malt – 250g
White Sugar – 680g

Colour 10 EBC

Hops
Hallertauer Hersbrucker - 100g 90min (Full boil)

Bitternes 24 IBU

Yeast
Whitelabs WLP 500 Trappist Yeast (Half a vial stepped up in a one - two litre starter)

Target OG: 1.059
Target FG: 1.009

Alcohol: 6.6% abv

We have only recently moved into this house and the plan was for me to have the brick shed at the back as a brewery. Unfortunately we are going to be moving again soonish and so for now I am brewing in limbo in the kitchen.

Further to my previous posts I am a young dad with little time and a pregnant-not-always-understanding partner! So fitting a brew in to daily life is an art. Also she hates the smell of brewing so I can mash/sparge in doors if she isn’t there but boiling is a definite no no.

I used to wake up very early and try to get done by the time she woke up (providing breakfast in bed to encourage a lie in!) But now we have a little one I think splitting the brew day in half works better. This essentially means mashing/sparging on a Friday evening and boiling/chilling the next morning.

So here goes…

First, the compulsory refreshment...



Lots of new grains for me this time, always been a true brit before.



Likewise for the yeast (first time I have used a liquid) and the continental hops.



To try and save money and experiment with storing yeast longer term, I pitched half the vial into a one litre starter and then stepped it up to two litres. After a week or so it was chilled and I racked most of the wort off before pitching.



Here is my current plastic brewery. Its much improved now after getting some more plastic vessels from my local recycling centre. Winner! I decided not to use my HLT today as it’s a work in progress really and stuck with my retro Burco laundry boiler.



I still need to get a solar pump though. All the issues I have involve transferring wort so that is what is most pressing. That and a thermometer that is actually accurate!

Weighing up the grist.



This is my newly insulated mash tun. It used to loose loads of heat (like 5c during the mash) when I just covered with a blanket. It now has two layers of reflective bubble wrap (radiator stuff from Wickes) then two layers on an old camping sleep mat and then a final layer of the wrap to make it shiny and wipe clean! I have also done the same to the top and lid.



This is my new false bottom – following several stuck mashes using a lunchbox with holes in it! The false bottom itself is an OXO good grips splatter guard off Amazon which has been trimmed down to fit the bucket base and the handle cut off. To this I have added a standard 15mm tank connecter and the pipe work is 15mm with two adapters taking it up to 27mm so that it snugly fits over the standard tap spigot. My brother is a plumber so soldered it up in about 30sec (I kid you not!)



So I preheat the tun by filling it with the boiled strike water at about 80c and then let it settle down to my strike temperature of 72c.



Time to dough in. I always use that huge Tupperware to weigh the grains on my little digital kitchen scales. It makes it easier to pour into the tun with one hand while I stir with the other. The black wire is the one for the probe from my thermometer. I like to see the reading change in realtime as I find adjustments easier to make that way. This is also my dads homebrewing spoon which I nabbed a couple of years ago - I would be lost without it as its miles better than my white Young's one!



A pint of extra adjustment water brings me to my target mash temp of 66c within a minute or so. Unfortunately I didn’t know at the time that my thermometer was on the way out at reading a degree or two high so I believe I actually mashed at 64.5c roughly. I hope that will still be OK even if the beer is a little dry.



I ended up mashing for nearly 90 minutes and only lost 0.2c over the duration!



Time to sparge. I have had mixed results with fly sparging over the years but will persist until I get the process right. This is how I have to have my vessels set up.



Boiler holds the strike water at 80c. This allows me to achieve good efficiency without a mash-out. I always assume that the siphoning and sprinkling of water will bring it down below the maximum allowed temperature. In future I will be monitoring the grainbed temperature as I think I may have over heated this time with my faulty thermometer.



This time I floated a Tupperware lid in the tun and ran the sparge water on this. It worked well as it rose and fell with the water level and grains remained undisturbed throughout.




This is a photo of the wort. I always recirculate the first 3 or 4 litres slowly until its free of bits but it never runs clear. Am I doing anything wrong?



I do worry about the wort splashing down into the bottom bucket and getting hot side aeration. In future I think I will attach some home to the mash tun tap to reduce this. For now I just tilt the bucket to reduce splashing/froth.



The other part of my sparge process that has gone wrong is when to stop. I have always just sparged with all the sparge water until I end up with my recommended pre boil volume. The runnings go gradually paler until they are near clear by the end. I am now worried that my occasional problems with astringency have been due to tannin extraction from over sparging. In future I will taste the wort as I go and stop when it tastes astringent.

At this point (11pm) I put the wort into a sterile fermenter and seal it ready to continue in the morning. To help reduce heat loss and subsequently the boil time in the morning I chuck a fleece blanket over it.



