AG BIAB #13 POTUS45 Grisette Thing

[wolfenrook]

First time brewing with my DIY built system. Also my first time with water treatment, and my first time using ONLY Beersmith 3 (usually used BIABacus to build the recipe and work out volumes).

It didn't going smoothly, that's for sure.... lol

POTUS 45 Grisette Thing (AKA Trump Grisette....)...

Water I starter with RO, then rebuilt it with calcium chloride, Epsom salts, calcium sulphate and a bit of lactic acid (yellow balanced water profile from BS 3). I should really have checked mash pH, but didn't bother.

Mash - 70 minutes full volume BIAB, no sparge, @ 64.4 degrees C. Mash out (yeah, didn't really work out...) over 10 minutes @75.6 (rising over 7)(need to set the rising for a good 15 minutes for future brews).

Fermentables

1000g Wheat Malt 3.0 EBC (reading about Grisette, you want a LOT of wheat malt in the malt bill to give mouth feel)
800g Munich Malt 17.7 EBC
800g Dingemans Pilsen Malt 3.2 EBC
130g Dingemans Special B 290.6 EBC
120g Weyermann Caramunich II 124.1 EBC

100g Polish mixed flower honey for last 5 minutes of boil.

Boil 60 minutes

Hops were all whole hops:-

7g Magnum 13.2% AA @ 60 minutes for bittering.
0.5 Protafloc tablet @ 15 minutes.
10g Jester 8% AA @ 15 minutes.
20g Jester 8% AA @ 5 minutes.
See honey in fermentables.
70g Jester 8% AA @ flameout.

Rehydrated 1 packet of Fermentis Safale BE-134 Belgian Saison yeast. Quite new as far as I can tell, so will be interesting to see what results I got. It certainly responded well to been rehydrated, foaming up quite a lot in the jug.

I was using an estimate brewhouse efficiency of 70% for my recipe, with the following targets:-

OG: 1.032. FG: 1.000. Colour: 17.0 EBC. Alc: 4.3% ABV Estimated. Bitterness (IBU's): 19.5 Tinseth (the goal is for it to not be overly bitter, but to be quite hoppy). Batch size into FV: 20 Litres.

So anyway, it started to go wrong even whilst I was mixing the grist, the handle snapping clean off my little plastic scoop... My wife had to use a jug to dough in... I think in future I need to not play things so close to the rim though, was getting a few drips from wicking...

The BIAB bag is horrible! A big floppy thing that just wants to float and fold in on itself all over the place... Got there in the end though. Found that the control panel worked best with the power regulator set to 50%, holding the temps nice and steady with little movement in either direction. It shows 30% in the pic, but this kept upping and downing by about .5 of a degree, 50% worked much better.

More>>>>

[wolfenrook]

Recirculation worked well, with such a small grain bill I was able to run the pump pretty much at full whack.

Estimate for post mash SG (SG into the boil) was for 1.027. Missed this slightly, only hitting 1.024, but could be my refractometer reading been naff (it's a naff refractometer to be honest). Plus I seemed to have way more volume after draining than predicted too. Gave the bag a squeeze, not used to doing this, not sure I want to do this in the future either to be honest, it didn't seem to give me more than a few hundred mls at best, but sure did give me much cloudier wort...

Anyway, with the bag draining, I attached the pipe to the whirlpool port (with the pump turned off, and taps all closed, just did it to keep it out of the way really) and put the control panel into boil mode.

Like with the mash switch the No PR/PR is the wrong way around.... lol I didn't use the power regulator at all for boiling, it wasn't needed....

[wolfenrook]

This is where things really got messy to be honest.

Boiler managed a decent rolling boil, so that was a plus. Somewhere between the overly vigorous one I used to get using both elements on my old boiler, and the wussy one I used to get with just the 1600 watt element. I guess this is a product of the wider, lower shape of the boiler compared to my old one. Seemed a bit lop sided too, but it did the job I guess. Pic doesn't do it justice, as usual I couldn't capture the peaks of the boil.

It was in the last 15 minutes of the boil the problems really started to show up. First up, I seriously need to either contain the hops, or put a hops filter on the pump intake. The pump clogged within seconds of been turned on, rendering the whirlpool useless sadly. I ended up doing it with my wine degassing wand and power drill once I'd turned the heat off and chiller on.

As to the pick-up tube plus spontex scourer idea I found on the internet, that's a big nope right there. The scourer blocked up completely in less than 1 second of turning the tap on even a tiny bit to transfer... Without the scourer, the whole hops just clogged up the pick-up tube itself almost as quickly... I ended up bailing out with a sanitised jug, filtering the wort through a sanitised sieve in order to transfer. I got 21 litres into the FV, but I bet you a good 1.5 litres of that will be trub even once it settles and compacts down. So, back to a bazooka I reckon.

The good news? I hit my target OG bang on! 1.032 bang on! This isn't the reading I took that from, but is from the same sample.

