ESB Clone 2 - Halloween nightmare

[BenB]

My latest beer was to be a rebrew of AG#1 - a Fullers ESB Clone

Fuller’s ESB clone
(5 gallons/ 19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.060 FG = 1.014
IBU = 35 SRM = 15
ABV = 5.9%


This recipe is for the bottled version of ESB. The cask version in the UK is 5.5% ABV.


Ingredients
11 lbs. 3 oz. (5.1 kg) Muntons pale ale malt
1 lb. 2 oz. (0.51 kg) crystal malt (75 °L)
5.25 AAU Target hops (60 min)
(0.53 oz./15 g of 10% alpha acids)
2.6 AAU Challenger hops (60 min)
(0.34 oz./10 g of 7.5% alpha acids)
0.83 AAU Northdown hops (15 min)
(0.1 oz./2.7 g of 8.5% alpha acids)
1.66 AAU Goldings hops (15 min)
(0.33 oz./9.4 g of 5% alpha acids)
0.33 oz. (9.4 g) Goldings hops
(dry hop)
Wyeast 1968 (London ESB) or White Labs WLP002 (English Ale) yeast


Step by Step
Mash grains at 153 °F (67 °C) in 16.5 quarts (15.5 L) of water. Mash for 60 minutes. Collect 6.5 gallons (25 L) of wort. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops at the times indicated. Cool and ferment at 69 °F (21 °C). Add Goldings dry hops to secondary fermenter.


The plan was to do all this whilst at the same time also simultaneously watching the F1 and bottling up 50 pints of South African "Castle" Lager.... So was going to be a push....

As usual I started the day before my putting my water in the HLT and putting it on a timer. When I went to fill the HLT I saw that I'd left it full of Starsan solution (for some random reason). Unfortunately the acid solution had stripped my ex-Electrim element down to bare copper. The bottom of the HLT was lined with a nasty metallic residue. I gave it a good wash and set it up for Monday (31st Oct).

Next morning I weighted out the grain



and put it through the mill. When I had a look at my HLT I wasn't happy- I lifted the lid and got a steamy but still quite metallic smell- smelt like Zinc oxide smoke when welding galvanised steel!! So I did the only sensible thing and binned the lot, cleaned the HLT a number of times further and started again.... So running two hours late by the time I began.

Anyway, mash went well other than the pH being low compared to target (aimed 5.4, got 5.15)....



It was quickly time to put in the hops whilst draining the lager into the bottling bucket using the easy-syphon thingy....



The good thing about brewing in the shed is I'm relatively relaxed about boil overs so just return to the shed at the required intervals to add the hops. Equally when doing the mash or letting the IC cooler do its thing I just leave it to it.

I was busily engaged doing the bottling so left the wort to cool for quite a long time with the IC running. Because I brew in the shed I have to run a hose from the outside tap down to the shed and then run another back up to the drain at the house..... Half way through bottling I decided it was time to stop the IC so went outside the house. Now at this point it got temporarily confusing- there was no water coming out of the drain hose and yet the hoselock connector hadn't simply popped off the tap.... Yet I could hear water running. Yup, nice sound of running water from the shed! I ran down there to find that the hose had popped off the flexi hose which runs to the IC. Yup- good 10cm of water flooding the bottom of the shed! Thankfully all the electrics were above water level and the disconnect had happened away from (and below the level of) the boiler full of wort so no hose water in the wort! And as I'm a mucky puppy and always spill I had previously drilled some countersunk holes in the shed floor and coated the floor in anti-slip decking oil so it was slowly draining... I just left the extractor fan on overnight and I'm hoping for the best. Oh well, beer was made and no-one died.

To add to my soggy misery when I finished bottling I took my bottling bucket (with little bottler wand turned upwards) into the kitchen. I had a FV full of water I'd used to rinse the bottles after cleaning so dumped that in the bottling bucket to give it a rinse. I decided to pull the bottling wand off and was met with a rather impressive fountain out the tap! I clearly hadn't turned the bottling tap off and it was only the bottling wand valve preventing floodage. So I then had to mop the kitchen floor...

Oh well! Just one of those days. Still, 50 pints of lager in the conditioning chamber before I lager it and a load of ESB in the fermentation chamber and I hit the numbers spot on with volumes, OG etc and a mash efficiency of 81%...

