Home Brew Forum

Should be called Midsummer Madness, really. For later this morning - 6 hrs later to be precise.

Bohemian Rhapsody II

3KG Pilsner Malt
3KG Lager Malt (yeah I know, but Pilsner Malt's fekkin expensive at Farnborough)
146g Saaz 90 mins 3% alpha, 2005crop - adjusted down to a generous 2%
60g Saaz 1 mins
30g Saaz in steep @ 65c (weight arbitrary, Got 2x generous 113g packs, will throw in what's left)
1tsp Protofloc at 15 mins
4x packs Saflager S23 - made up as per pack instructions
Target OG 1050-ish
40IBU - ish-ish

52L liquor prepped with 2 campden tabs and lactic acid to PH 5.9 - timer switch set to 6am, I'll shuffle downstairs at about 7-7.30am and it should be at strike heat there or thereabouts

Batch sparging/double mashing a generous ammount of malt. 75% extraction efficiency will do it for about 29L postboil finishing up with 24-25L in the FV. I don't mind losing loads to the hops...and I can't be bothered to wait for the last dregs to drip through, or sparge the hops. Easier to chuck in a bit more malt and have more wort to play with.

I'm aiming for a nice Urquell-ish type lager - in the sense that it's loaded with Saaz flavour, aroma, and quite bitter. Under extracting from the grist should mean it will have decent maltiness to balance it out.

..........I did NOT forget the hop strainer. It's in the boiler now!

Good luck with the brew in a few hours SteveD.

What temp do you plan to mash at? (i notice you don't have even a smidgen of light crystal or carapils).

Oh, er, Cheers! That was quick! 66c-ish.

No caracrystalpilsfahellspecialBacidmelanoidinviennamunichdextrineoranythingelsewierdmalt. You are quite correct. Nice and simple.

SteveD wrote:Oh, er, 66c-ish.

No caracrystalpilsfahellspecialBacidmelanoidinviennamunichdextrineoranythingelsewierdmalt. You are quite correct. Nice and simple.

I haven't seen that particular malt before, im sure it would be popular in some american homebrewing circles though

delboy wrote:

SteveD wrote:Oh, er, 66c-ish.

No caracrystalpilsfahellspecialBacidmelanoidinviennamunichdextrineoranythingelsewierdmalt. You are quite correct. Nice and simple.

I haven't seen that particular malt before, im sure it would be popular in some american homebrewing circles though

..yep, and they'd stuff the glass full of hops when serving it up, and strain the beer through them with their teeth.

SteveD wrote:

delboy wrote:

SteveD wrote:Oh, er, 66c-ish.

No caracrystalpilsfahellspecialBacidmelanoidinviennamunichdextrineoranythingelsewierdmalt. You are quite correct. Nice and simple.

I haven't seen that particular malt before, im sure it would be popular in some american homebrewing circles though

..yep, and they'd stuff the glass full of hops when serving it up, and strain the beer through them with their teeth.

I noticed you are trying davids edges suggestion of dropping the temp to 80C before throwing in the flameout hops, thought it was a cracking idea myself and tried this on my last brew.
A bit too soon to tell if it has made much of a differnce, also the fact i was using amarillo (for the first time) which is full of aroma by all accounts does't really leave me much room for comparison (must go back to one of my cascade brews and see how it affects aroma with a known amount of hops).

Looks very nice, Steve. Simple recipes are almost always better, IMO. Re the lager malt, I think the UK lager malt is very good stuff indeed. It gets little mention here is the US but it has always made an excellent brew for me. I have used it several times to brew CAP (Classic American Pilsner~a flavorful version of what American lager was like in the 19th Century) and light-colored ales.

Have a good day Steve! The usual brew day cheese platter coming out?

Good luck Steve. Hope it all goes well.

What fermentation/lagering schedule are you planning to follow? I left the printout that Ant gave us, back in January, at his house so am interested to know if that's what you're planning to follow.

/Phil.

Have a good day Steve. I'm sitting in the office looking out at the rain thinking that you are going to have a whole lot more fun than myself today. . However, I am "working from home" tomorrow.

I fancy making a decent pilsner but all the temperature and lagering has put me off so far. What temperature are you going to ferment at? Do you have somewhere to keep it cool? Also, are you planning to lager it for any extended period of time or will it be consumed in its youth.

Come on Steve, let's hear all about it then

/Phil.

how long did you hold at 80C for? did DE make any suggestions regarding time?

