Homebrew Beer Howto

The high horse brigade

raxy wrote: »

most people would use star san instead of water.

I actually used vodka in the airlock but that was a waste of time

The wife just went to have a bath only to meet 10m of garden hose soaking in it. I think she’s contemplating where her life went wrong at the moment.
Going to give this biab a lash today anyways. God help us all.

Sweet Christ the mess.

Sparging is not good over one of these buckets. I need a massive funnel.

mordeith

Those airlocks aren't great. You'd be better off with the standard bubbler with the red cap.

Bogwoppit

ReginaldSmythV wrote: »

Sweet Christ the mess.

Sparging is not good over one of these buckets. I need a massive funnel.

Show us a pic of your setup, you might get some tips for improvements.

Bogwoppit

Bogwoppit wrote: »

Show us a pic of your setup, you might get some tips for improvements.

I’ll gather up a few now cheers, I some while I was at it. OG is bang on but I ended up with less liquid and it doesn’t look right. I’ll let it ferment anyway and see.

I tried sparge over an oven tray I bought to let the bag sit on but it sat on it wider than the bucket.

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Setup with the bag and paddle. This is 17 litres of water but when the grains went in it was like porridge so I had to top it up (luckily I had already started to heat the sparge water and it was at temp so I didn’t disrupt the temp). Ended up sparging with less.
Foil is an Aldi windscreen frost thing.





Mashing. Temp never dropped below 67, checked every 20 mins.





Starting to look weird during chilling.





Starting to look even weirder during chilling.






Gravity. Looks like there’s oil or something on it.

RasTa

Proteins, they will settle down.

Brewer speak is hot break and cold break.

How long did it take to cool to pitching temp?

How many L was your recipe calculated for?

RasTa

RasTa wrote: »

Proteins, they will settle down.

Brewer speak is hot break and cold break.

How long did it take to cool to pitching temp?

Cheers, I had heard of the former, but never the cold break.

Took about 15-20 minutes to hit 22.

RasTa

was it a 23L kit?

It was but it’s ended up at 21 as I never took into account the space the metal base would take up.

I cooled it from an outside tap, which was almost frozen over today (only one I’ve hozelocks on).

RasTa

Yeah when doing bIAB, start with he total volume of water, about 30L. Don't bother with sparging

RasTa

RasTa wrote: »

Yeah when doing bIAB, start with he total volume of water, about 30L. Don't bother with sparging

That would make it a whole lot easier. Do I need to look up a kit that suits that then or do any brew that way?

Would you still drain and squeeze the bag at that method?

RasTa

ReginaldSmythV wrote: »

That would make it a whole lot easier. Do I need to look up a kit that suits that then or do any brew that way?

Would you still drain and squeeze the bag at that method?

Do any style. I'm guessing it's a 30-33L boiler. Careful it doesn't spill out.

Did you hit your OG or higher? Looks about 1060 on the hydro.

I've had loads of close calls at the start, doing stupid ****

RasTa

RasTa wrote: »

Do any style. I'm guessing it's a 30-33L boiler. Careful it doesn't spill out.

Did you hit your OG or higher? Looks about 1060 on the hydro.

I've had loads of close calls at the start, doing stupid ****

That’s fairly close looking.

I started ended up with 28l boil in 32l boiler. Hit the OG bang on at 1.060. Next time I’ll do the 30 though to account for the base, etc and do the full amount for mashing.

The airlock on this thing is going mad. I know it doesn’t mean much but I never seen that at all with the extract brews.

Anyway, anyone know any good sources for recipes? BIAB recipes ideally, so I don’t have to work out volumes, etc from a regular AG brew. I had looked at that Beersmith thing and, while it’s excellent (especially the volume adjusting - I’d like to do 15-18 litres finished next time) and I can work the conversions (weights, SRM to EBC, etc), I find that most recipes I’ve looked at always seem to have one or two grains or hops that can’t be got here. Anything even UK based maybe?

RasTa

http://scottjanish.com/

Google hop sub chart. Most hops can be subbed

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/hop-substitutions/

I presume it’s the same for this one as it is for the kits - 2 weeks in the fermenter?

BeerNut

Yes. The yeast don't care about your method. It's all just sugar to them.

I was in a couple of old kits I made a good while back again for the first time in a while (a mangrove jacks and a GEB one) and I tell you they’re fair nice. Massive improvement over what they tasted like early days.
Definitely looking forward to seeing what the biab stuff turns out like now.

Bottled my first BIAB this evening but didn’t reckon on there being so much more slop in the bottom than an extract batch. Batch primed for 20l but only ended up with 16l bottled. So just how fecked am I?

Bogwoppit

It’ll be grand, just a bit fizzy that’s all.

Bogwoppit

I have a question myself, beer but you may be able to help.
I’ve noticed a bit of astringency in my last couple of batches, I think I’ve narrowed it down to the sparge water temp. I’ve run it at about 85 degrees as I was told it would improve efficiency but I think it’s scorching the husks.
What sparge temps do you work at?

Bogwoppit

Bogwoppit wrote: »

It’ll be grand, just a bit fizzy that’s all.

Much chance of them cracking? Fizzier the better if the bottles hold up.

Bogwoppit

ReginaldSmythV wrote: »

Much chance of them cracking? Fizzier the better if the bottles hold up.

Unlikely I’d say but keep them somewhere they won’t do damage if they do go. Open one in a couple of weeks and see.

raxy

I heat my smwater to ~70-75 & transfer the sparge water to a cooler until finished the mash.

What are people doing with their inkbird probes? I always taped it to the outside of my bucket but it only dawned on me that I could probably put it into the liquid down a grommet into the lid. Can you submerge it and would it be better?

raxy

I just tape the probe to the outside & put a bit of sponge over the probe so it makes good contact with the fermenter.
No need to put it into the fermenter.

How important is temperature for conditioning? I’ve had three batches lately, one was bottle 7 weeks ago, one 5 weeks ago, and one 3 weeks ago. Everything I drank from the first few batches was fine until this week but everything I open now is flat (even the one I posted before about accidentally over priming). From the batch 3 weeks ago, the first 5 I’ve opened have been flat.

BeerNut

Conditioning is just fermentation: it works best at room temperature and is slower when it's cooler.