[sbond10]

Looking good brew days arnt fun with incidents

[BenB]

Good news is the oxygen cylinder didn't get wet. Had a look at it today and no sign of rusting! I've seen what happens when a cylinder explodes and it's not pretty!

[j4c]

Nice one.
Sounds stressful like my attempt.
Glad u got all your targets.


Sent from my Vodafone 890N using Tapatalk

[orlando]

Your mash pH must have been disappointing to you, do you know why? What was your water treatment and what was the final alkalinity of mash and sparge?

[BenB]

Hi Orlando. It's a bit disappointing but hey. In fact the one thing I'm struggling with at the moment is nailing the pH! I found one reason why the mash was low- I had used BruNWater and had entered the large amount of crystal as Lovibond instead of EBC and yet had the spreadsheet expecting EBC. Once I corrected that the mash pH estimate dropped quite a bit to 5.3.

No idea what my sparge alkalinity was, I tested my tap water before brewing and got 210ppm alkalinity from a Salifert (I test it every brew but it never changes). I cut it with Ashbeck (unless I do that I have to add lots of CRS and then get adequate sulfafe and chloride levels with the calcium still being on the low side. So I reduce the alkalinity by diluting then add the CRS....

All the salts were measured on a calibrated accurate scale, the CRS measures in a medical syringe, malt measures on a gram accurate scale. Really scratching my head on this one...

I'm going to double check the figures for the tap and Ashbeck I've entered into BruNWater, my gut tells me there's something wrong in the spreadsheet. Might also try some new CRS and shaking it before measuring it out... Also going to add the salts to the water in the mash tun before adding the malt. I measure out the salts and stick them on top of the cruyshed malt before pouring into the mash tun- I wonder if I'm getting inadequate mixing of the salts in the mash so when I take the sample to cool for pH testing from the top of the mash it may be unrepresentative. Probably also need to stir before taking the sample. I take the sample about 5 minutes after doughing in and don't re-stir before taking it.

Anyway, food for thought!

[orlando]

Hi Orlando. It's a bit disappointing but hey. In fact the one thing I'm struggling with at the moment is nailing the pH! I found one reason why the mash was low- I had used BruNWater and had entered the large amount of crystal as Lovibond instead of EBC and yet had the spreadsheet expecting EBC. Once I corrected that the mash pH estimate dropped quite a bit to 5.3.

No idea what my sparge alkalinity was, I tested my tap water before brewing and got 210ppm alkalinity from a Salifert (I test it every brew but it never changes). I cut it with Ashbeck (unless I do that I have to add lots of CRS and then get adequate sulfafe and chloride levels with the calcium still being on the low side. So I reduce the alkalinity by diluting then add the CRS....

All the salts were measured on a calibrated accurate scale, the CRS measures in a medical syringe, malt measures on a gram accurate scale. Really scratching my head on this one...

I'm going to double check the figures for the tap and Ashbeck I've entered into BruNWater, my gut tells me there's something wrong in the spreadsheet. Might also try some new CRS and shaking it before measuring it out... Also going to add the salts to the water in the mash tun before adding the malt. I measure out the salts and stick them on top of the cruyshed malt before pouring into the mash tun- I wonder if I'm getting inadequate mixing of the salts in the mash so when I take the sample to cool for pH testing from the top of the mash it may be unrepresentative. Probably also need to stir before taking the sample. I take the sample about 5 minutes after doughing in and don't re-stir before taking it.

Anyway, food for thought!

If you treated the full volume of liquour used we can assume the same level of alkalinity for the sparge, did you measure alkalinity after administering the CRS? I am aware of previous problems with BW but the latest version appears to have fixed those, do you know whether you have the latest? Obviously if your input figures are wrong that's different, I would still check the version though. A very low level of alkalinity may just allow the calcium and crystal, and don't forget that crystal malts can be more acidifying than highly roasted malts, to have caused the overshoot.

I don't think you have a mixing problem, but if you are using Gypsum that can be difficult to get into solution. Can I suggest you sample after 15 minutes after mashing in (not doughing in that's US terminology ), it gives it a little bit longer for all the salts to have taken effect?