Onto the morning boil. The wort is still at over 50c so that’s good - less heating required.

The wort is transferred to the boiler which is outside the back door and set to max. I use the thermometer and have the lid on to reduce heat up time as well. Note the reflective windbreak.



Once I have a rolling boil in goes the 100g of hops. This is a huge amount for someone used to British ales but the single addition is a welcome mental break.



15min to go and in goes the sugar which is added gradually and stirred continuously.




This is a good example of innacurate thermometers. All three dangling in the boiling wort - I wonder which is correct?



Once that’s done in goes the chiller. This is my chilling setup. I collect some of the waste hot water in a fermenter for cleaning purposes. This house has no water meter so I am free to crank it up to speed up the cooling process.



Stirring the wort rapidly increases the efficiency of cooling but I didn’t have much time for that today. Still I chilled the wort to 20c within about 25min which is excellent I think.

At this point I realised I had forgotten the Irish moss. I have never forgotten before, how much of a problem will this be do you think?

Transferring the cooled wort from the boiler is my biggest nightmare. The boiler tap is useless and trying to use it has cost batches before. So for now I have to let it settle for 30min and then siphon it out which isn’t ideal. The last gallon or so has to be tipped through a sieve/funnel into the fermenter. This means most of the cold break goes in the fermenter. This means the wort looks like this:



In future I might fit a hop stopper and tank connecter complete with pipe work/tap to the bottom of the boiler.

And the finished wort, waaaaaaaay above gravity and below on volume! It was windy and a long boil so combined with the 100g hop loss I must have had large losses.




To adjust it to the specified 1.059 I had to add 1.25 Gallons of boiling water. This means I ended up with 6.25 Gallons in total as my efficiency was around 89%

The water addition raised the wort temp back up to 35c so I had to pitch later that day when it had cooled to 22c. On goes the lid and air lock.



Only hours after pitching I saw the initial tentative bubbles. To keep it warm I decided the fermenter could wear my hoodie! The split starter obviously worked!

Next morning and the temperature has stabilised at my chosen 22c and fermentation is going like the clappers and the krausen is looking healthy. I have a heat mat under the fermenter to give background heat if needed but its
self warming for now.



That’s it for now. More photos and mumblings will follow. The plan is as follows:

Ferment for a week to ten days at 22c.
Crash cool for a week at 5c in my fridge
Rack into a new fermenter and add 2 part finings to counter the fact I forgot the irish moss. Leave for 24-48 hours to drop clear.
Bulk prime and bottle as normal.

Due to the continued teething problems I would appreciate any advice on the following balls ups:

Have I over sparged? If so what are the effects and how do you guys monitor your sparges?
How bad an effect will missing the Irish moss have? Can its job be done now by anything else?
The wort stays at 50c-70c over night, would this affect it in anyway?
My mash temperature was just over 64c in reality. How much of an effect does that really have?
I had to add lots of boiling water to the final cooled wort, I presume this is OK?

Does anyone have any tips to improve my shambolick process?!!

Thanks,

Dean.

Great pictures mate, sure it will turn out ace. My last three brews have all been split brewdays as well due to lack of time from having a young family. My technique is an utter shambles, look forward to hearing others comment
I'm going to try something along these lines next, have some WLP500 in the fridge on standby

It is much easier to work around family doing it that way, lets face it Friday nights out are a distant memory anyway!

The yeast certainly seemed to take off well with very little lag time, but that is probably due to my first use of a starter and liquid yeast. Thankfully the krausen is large but under control as the FV is quite full and I have no blow off tube.

Thanks,

Dean.

Excellent post - looks very good indeed!

I'll have a go at some of your questions in there, as IMHO I think you actually did better than you believe:

I don't think you're doing anything wrong with the cloudy run-off; most of mine get clearer as the sparge progresses but are normally quite cloudy to begin with. The recirculation seems to get rid of the initial bulk of sediment and larger particles but not all of the cloudiness (I think you'd have to do a lot more of it for that such as with a pump or something, but it doesn't bother me so I currently don't).

I also wouldn't worry too much about the wort splashing down. There is some basis for the supposed dangers of HSA but general opinion on the forum seems to be that in practice for homebrewers its not really much of an issue. I tend to just stick a bit of pipe on the tap to give it something to run down more gently, but I don't worry beyond that.

I also wouldn't worry about the lack of irish moss - its an aid rather than a necessity in my view. Also after many, many years of using it I have to confess that I don't actually find it all that effective anyway; I've been using half a protofloc tablet for the last several brews and that does seem to do more, partly as testified by whats stuck to the boiler walls/lid afterwards.

