Brewday 05/08/07 - Choccy mild with pictures!!!

[oblivious]

You can add some coco powder to the last 15 minutes of the boil to get that chocolate/ coco flavour, that’s a popular method for chocolate stouts.

[Vossy1]

Looks like another successful brewday IB, gr8 pics

[Ianb]

You can add some coco powder to the last 15 minutes of the boil to get that chocolate/ coco flavour, that’s a popular method for chocolate stouts.

Thats what I did, OBV. 3 tablespoons, fifteen minutes before the end. I always judge chocolate beers against my favourite, Youngs double chocolate stout. Alas, they've stopped selling it in Sainsbury's, and the last pint I had was on draught at, believe it or not, the Gingerman in New York, U.S.A.!!!!

There is a thread with a recipe, and this uses cocoa in the boil, and chocolate essence in the secondary. I suppose that explains the double chocolate then!

I was wondering if I've removed to much of the chocolate flavour by skimming the cocoa-y trub.

Any ideas?

[oblivious]

Hersheys chocolate

Cadbury coco should be just as good

[Ianb]

If you hadn't skimmed it it would have ended up in the slurry after fermentation so I doubt it would have made any difference.
I don't know if it is significant but US chocolate beer recipes seem to always suggest the use of Hersheys chocolate powder.

Hmmm. My over-riding memory of eating a Hersheybar was (at the risk of upsetting our American members ) that it tasted like sweetened vomit .

One mouthful and I tried to feed the rest to our hosts dog, who turned his nose up at it!

I took the Cadbury's option.

[slim34]

smashing pictures of a very professional looking setup.

I like the shelf system. I had been thinking until now that i might build an elaborate and ugly wooden contraption, but your system is good because it can be easily dismantled or adjusted for different setups.

[Ianb]

I like the shelf system. I had been thinking until now that i might build an elaborate and ugly wooden contraption, but your system is good because it can be easily dismantled or adjusted for different setups.

If I'm totally honest, it was more good luck than good management. I bought two boilers off Ebay for about £25 each. One was tall and thin, the other (like me ) shorter and dumpier!

I chose the tall one as HLT as I could get my arm to the bottom of the other one easily to clean it.

There are some better pics of the set up pre cooler HERE

I then realised the shed has a sloping roof in one direction and some adjustable shelf rails and brackets on the "tall" wall might allow me to get a gravity system.

The units were built in when the shed was built, but cutting a section of worktop away gave access to the shelf at the perfect height.

I like it for a number of reasons.

1) The only time I'm moving hot liquid is moving the full mashtun from its shelf onto the butlers sink grid for doughing in, then back again. The height difference is small and I can lift the tun from underneath, not having to rely on handles.
2) The HLT has a remote fill, so since it went up there, it's only been out once for an inspection.
3)the Mash tun shelf lifts out of the way in 5 seconds for easy access to the boiler for removal / cleaning.
4) The whole thing stands me at about £130!!!

I'm already thinking of upgrading, and when I do I'd like to keep a vertical setup, Brew length permitting.

[Frothy]

I like the idea of recirculating the wort through the chiller and back into the boiler, this could be a lot less messy than my current attempts. Great sight gauge on the HLT what are those brass elbows your using? HLT

Frothy

[Vossy1]

I love the idea of recirculating the wort through the chiller and back into the boiler, this could be a lot less messy than my current attempts.

It is a great idea but both IB and I have had problems with the cold break getting through to the fv.
If this doesn't prove to be a big problem then there's no need to recirc back to the copper.
If that's the case, and I've done this before, you can cool a 10 gallon batch in less than 10 minutes.

We'll see

[Ianb]

....... Great sight gauge on the HLT what are those brass elbows your using? HLT

Frothy

They are "Compression Elbows, Male" with "Brass flanged backnut" from HERE and a rubber sealing washer.

I cut two 1.5" stubs from an offcut of 15mm copper tube and soldered a "Yorkshire" solder ring end cap to each, then drilled a 5mm hole in the centre of each end cap. These were then fastened into the compression fittings.

The advantage of the Yorkshire end caps is the ridge formed in the copper for the solder ring acts as a "barb" for holding tube on. The tube is a length of 1/2" food grade plastic tubing from the local aquatic centre, held on with jubilee clips tightened down HARD!!!

I was concerned how the tube would stand up to the temperature, so when complete I filled the boiler and boiled it for an hour. No problems. No Leaks, and it only cost about £4!!!

It is a great idea but both IB and I have had problems with the cold break getting through to the fv.