[BenB]

One other thing I am considering is whether I'm just measuring too early- I've observed the pH of the mash increasing quite significantly with some beers.... so is the estimated pH the 5 minute, 15 minute or 30 minute reading????..... Some forums posts I've seen have suggested that the cooled sample should be filtered to remove grist on the basis that those sticking to the probe can impact on the reading.... suppose I might give that a try. I might get really pedantic and on the next beer measure every 10 minutes throughout the mash and see what happens!

I'm not going to sweat it for the moment- my Barley Wine pH measured 5.2 and that's incredibly tasty... I'll get to the bottom of it in the end- people on forums seem to be getting within 0.05 pH (or better) using spreadsheets! I'm getting anything from -0.15 to +0.2 .....

[BenB]

Hi Orlando. It's a bit disappointing but hey. In fact the one thing I'm struggling with at the moment is nailing the pH! I found one reason why the mash was low- I had used BruNWater and had entered the large amount of crystal as Lovibond instead of EBC and yet had the spreadsheet expecting EBC. Once I corrected that the mash pH estimate dropped quite a bit to 5.3.

No idea what my sparge alkalinity was, I tested my tap water before brewing and got 210ppm alkalinity from a Salifert (I test it every brew but it never changes). I cut it with Ashbeck (unless I do that I have to add lots of CRS and then get adequate sulfafe and chloride levels with the calcium still being on the low side. So I reduce the alkalinity by diluting then add the CRS....

All the salts were measured on a calibrated accurate scale, the CRS measures in a medical syringe, malt measures on a gram accurate scale. Really scratching my head on this one...

I'm going to double check the figures for the tap and Ashbeck I've entered into BruNWater, my gut tells me there's something wrong in the spreadsheet. Might also try some new CRS and shaking it before measuring it out... Also going to add the salts to the water in the mash tun before adding the malt. I measure out the salts and stick them on top of the cruyshed malt before pouring into the mash tun- I wonder if I'm getting inadequate mixing of the salts in the mash so when I take the sample to cool for pH testing from the top of the mash it may be unrepresentative. Probably also need to stir before taking the sample. I take the sample about 5 minutes after doughing in and don't re-stir before taking it.

Anyway, food for thought!

If you treated the full volume of liquour used we can assume the same level of alkalinity for the sparge, did you measure alkalinity after administering the CRS? I am aware of previous problems with BW but the latest version appears to have fixed those, do you know whether you have the latest? Obviously if your input figures are wrong that's different, I would still check the version though. A very low level of alkalinity may just allow the calcium and crystal, and don't forget that crystal malts can be more acidifying than highly roasted malts, to have caused the overshoot.

I don't think you have a mixing problem, but if you are using Gypsum that can be difficult to get into solution. Can I suggest you sample after 15 minutes after mashing in (not doughing in that's US terminology ), it gives it a little bit longer for all the salts to have taken effect?

Sorry- cross-posting Yes, I think I'm going to chill and do a 15 minute reading as you suggest. There was indeed a good old slug of Gypsum- then again presumably the calcium in that would lower pH so if it was taking a long time to dissolve wouldn't the pH read high? Good point re the terminology- shouldn't be using US terminology on a ESB

[orlando]

There was indeed a good old slug of Gypsum- then again presumably the calcium in that would lower pH so if it was taking a long time to dissolve wouldn't the pH read high?

You're right about calcium but it is affected by alkalinity, if you have removed too much it can lower it to the point you experienced. It's why I asked you what the alkalinity was post treatment, did you measure it?

[BenB]

Aha- do you mean measuring the alkalinity of the mixed water post CRS? If so I must admit I didn't but it's a good idea! It would narrow down the source of error.

[orlando]

Aha- do you mean measuring the alkalinity of the mixed water post CRS? If so I must admit I didn't but it's a good idea! It would narrow down the source of error.

Exactly, otherwise how do you know for sure what you did, that what you are adding is the right amount to achieve your target? To be really pedantic it is also worth measuring the pH all the way through the process so you can track your practises or techniques are working. Final pH before packaging is a good clue as to how you did.

[BenB]

Yes, it's a good point. I'm going to double check the spreadsheet and then if all else fails at the upcoming brew I'll triple check my alkalinity measurements throughout and ditto the pH, try and see where its going awry.