Without having tested the final runnings its difficult to say if you've over-sparged in terms of quantity. Personally, if the wort starts to taste tart I tend to pause the sparge and take gravity readings of the run-off - if after temperature correction its getting near 1.006 then thats supposed to be the danger zone (though opinion varies on the exact figure). But for all my monitoring I can't remember the last time I got near that - generally I find if you get the recipe and liquor quantities right there isn't usually an issue. But you may have overdone it with the temperature if your thermometer is out - the only time I extracted excess tannin was through the sparge liquor being too hot, and that in turn was because I wasn't stirring the HLT - the temperature at my probe was a surprising amount cooler than the liquor higher up.

I don't believe the wort staying warm overnight matters at all, its a recognised method of cooling to just wait over night. The issue though is to prevent nasties getting in as theres a greater lag time before adding the yeast, which they'd have a head start over. If you did that then all should be well.

Lots of people add boiled water post boil - to overcome capacity limitations as well as if their evaporation losses are high. You may have a slightly better hop utilisation than you expected with a higher gravity boil but I don't think there'll be much difference - at least I can't say that I notice one if I boil for longer than intended.

I'm not familiar with brewing this style so I don't know exactly what effect the mash temperature will have, but I usually reckon that if its between 62-68c then you'll have made a decent beer of some kind, to style or not.

I hope thats useful, although I've no doubt others will have other views!

Cheers
Kev

I will try to answer some of your questions:

I wouldn't worry about the irish moss at this stage. If the beer refuses to clear, you can add some gelatine/isinglass finings to the keg. Any cloudiness won't affect the taste so if you don't mind the hazy, don't worry.

Because you are getting nearly 80C at the sparging stage in the grain bed, all the enzmes will be destroyed, halting any further extraction in the boiler overnight, so that is OK.

It takes someone with quite a distinguised palate to notice any real difference between 64C and 66C, I know I certainly can't! You are well within the range for a good decent result.

You don't need to add boiling water at the end, cold will do - just make sure it is treated with campden at the very least to remove the chlorine and chloramines.

Another thing you asked above about never getting the first runnings clear. I think this is normal and there is a lot of confusion in the homebrew books where it talks about recirculating until the wort runs "bright". As long as you have recirculated it until almost all the grain stops coming through it will be fine - In fact at this stage it always looks "brighter" than the initial few jugs.

Hope this helps - love that boiler by the way!

We have a saying over here "relax, don't worry, have a homebrew", always good advice. You will likely find that WLP500 is extremely fruity. The higher the ferenatation temperature, the more fruity it will get. I usually start at 65F then move the temperature up over about a week to say 75F to try and keep things under control. See how you like the results and adjust the next time if needed.

Just a couple of things to think about, not necessarily problems. First of all, I try to get the wort cool as quickly as possible. If the wort stays hot a long time, besides wierd "bugs and yeast" starting to take hold, you are also isomorizing any late hops which will tend to make your beer more bitter than intended as well as driving off any volitile hop aromas. Secondly, an easy way to avoid problems with oversparing is to use the 5.2 buffer stuff as well as doing batch sparging.

Anyhow, I like to see folks doing the Belgian thing, those beers are really fun to make. I would encourage you to start fooling with your formulations, it's all about creativity. Try different sugars or other wierd ingredients, make something completely your own. Finally, I like to bottle mine in the Belgian 750's with the cork and wire cages. It somehow just adds to the mystery when drinking the stuff, you do have the correct glassware, right?

Hi guys,

Such informed and knowledgeable replies - JBK never fails to teach me more!

I feel reassured on most of my points and hope that this beer will turn out OK if a little rough around the edes!

I am sure that I read that WLP needs to be kept on the warmer side, I want a balance of clean fermentation with some notes of interest. It sounds as though I may be heading more down the fruit route!

I hadnt considered the pH buffer, as I try to minimise chemicals as I am a bit of an eco greenie. I like the sound of the taste, stop, test routine for run off gravity though. I will definately follow that process next time.

The runnings from sparging do become clear later in the sparge so I may persist with more recirculation next time as I do feel that a brighter wort is happier in the FV and less likely to develop off flavours. That same thinking applies to the cold break - I really want to reduce this.

I think my green head will stick with the moss over protofloc as I am sure it cant be just refined moss? There must be additives?

Its still bubbling away like a trooper and the krausen is still there, normally I find that drops back quickly but it seems to be holding up with this brew. This is my first warm ferment though and first use of any kind of wheat in the grist.

I have a few big leffe bottles but not many, I would love to cork and cage them but think I will end up capping if I can get hold of the caps and 29mm bell. How do you cork them Barley Water? I thought you couldnt do that at home?

Thanks,

Dean.

