5200 gms lager malt, 600 gm wheat malt. I like round numbers.
The Saaz I have is only 2.1% AA, so I adjust the weight according to Beer Engine.
07:30 60L water on to boil, Made a false bottom for tun with perforated stainless steel while waiting.
09:20 Water boiling, added a teaspoon of gypsum to help chalk precipitation.
09:50 Boiler off
10:30 Pumped boiled water to HLT (through CF cooler). HLT now reads 50L at 50C.
10:55 15L liquor into tun, started re-circulation at 39C. Added grains
11.12 After sodding about to get flow rate stable, mash is now 40C:
11.21 Mash at 45C, set PID for 55C
11.30 At 55C, but then overshoots to 57C, increase the P of PID from 5 to 50%, settles down.
11:46 Mash has stable temperature throughout, 56-57C, bit high but...
12:00 Set PID for 66C
12:30 PID has overshot again, now reading 69C, MashMaster reads 68C
Wort is much clearer; this is a much higher flow rate than I use for sparging:
During mashing, I mess about with the PID to make it respond more quickly so I get a higher than usual range:
Re-circulation valve on the left, sparge valve on the right, precision engineering of sparge arm height...
14:00 Start sparge, planning to use another 22L from HLT, First runnings (at 66C):
You can barely see the sparge water entering the tun, it balances pretty well, but I have to adjust it as the valve is a very course control and heat sensitive
, replace valves..
14:20 12L to go, SG = 1060 at 66C
14:25 8L to go, 13L in boiler, SG = 1040 at 64C
14:30 5L to go, 17L in boiler, SG = 1022 at 62C
14:35 2L to go, 20L in boiler, SG = 1015 at 61.5C
14:38 Sparge water stopped, used a total of 37L for mash and sparge
14:40 22L in boiler, SG = 1010 at 61C
14:42 Boiler at 45C, burner on
14:45 25.5L in boiler, SG = 1006 at 61C, stopped drain into boiler, drained re-circ line, total=28L
15:10 Cleaning out mash tun, need to find a way to seal round the edge of the false bottom:
For the time being, at least, the perforated sheet sits on top of the mmmbeer grain filter:
Looked round to see
Never had that sort of froth before, maybe because previously I always added the first hops before the wort was boiling!
16:40 Irish moss and Protofloc in
16:55 Boiler off, Saaz steep hops in, lid on
17:18 Wort at 90C, begin recirc (bit hot for pump, but not for very long)
17:28 Wort at 38C, allow to rest because flow rate has significantly reduced - probably hops blocking filter.
17:35 And then it all went a bit tits up !!
19:30 Eventually drained VERY slowly, but the end result was:
This was the hops and trub:
Very little liquid left in the boiler:
At the end of boil I had about 25.5L showing on the sight tube, but I only collected 22 L, expecting closer to 25L.
So as the efficiency was very high anyway, I added 3L of cold water.
I did not measure OG at this stage, but a very quick sum says it is probably still going to give about 5.5% instead of 5.2%.
Lessons:
Change re-circ and sparge valves to give better control
Re-circulate at lower flow rates to start with, avoid filters blocking.
Larger losses than expected in wet hops.
This forum does not like long posts with Windows 7/IE8, had to load Firefox to get it to work
Got to allow for higher efficiencies, otherwise all production will be "fall over juice....."
(finks, wots rong wiv fawl ova deuce?)
Great shots.
](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
because I've seen it at the bottom of his boiler but can't for the life of me remember what it's called.