There was quite a lot of CB left in the boiler with this last brew, but a lot got through as well. When you've got a good covering of hops on the false bottom, next to no CB get through, and the amount of c**p left in the bottom of the boiler is astounding

[delboy]

I love the idea of recirculating the wort through the chiller and back into the boiler, this could be a lot less messy than my current attempts.

It is a great idea but both IB and I have had problems with the cold break getting through to the fv.
If this doesn't prove to be a big problem then there's no need to recirc back to the copper.
If that's the case, and I've done this before, you can cool a 10 gallon batch in less than 10 minutes.

We'll see

Vossy does it make much difference if the cold break makes it into the FV, surely it will all just drop out and form part of the trub, not ideal if you like yeast harvesting but otherwise woudn't it be fine???

[delboy]

A small amount of cold break is beneficial to fermentation but too much can cause a chill haze and long term stability problems. Too little though and it can cause problems with fermentation, none at all and it can produce off flavours.

One pass through the hops seems sufficient for my purposes, I get good fermentations and don't have any stability problems within the period I keep my beers.

Ok im not really in a position to gave an opinion (never having done a brew that just allowed all the cold break into the FV).
But in my head it doesn't make sense that letting the cold break into the FV would result in issues with cold haze (cold break is the proteins that have aggregated during the rapid cooling process, these form large lumps that settle out quickly, its the proteins that haven't sucessfully clumped/aggregated and precipated surely that cause the cold haze with post fermention chilling and they come into the FV regardless of whether you use a bazooka screen, filter bed, CFC or whatever???
Stability, i haven't a notion about? What do people actully mean when they talk about stability???

[delboy]

Thanks for shedding some light on that DaaB, so its the consequent metabolism of the cold break proteins/polyphenols that causes issues

[delboy]

Thanks for shedding some light on that DaaB, so its the consequent metabolism of the cold break proteins/polyphenols that causes issues

Partly, but the haze issue is down to the polyphenols combining with proteins (unless that also comes under the heading metabolize, bear in mind i'm a time served mechanical fitter and not a scientist).

You hold your own well

Im just wondering how much of what we talk about though isn't applicable to the homebrew setup, for instance i think the big breweries chill the wort right down to 5 C or as low to O C as they can which causes the aggregates to become really quite large, this is filtered into the FV where i presume the temperature is increased to pitching temp which if the cold break had not have been filtered would have allowed it to go back into solution and hence cause a cold haze.

At the homebrew level we never get the beer chilled down to anywhere near those temperatures. Instead we aim at just getting it down to near pitching temperature. Therefore in the homebrew setup there is no subsequent significant increase in temperature of the wort to allow the cold break proteins from whatever chilling method we used to become resuspended. Again I still think it would be the proteins that didn't aggregate out in the chill that would cause any haze issues and not the resuspension of those that did form during the chill.

[delboy]

Although we may not be able to emulate commercial breweries, we can chill beer far quicker that it would naturally cool so we are able to go some way to increasing the precipitation of proteins.

Large breweries use Whirlpools or Centrifuges to remove a large part of the trub as they will often use pellet hops which offer no filtering ability. Homebrewers are left with more traditional and inventive methods by using the natrual ability of the whole leaf hop. This might not remove all the trub but neither does the centrifuge.

I don't think it's a case of black and white it shades of grey. We can't achieve the same levels of resistance to chill haze that a commercial brewers can, especially if they cold filter but as there are other benefits to removing the cold trub it's worth persisting with it's removal and it's worth precipitating as much of the proteins etc out as we can for removal.

Using my pretty standard setup as an example, using my immersion I can chill my beer to pitching temperature in 30-40 mins, I don't want to chill it any more as I like to pitch around 25 deg c. A large proportion is filtered by the hops when I run off, enough that I don't notice any off flavours so i'm happy with the results. I can also chill my beers down to 13 deg probably lower without experiencing haze issues.
If I leave some in the fridge and allow it to get to 5 deg or lower it will likely get a chill haze, if I leave it for a 3 weeks at that temperature it drops out.

If I hadn't chilled my wort, maybe it would act the same way but looking at peoples beer on various forums who use the 'no chill' method and reading what they have to say about their beersI would say the small effort I make to quickly chill the wort is beneficial not only for taste but for clarity.

I've since upgraded to a plate chiller, this I use for speed rather than for any other reason.

I agree with you DaaB its certainly not black and white and chilling the wort with an immersion chiller or CFC etc reasonably quickly to pitching temperatures is certainly better than nothing by a long way. (the addition of irish moss or whirlfoc obviously also helps).

Any rapid chilling below 60 C will result in some cold break and this obviously increases with a decrease in temp, that said though from experience i know that cold precipitation of proteins only really gets truely effective at temps close to freezing (when precipating proteins prior to centrifugation in the lab we routinely chill and incubate on ice).