PS @ Grahame, yes its an antique but its great bar the tap. It has wheels underneath which is handy for moving when full of hot wort. Its an F44L and takes 8 gallons to the max line but you can boil 10 if your careful. If my mash tun could mash a 10 gallon batch I would do that and use two FV but its not quite possible, especially on higher gravity brews.

Oh and no I dont have any Leffe glasses. Where can I get some?

Any ideas?

dean_wales wrote:Oh and no I dont have any Leffe glasses. Where can I get some?

Any ideas?

Just about anything you want here:

http://www.beerhere.co.uk/acatalog/Belg ... glass.html

Oh you sure can do Belgian bottles with corks and cages at home. I have one of those fairly expensive floor corkers mostly used by the wine folks but it works on Belgian 750 bottles as well. I don't know that you necessarily need a Leffe brand glass but certainly some sort of challace would be in order after all, the proprieties must be observed. I admit I can be a little anal when it comes to glassware. When I go to brewclub parties I always bring my own glass. I hate drinking out of plastic cups and also I won't pick up somebody else's glass by mistake. After all, since we all go to a fair amount of trouble to make the beer in the first place, we should always honor the effort by serving it in the appropriate vessel don't you think?

cracking post I do like a Leffe from time to time

Im afarid I shall not be investing in a corking machine or those glasses at £5 a pop! I would love to but in this age of austerity wont go down well.

However, I may take the little one to weatherspoons after work later and order me a few bottles of Leffe as they serve with the proper glasses... and leave with a pram that goes *clink* *clink* if you get me.

It has been five days now since I pitched the yeast and I have kept the temperature at a fairly constant 22c (measured using a probe taped to the FV under the hoodie insulation. It is still bubbling away merrily although the krausen has subsided a little and the airlock bubbles slowed slightly (now every 5sec rather than continious). I have never seem such a vigourous fermentation - but that poor yeast has a lot of sugar to get through!

The smell has gone from yeasty to what I can only describe as a very pleasant buttery "beurre noisette" smell this morning. If that makes any sense.

How long should I keep it at this warmer temperature for before I crash cool do you think? I dont have a thief so testing a sample for gravity without risking infection isnt easy. I am thinking that it will need about 10 days to completely finish up?

I still need to clean up the spare fridge, check the FV fits in it and get her permission to bring it indoors first!

Thanks,

Dean.

Hi guys,

As discussed in the main forum, I am a little dissapointed with my initial taste test.

After 8 days the gravity has pretty much bottomed out at 1.009 which is the target FG. I think it may end up a shade under.

The trouble is I have tasted the beer and it seems very dull:

The beer is extremely pale in colour
The taste is a light sweetness with very little malt flavour or aroma. (I upped the aromatic malt to 250g from 225g?!)
There is no signs of fruity Belgian yeasty flavours from the WLP500
The beer is very cloudy but this is to be expected at this stage, crash cooling and finnings will follow.

Where is that bite and strong flavour so important to Leffe? Will the crash cooling and finnings bring about that crispness?

I dont understand! The brew has near as damnit gone perfectly and this is the first beer I have turned out that seems bland.

Dean.

PS: Although my gravities are correct at the 6.25 Gallons I have ended up with I think that the bitterness and aromatic malt flavours are lacking from the increased efficiency and volume. I will put the same recipe through BeerEngine later today to see what effects increasing the efficiency to 90% and volume to 6.25 Gallons has?

Do you guys think there would be any merit in an addition of hop tea and some steeped/minimashed aromatic malt??

Try this recipe:

Fermentables
Pilsner Malt 3 EBC 3010 grams 51.7%
Pale Malt 5 EBC 2010 grams 34.5%
Sugar, Household White 0 EBC 300 grams 5.2%
Home made sugar candy 5 EBC 500 grams 8.6%

Hops
Saaz Whole 3.3 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 28.6%
Golding Whole 4.7 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.9 oz 25 grams 23.8%
Saaz Whole 3.3 % 15 mins 0 lbs. 1.8 oz 50 grams 47.6%

Final Volume: 21 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.062
Final Gravity: 1.006
Alcohol Content: 7.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 31.1 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.5 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 67 %
Bitterness: 31 EBU
Colour: about 5 EBC

Stopped sparging very early.
Yeast - WYeast 1214 Fermented at 20-22C for first two days, 27C through to the end of ferment.

I think the key was getting the fermentation temperatures up in around the 25C mark. I gave a couple of bottles of this to a Belgian resident, and they told me it was just like a Leffe. Which annoyed me as it wasn't what I was trying to achieve!

Also in hindsight I would stick in 300g of wheat malt.

And also give it sometime in the bottle. It might change with a bit of time.