Arse Arse. It's been an arse day... full gory details to follow, but the beer is fine Fermentation underway - bloop bloop. Up to my eyeballs in real life stuff hence the delay. Full story, pic, and process details, to follow....

Thanks for the interest.

back to invoices....

Ok, invoices done.

I'd prepped liquor to just under ph6 with lactic acid.
Mashed with 16.5L.
Strike heat 74c
Initial heat 66c
Ph was 4.9. I didn't think lager malt would have dropped it that much. Know better next time. Never mind.
90 minute mash, finish at 66c. No heat loss.

Heated 'sparge' liquor to 85c
6kg malt and 0.25L dead space so 7.5L added to get an 18L 1st run (72.5c mash bed) 18L got, at 1059

2nd run: 14L added. (note: for max efficiency, should be 18L, but I'm under extracting deliberately) at 83c. 75c mash bed. 14L got at about 1023. Combined was 32L at about 1044, topped to 38L preboil with more liquor.

Boil..foam up, bung in 146g Saaz. 146g because that was a whole 113g pack. Told you it was generous. This is where things started to go wrong...the phone didn't stop ringing, and I got behind. I was busy rigging my cooling contraption (see below) and running sanitiser through it (VWP - proper chlorine/caustic stuff. Sod idodine.) and the FV. The return pipe was taped to the side of the FV.... I was on the phone....the tape gave way........the pipe snaked out of the FV....nobody noticed....the little trusty totton pump carried on cheerfully pumping out about 2 gallons onto out laminate kitchen floor........colourful language ensued when I got off the phone and wandered into the kitchen to rinse the cooling contraption.

Consequently the boil went on 30 mins longer, 2 hrs total, then 60g Saaz went in at 1min to switch off - and a long wait as I mopped up the kitchen floor before the steeping hops went in - at 65c, not 80c. 30g Saaz

Still, the phone did not stop. There was no time for a cheese platter Oh, and it rained.

Cooling was effected by the contraption below.

I recirculated a couple of jugs to reduce the ammount of detritus hitting the chiller and pump - in the end thought sod it..let's see if it copes. It did. No flow restriction through the chiller but I choked the totton pump so as not to draw too much crud through, and not to create a tidal wave in the boiler as I returned it. The pump was after the chiller because the pump has an 85c max liquid temp. Cooling was very fast and the recirculated wort ran nice and clear. Eventually directed to the FV I got 24L, as
expected, at 19c. OG 1053 Must have knocked an hour off my cooling time.

A bit more detail

The chiller is a Mashmaster Chillout 20 plate chiller from Ross at Craftbrewer in Australia. Barbed fittings a doddle, just plonk the hose on. Sweet. Not expensive, either. It's bloody good. I backflushed it afterwards. Very little crud was trapped. Must have a good flow path.

The pump is a Totton GP20-12 magnetically coupled, from Norman. New, £45 including delivery and, JG fittings, which included ball valves. I got 2 of them. Same as the ones Seveneer has.

Oxygenated with a 4 min burst of O2 while 14 tons of saflager S23 was rehydrating. The pack said sprinkle dry onto wort. I just couldn't. But...maybe I should. It was a pig to rehydrate. Sticky claggy mess, but I won in the end.

It's well underway with a fluffy 3" head, at room temp. I'll now stick it in the fridge at 12c for about 10 days, then give it a diacetyl rest by bringing it up to 16c over 2 days then gradually drop it to about 4c over about a week, then keg/bottle it after about 3 weeks, and leave it for about a month. That's the plan.

Extraction efficiency was 77%. Brewhouse efficiency was 69.5% Last brew I'd taken a 12L 2nd run as opposed to 14L this time and got 75% / 65% so it appears fairly consistent. if I'd taken 12L this time It might have been 1050 and 65% brewhouse (can't be arsed to work it out.)

Phil, It's more or less Ant's schedule, except he goes down to near 0c after the diacetyl rest. Don't think my fridge will go that low. The freezer will, but it's full of beer that won't appreciate being frozen.

Right...to the shed!

Gurgeh wrote:how long did you hold at 80C for? did DE make any suggestions regarding time?

You don't hold it. What he means is, after switching off the boil, instead of immediately chucking in steep hops, you wait till the temperature drops to 80c before adding them. The idea is that steeping from 80c downwards is hot enough to extract flavour and aroma, but not so hot that the essential oils are distilled off.