Big day testing lots of new kit

[Matt in Birdham]

Big brew day for me, as I had a load of new and/or fixed bits of kit to use for the first time.
Brewed (roughly) the same SNPA clone(ish) that I often brew, but this time with WLP002 instead of US05 to try and get a bit more interest going flavourwise. First time with WLP002, and only second time with any liquid yeast. Mashed a bit lower at 65C (usually 67) to try and get a similar FG as I do with the US05.

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 29.00 l
Post Boil Volume: 26.00 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 22.00 l
Bottling Volume: 19.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.053 SG
Estimated Color: 11.0 EBC
Estimated IBU: 35.7 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 79.5 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
5.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 94.3 %
0.25 kg Caramel Malt - 10L (Briess) (19.7 EBC) Grain 2 4.7 %
0.05 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (118.2 EBC) Grain 3 0.9 %
10.00 g Magnum [14.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 4 16.2 IBUs
15.60 g Perle [8.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 5 10.1 IBUs
0.91 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 6 -
36.40 g Cascade [6.80 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 7 9.4 IBUs
52.22 g Cascade [6.80 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 8 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) [35.49 Yeast 9 -

Built a cheap stir plate in the usual way - this was my first starter on it, 1.2L with a sachet of WLP002. It vortexes well and the stirplate lasted the full 24 hours no problems.. serious clumps of yeast by the end, but this pic is from the beginning:



Bought myself a Brewferm malt mill as an early Christmas present. First time milling malt at home, one of the reasons being that I wanted to try conditioning the malt. Conditioned the 5kg of grain with 100ml sprayed water and milled at 0.7mm. The crush was amazing - almost all hulls intact, and very fluffy - you could stuff a pillow with it!




Mashing in, I got a very gelatinous mash straight away - wallpaper paste almost - and quite a few dough-balls. I was slightly panicked. I stirred for a good few minutes then let it sit for another few minutes before turning on the re-circ pump. Stuttered a bit at first (only a 12V solar), and I had to back it up once (blow through the other end), but it hit it's stride after that as the mash thinned.

Also had to replace the PID in my getto HERMS rig - glad to say the new one worked without issues. Here it is ramping up to mash-out at 75C:



First runnings hitting 10g of Magnum first wort hops:


The end of the last runnings, burner on - almost at the boil by the time the mash tun is empty:


The boil - I've mentioned it a few times, but I am really loving this induction hob. This is 29L on the boil at a 5C ambient temp. Doubt I'll be brewing much colder than this:


Cold break:

[Matt in Birdham]

I stopped transfer to the fermentor at 15L so that I could pick up the bucket and give it a decent shake - I gather aeration is particularly important for WLP002. Having just read "Yeast" I am now seriously considering an oxygen kit.. maybe for my birthday




The wort - crystal clear and quite light:


Another piece of new kit, my fermentation chamber. This has been running at 21C for the last week with bottles conditioning and stands up well enough to the cold. 45W tube heater, PC fan in a chest freezer. I washed all of the inside with starsan before putting the fermentor in. Don't panic, probe was taped to the side of the fermentor under insulation after this picture was taken:



All up very pleased (so far). Milling my own grain has taken me from 65% (very poor) to 80% mash eff. with no other change in process. I might mill a little looser next time, as the mash was slightly hairy at the start. So far - touch wood - all of the new bits of cobbled together kit seem to be working

Should just add that, for the first time since getting back into brewing, I hit all my numbers - 22l @ 1.053 in the bucket

Fingers crossed now that I don't get the dreaded off-flavour later on - as far as I can tell, everything today has gone to plan..

[cerbera84]

looking good Matt, did a similar SNPA clone myself a few weeks back, great beer.

have you got any more details of your HERMS setup please? looking for ideas as HERMS is on my Santa list

[Matt in Birdham]

I built this setup when I was living down in Aus, and put a post up on the forum down there: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/67302 ... mit-build/

It uses a very small (about 4") stainless coil, which is sold by a homebrew shop down there. All the other bits are off the shelf - sewage down-pipe, cheapo kettle element (from a £3 kettle - still going strong ), PID, SSR etc. If you were keen, I reckon you could try and make the coil yourself out of copper and then the whole thing would work out pretty cheap.

I've been brewing with this rig for a while now, but recently had some issues after taking the stuff out of storage - PID crapped itself mid-brew (twice - I thought I'd fixed it), pump seized etc. Sometimes I wonder if it is worth it and, on balance, I think if I was starting again I would probably get a really well insulated tun instead. The main problem with HERMS is that you add a few levels of complexity to the brew day and a few more points of failure - PID and pump, stuck mash etc. I raise my strike water to a few degrees above mash temp now, so that temp is correct after mash in and if things go pear shaped I can just put the lid on and do a normal mash.

Having said all that, when it works it really works well, and I effectively run a "2.5" vessel system. I use the HERMS to bring strike water up to temp which is really convenient. It's not fast (especially today, water started at 5C!) but it doesn't need to be. I can set the temp then do something else for a couple of hours, knowing that it will be held there. Recirc and clear wort looks great (but makes no difference to the finished beer) and temps are within 0.5C all over the mash for the whole time (again, this makes little difference really but its good for repeatability). Being able to ramp up to mashout is nice, as is recirculating the sparge water.

[cerbera84]

thanks for the detailed reply! I currently brew on a 3v setup - 50L HLT, 50L boiler and 50L mashtun. Need to upgrade my boiler to a 70/80L really, should have bought that in the first place! Noob mistake. I currently use propane but was interested in maybe using a HERMS like yours or possibly adding an element to my HLT and fitting a HERMS coil in there. My only concern was heating time really, propane is pretty rapid.

[Matt in Birdham]

WLP002 is a monster!
First time with this yeast, and having read all the advice to avoid low attenuation - mash low (65C for this recipe), pitch @ 18 and rise during ferment (@19 now after two x 0.5 incs), swirl the fermentor (twice daily) - this beer has now gone from 1.053 to 1.017 in 52 hours! Still bubbling as well, so it looks like I'll overshoot the 1.015 that BeerSmith calculated - although I guessed this might be the case beforehand, and am vaguely anticipating 1.012 or thereabouts.

Also took the opportunity to measure the temp of the sample with a thermapen - within 0.1 of the STC1000 set temp. Got to be happy with that.

Sample tastes great already - not super fruity but thicker, fruitier and more interesting than the same recipe with US05 for sure.