AG #47 Galaxy Delight

[BrewerBen]

Today's brewday is Dennis King's Galaxy Delight all grain kit from the malt miller that i got for Christmas. I made a small adjustment as the recipe kit is for 23L @ 1.050 and as i normally aim for 25L and i had some left over grain from the last brewday i added a extra 318g of pale malt. The adjusted recipe is:
4918g Crisp Pale Ale Malt
300g Vienna Malt
100g Aromatic Malt

15g Galaxy for 90 mins (23 IBU)
45g Galaxy last 15 mins.(32IBU)
40g Galaxy Dry Hop

Target volume 25L @1.050 and a total bitterness of 55IBU

Mash Schedule:
Mash in at 66C for 75 Mins
Mash out at 78C for 10 mins
I also stop the program a few times and stir the malt about.

One change to the brewday is to start looking more at water. As i posted in the brewing Liquor section i bought a salifert alkalinity test kit and decided to test the tap water and some Tesco Ashbeck water and blend the 2 to see what it came out as.
The Tesco Ashbeck has a alkalinity of 16.5mg/L and my tap water is 256.5mg/L. I had bought 25L of Ashbeck so added 12.5L of tap water to get a liquor volume of 37.5. I then measured the resulting blend of water at 96.5mg/L. Not quite the recommended 25mg/L fpr a pale ale but certainly softer than the 100% tap water i normally use.

Galaxy Delight Kit:


Grain Shot:


Doughing in:


Starting the pumps:


New scales makes measuring the hops far more reliable:


End of the mash:


Spent grain:


End of Boil and cooling done. I leave the hop bags hanging to train any wort out of them.


Running off into the fermenter:


All done and ready to start fermenting:


Gravity reading of 1.055


Apart from a couple of power outages due to a dodgy extension lead it all went quite smoothly. I ended up with 24L of 1.055 wort which gives me a efficiancy of about 80% which i'm pretty peased with. The slightly lower volume may be because i didn't notice the power outage and going into manual mode for the rest of the boil. Once the fermentation has settled down i'll add the dry hops then after a week or so bottle.

[Dennis King]

Nice photos, hope you enjoy it.

[Charles1968]

Looks great. How much difference does the Braumeister make to your brew day?

[Matt12398]

I took delivery of my braumeister this week. Plan on sorting out a hop spider eventually but have been wondering what to do before then. How do the hop bags work out? Are they free in the boil?

[BrewerBen]

Thanks Dennis, it certainly smells good. I've not used Galaxy hops so this beer will be a good showcase for them.

Charles, The braumeister tends to make the process easier. I wouldn't say the brewday is any shorter because of it but setting up/packing away is easier with less room needed. Stepped mashes are a breeze, I only added a extra mashout step at 78c on this one but you can have up to 5 steps.
The only thing I find hard work is lifting the malt pipe but that's partly due to a dodgy shoulder. When I do a brew to the full 50l capacity I'll need to set up some kind of winch like others have done. It is also shiny.

No activity in a air lock yet which has me a little nervous after the last brews failure but have read on the forum this yeast has a long lag phase so I won't panic yet.

[orlando]

It's a good recipe and delivers a really hoppy nose when drinking it, sure you will like it if everything stays on track. On another note I really like your gram scales, where did you get them? Link if you have one please.

[BarnsleyBrewer]

Bottom of the pic.... Did you boil a crab in the wort??

BB

[barry44]

What AA were your hops? My galaxy are 17%, I'm getting a theoretical 68ibu.

Is there an estimated ibu?

[BrewerBen]

I took delivery of my braumeister this week. Plan on sorting out a hop spider eventually but have been wondering what to do before then. How do the hop bags work out? Are they free in the boil?

The hop bags are working well, i prefer to use pellets with them as i'd hope that any ustilization lost by using the hopbags is made up for by the pellet's. I also try not to pack to many in. With 45g in at 15 minutes and no aroma hops going in i split them across the 2 bags i had to let them spread out a bit. Containing the hops do make life easier when cleaning up afterwards.

[BrewerBen]

It's a good recipe and delivers a really hoppy nose when drinking it, sure you will like it if everything stays on track. On another note I really like your gram scales, where did you get them? Link if you have one please.

Therse were the scales i got http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smart-Weigh-Dig ... igh+scales

[BrewerBen]

What AA were your hops? My galaxy are 17%, I'm getting a theoretical 68ibu.

Is there an estimated ibu?

Mine were 16.1 which worked out at 55ibu. I'd just go with it. Most of the bitterness is added in the last 15 mins so i'm not sure how permanent it would be, or how accurate the IBU calculators are for this short amount of time.

[BenB]

I do like the shiny shiny but how f'n much are those brumeisters? Ye gods!

[orlando]

I do like the shiny shiny but how f'n much are those brumeisters? Ye gods!

Have a fresh pair of pants ready when you find out.

[chris.laws.54943]

I have the 20L BM. I'm interested to see you stir the malt around during the mash. Do you find this helps your overall efficiency? I use a liquification rest at 40c for 20 mins but I might try giving get it a stir instead.

[BrewerBen]

To be honest i cant really tell if stirring has helped efficiency. At the moment i'm still changing quite a bit from brew to brew. On this one i brewed with softer water but its hard to tell if its that what i can attribute the improved efficiency to. Other things i change often are the mash profiles, grain supplier, volume into fermenter - with a lower volume i end up sparging less.
I think i'm slowly settling on the process though after 8 brews. I tend to mash in with 30L water and sparge with about 8L with minor adjustments depending on the grain bill to aim for 25L in the fermenter. You don't have to sparge but if i need to top up the volume then i figure it may as well go through the grain.
Mash profile i adjust to style but normally pause the program and stir a couple of times, include a mashout step at 78C then sparge with water at the same temp.
I've not tried a lengthy rest at 40C yet, i have mashed in at 38C but did not hold it there just let the temp start rising straight away for the next step. Do you do that rest for just wheat beers or all beers? I did read that it can help the banana flavour of wheat beers but sadly my last one had to go down the drain (i'm still mourning its loss).