Brewday 911 2007 - Historical IPA

[Aleman]

Well tomorrows brew day has been cancelled and this is one of the drawbacks of brewing with gas, having set the brewery up, I went to move the propane cylinder into place, and thought "Thats a bit light", so I picked the cylinder up and gave it a good sloshing. well I could just about here something moving inside, but there was no feeling of weight moving back and forth. Therefore I deduced that the cylinder is getting down to empty. Of course you discover this just after your gas shop closes for the half day on a Saturday I could try and brew with what I have but I'd rather not run out. Still I can collect another bottle on Monday, and have it ready, and I'll take Tuesday off to brew instead.

The planned recipe is my historical IPA, which has been inspired by some of the recipes in the Durden Park book. I'll posta copy in the recipe section along with an explanation of why I'm doing what I'm doing, but just for ease of viewing, I'll precis it here.

Historical IPA (40L @1.080 - 85% efficency, 105IBU - Tinseth, 16 EBC)

10.0 Kg Pale Malt
1.5 Kg Munich Malt
0.5 Kg Light Crystal

I'm going to mash this for 90 minutes at 64C using 36L of treated water.

100g Target (11%AA) (FWH 120min boil)
100g Goldings (4.75% AA 60 Minutes)
50g Fuggles ( 5%AA 60 Minutes)
50g Goldings (4.75% AA 45 Minutes)

Fermenting with Whitelabs Burton Ale Yeast. Aging - Definately

And yes there will be pictures, If I follow my usual practise I'll be lighting the burners for the Mash Liquor around 6:00 AM. I doubt that I'll be able to get a webcam set up on the brewery PC (Linux) before then so you will have to make do with pictures.

[Aleman]

Ok, Well All the kit is set up ready for today, 80 odd L in the kettles waiting for morning, Decided NOT to start first thing as that would involve leaving the mash to its own thing while I take nipper to school. (Infusion mash Yes, RIMS NO! Not with the much smaller Hop Back I'm now using).

So will still be up early, to light the Kettle, but will also transfer the grain to the doughing in bucket, and set up the FB in the mash Tun. I'll probably transfer the liquor to the tun before taking nipper to school to let the temp equalise, then start from there.

Really looking forward to this, ALthough there have been some modifications to the set up from the last time I brewed I don't think they'll be too great to require relearning

[Aleman]

And he's off!

Although I lit the burners this morning at 06:45 (Whats the 0 for? OH MY GOD ITS EARLY!) Due to the lack of gas in the cylinder (It ran out while the mash Liqour was only 63C I have just finished Mashing in, and the recirc is on.

Mash Start 0:945 - Pictures taken and will be duly posted when I'm not checking underback levels

[Aleman]

12:03 Mash and sparge over, finished spare at 4.5 Brix so around 1.018 shouldn't have too much problem with tannin extraction, Mash bed temp wast 72C

Cranked up the gas under the boilers, and its all looking good. Piccies will be posted once boil is stable

52L at 17.25 Brix - Which I make around 94% Efficiency

[Aleman]

Following A request for Piccies. Here is the Brewery, HLT Isn't is place as it sits above the Mash Tun and I need to Dough In


The Grain Bill


Mash Tun at Strike Temp


The first half of the Grain Going In


Followed by the second Half

[Aleman]

The Mash Tun And Rims Heater Element Configured and ready to run


The first runnings after acouple of minutes of recirculating


But within 15 minutes it clears pretty well don't you think?


All I need to do is sort out that Dratted PID thing, It needed Autotuning again, and still it wasn't holding temp properly. The Mash Bed Temp was 63 Though Just under the 64 I was Aiming to mash At


So the mash was completed and I transferred the wort to the Boilers together with 100g Target and 100g Goldings (50g of each in Each Boiler) as FWH. Temp Held at about 75C while transfer took place then heat cranked up.


The Left hand kettle always seem to get to the boil first


Followed by the Right Hand one


Turning the power down from 19KW per kettle can be a painful experience as it gets damned hot under that bullfinch.

Alarms gone, Need to go and Measure the second Batch of hops - 60 Minutes to go

[DRB]

Nice set-up, only I think in future you may be better off getting a proper burner and gas than using a blow torch to get the boil going .

[Aleman]

Nice set-up, only I think in future you may be better off getting a proper burner and gas than using a blow torch to get the boil going .

Thats my Gas Lighter, used to cause a few singed eyebrows at the pub when people asked for a light

[oblivious]

Very sweet set up

[spearmint-wino]

That's some kit, good work

[Aleman]

Hopping Schedule has changed

100g Target (11%AA) (FWH 120min boil)
100g Goldings (4.75% AA 120 Minutes)

50g Goldings (4.75% AA 60 Minutes)
50g Fuggles ( 5%AA 60 Minutes)

50g Goldings (4.75% AA 45 Minutes)

Just about to start transfer to fermenter

[Aleman]

52L at 17.25 Brix - Which I make around 94% Efficiency

Yeah well it should be too good to be true I got 37L in the fermenter at 17 Brix) so only 74% on the efficiency. I had forgotten to account for the wort loss to the hops with 400g tht would account for a lot.

Hopstoppers worked very well, with very clear wort going into the fermenter. I recirculated using the immersion chillers (Pics of the chilling setup to follow) so should have ended up with a lot of the cold break trapped. Looking at the foam in the fermenter, it should have good head formation/retention.

[Aleman]

Ok So here are the final few pictures.

I decided to do use a combined Immersion / Plate chiller setup, to try and get a sensible temp in the fermenter, so built a couple of 10m immersion coils from some 8mm copper I had lying around and rigged them up with one feed and one drain.



But this is the overall picture of the chilling setup, the pump recircs wort to the boilers and outlets into a manifold in the center of the IC coils. Worked fairly quickly to 90C down to 50C in about 15 minutes. There is another take off from the pump outlet that feeds the wort into a small plate chiller From pervious experience I know that i can take the feed from the Plate chiller, and use it to drive the IC with no loss of cooling. From the outlet of the PC the wort flows into an in line thermometer and into a 22mm compression T fitted with an aeration stone, driven in this case by O2 (Medical Grade). I run this at 2L per minute, and the run into the fermeter gives plenty of contact time for the wort froth to absorb O2, plus the foam in the FV is full of O2



Again the PC failed to do the job, and I had to throttle the wort flow back to get 25-26C going intot he FV which even makes using pure O2 a poor job although I would guess that I can saturate the wort with O2 at 25C (IIRC is around 5-6ppm, and below the ideal levels, still I'm not reusing the yeast so I can probably get away with it).

Still I must have done something right as here is the ferement after 24 hours of pitching (It was similar this AM but I was too busy to take the piccy)



The recirc while chilling seems to have done a great job of trapping the break proteins in the Hop bed (Which was quite thick, 2-3 inches ), as the yeast head is one of the cleanest I've seen for ages. I think that for my next Beer (A CAP) I need to look at probably using my 20m CFC, Its just a big heavy beast to lug around and store.

[steve_flack]

Nice pics. I think you should get a stand or something for that O2 cylinder...Health and Safety mate

[Aleman]

Despite the H&S issues of the way I treat my cylinders Its been a week since the yeast was pitched and its gone from 1.067 to 1.014 (Corrected with a hydrometer, Brix value is 8.5) which gives me 77% apparent attenuation for just over 6% alcohol.

I guess it will fall a couple more points over the next few months

Anyway here is the file