Everything about this brew was new and experimental for me.

New kit, first time with water treatment, new style of beer and even hops I've not tried before.... Oh and I've never used Special B or Caramunich II malts before either... So I have no idea what it's going to come out like...

Oh yeah, and if the FG falls short of the target of 1.000, I have a bottle of this amylase enzyme stuff, and will be experimenting with using it in secondary to produce a lower carbohydrate beer.... lol I doubt I will need it though to be honest, if the BE-134 is as good as I reckon it is. I'll probably end up using the enzyme on a Brut IPA or something.... lmao Once I sort out the niggles with this ruddy boiler that is.....

[wolfenrook]

Tweaks to the boiler now made, I'll add more detail at some point in my boiler build thread, here's a quick pic of the inside for now though.

[WalesAles]

wolf,
Great post!
Nice to see that you are not scared of posting mishaps, it all helps people to learn things.
How the hell did you catch the pic of the `Monkeys` Face` in the Boil pic? You must have been waiting ages for the perfect pic!
Why do you think it will get FG of 1.000? That`s a bit low innit?

WA

[wolfenrook]

You think that's low? I had a Saison go down to 0.998 once with Belle Saison yeast. Lol. 1.000 is the prediction from Beersmith 3 believe it or not, BE-134 is rated for 90% attenuation by the manufacturer.

Talking of mishaps, I took my pump apart last night to unblock it. There was a big lump of kitchen roll in there? I kid you not.... Ever likely it have up when I tried to whirlpool, it's a miracle it managed the mash....

I'm now trying really hard to see that monkey face..... Lol

[ciderhead]

Just use pellet hops far superior product, I remember the first and only time I tried to use leaf and a chugger it was like Augustus Gloop

[wolfenrook]

I don't agree at all. If you get your filtration right, whole hops give you much clearer wort in transfer. They form a good filter bed that really help to filter out the trub, keeping more of it in the kettle. Also, whole hops give a slightly different flavour, slightly more herbal than pellets. Some of my earliest brew days were plagued by pellets and trub clogging my bazooka completely up during transfer...

Pellets however are easier to store, and give more punch when dry hopping.

[ciderhead]

As homebrewers we become obsessed with complete elimination of trub and requirement for crystal clear wort into our fermenters, time Temp and yeast will sort all that out.

[wolfenrook]

Why shouldn't we? Just because we are brewing at home doesn't mean we can't seek to craft the best beer we can. Plus less trub into the FV means less waste when it comes time to package, and an easier time of it.

Why be in a race for the bottom just because of the home brewer tag?

[ciderhead]

I had that attitude in my early home brewing days filtering before FV, old hands on here taught me over the years that you don’t need a full protofloc or siphon from the top of the boiler or that an element of trub actually helps with fermentation. As you do more and more brews you’ll see what I mean.

In the meantime here’s a Bells Two Hearted IPA with pellets in a GF I did today.



Which I’ll put into number 3

[alexlark]

Bells Two Hearted IPA, on my to-do list. Impressive refrigeration setup there!

[ciderhead]

Best Beer in US apparently, I had it years ago and this is version 2 I'm having a go at for a US visitor.
Cheers, I do lagers on 3 month profiles and typically have 2 permanently on the go, 1 is a beer & C keg conditioning fridge if I'm honest. But other 4 are controlled by brewpi, mybrewbotx2 and a programmable stc.
Getting back on topic never did a grisette not sure why, love to see a pic of wolfs final product, will probably convince me as traditional style is just pilsner chitted wheat and saaz, I see some use oats for body as well.

[Matt in Birdham]

Why shouldn't we? Just because we are brewing at home doesn't mean we can't seek to craft the best beer we can. Plus less trub into the FV means less waste when it comes time to package, and an easier time of it.

Why be in a race for the bottom just because of the home brewer tag?

I'm not sure that's even true though. Trub in the FV will be much more compact than trub in the kettle by the time it comes to package, so arguably less waste (overall) is achieved by chucking it all in. I generally let plenty of trub into my FV and it doesn't bother me - no real evidence to suggest otherwise, and some evidence to suggest that it is good for yeast health.

[wolfenrook]

It's true for me, and to me this is what matters. The last time I had a lot of trub make it into the FV, it got disturbed when it came time to transfer for bottling, and I lost more beer. I am talking about MY opinions about home brewing and MY experiences with it, not somebody else's, here. Frankly, if you disagree then that's your opinion and I honestly don't really care overly. When I get a lot of trub in the FV, I get more waste, end of story. I found it much easier using whole hops, and found I much preferred the filtering effect I got using whole hops, plenty of other folks do too. Given that this is my brew day thread, not a thread debating the best technique, I think you'll find that's what matters.

You prefer pellet hops, and transferring more over into your FV, heh that's your choice, have fun doing it. But please, don't come into my brew day thread and try to throw your weight around telling me that I should too.

Have a nice day.