Our virgin AG Dr's golden ale brew day.

[chadjaja]

Well here is a sort of summary of the day so far. Svyturys and I teamed up for todays effort. Both AG virgins

LOOONG day

First off got out first strike temp pretty spot on and missed our mash target by half a degree at 65.5. Lost a degree over an hour but didn't pre heat the mash tun as I should of

Got a sort of stuck sparge in the first runnings now known due to too quick a flow and the fact the braid found its way up not lying flat on the bottom. Got 4L short of our first mash out target.

Second sparge temp was a bit low at 73 due to us carrying our HLT between rooms and got the amount of wort same out as what we put in. Needed to do a small 4L third sparge to get our final target volume of 29L. When in the fermenter and mixed we got a temp adjusted pre boil gravity of 1040. Not sure what that makes our efficiency though. Should be pretty good.

Doing a split boil of 15L's at a time with half the hop additions in each and I have a 1L starter coming to room temp to pitch when this second batch is cool and in the fermenter. The evaporation is pretty spot on to what we expect for the 90 min boil. All smells great so far. Looks like beer, smells like beer, should make beer LOL

Things we learnt today.

We NEED an urn to do full boils and eliminate the need to carry sparge water and lose temp.

Need to silicone the end of the braid.

Should replace some vinyl tubing with something more temp appropriate.

AG takes a lot of time

Thanks to Dr S, Warra, Trough and all those that helped.

Questions..

Why boil for 90 mins instead of 60 and does the grain bill need to be adjusted if a 60 min boil is done. Obviously less evaporation occurs.

[Tipsy]

Why boil for 90 mins instead of 60 and does the grain bill need to be adjusted if a 60 min boil is done. Obviously less evaporation occurs.

Your grain bill shouldn't need adjusting, but you would need more water in the sparge to account for evaporation.
There's a technical term for doing a longer boil, could be mail something reaction, or I could be way off. But it helps darkening the wort to get those nice malty flavours.

Personally I do a 75min boil.

[drsmurto]

I do 90 min boils routinely, the first 30 mins are on full tilt to get a good hot break, the remaining 60 are a gentle rolling boil.

I find i get a better clarity in the resulting wort but thats just my experience.

It also allows me (as Tipsy noted) to sparge a little bit more to get a bit more oomph out of my malt.

Maillard reactions is what you are thinking but they result from boiling grain, not wort AFAIK.

Sounds like you are having a fun day, make sure you post up some pics.

[chadjaja]

Well the second boil was cooled and in the fermenter with a good stir to get some oxygen in there. Starter decanted as it was on the stir plate and didn't want that wort in the brew adding off flavours. A good dose or yeast too so it should go off soon. Pitched at 22 degrees and OG was 1051 at 22 degrees but there was bit of trub in the sample that may of thickened it up slightly.

Pretty much 19L of wort in the fermenter and I think we did well considering the equipment limitations and extra work involved because of it. I guess our boil was a bit more vigorous than your Dr and that accounts for the extra loss with evaporation and probably the wider pot we used. Hence our gravity is a bit higher too I'd say because of it. Still in the range for an APA though.

So in summary.

29 Ls collected
pre biol SG 1040
90 min boil
Pitched at 22 degrees
SG of 1051
19L batch size.

Can anyone give me what my efficiency rating would be for my records. I don't have brew software just yet.



Sorry Doc didn't take pics, forgot to do that

Man I'm buggered.

[svyturys]

Man I'm buggered.

You're buggered? I'm the one that had to trudge off and work. It was fun...the work and the brewing...but what a long day.

I guess our boil was a bit more vigorous than your Dr and that accounts for the extra loss with evaporation and probably the wider pot we used.

It's a different boil to "extract" boiling. Also it should be noted that we boiled for 180 minutes in total. Two batches @ 90 minutes each. That could account for the extra loss.

Cheers

[warra48]

What weight and types of grain did you use?
If we have that we can work out your mash efficiency.

Or, you can work it out yourself the long way:

Mash Efficiency

Brew maths is quite simple.

How it works is all malts and adjuncts etc give a different gravity.
The specs are all written as H.W.E which is hot water extract with sugar being the highest at 386 so everything else is given as a % of that. ie, pale malt is around 81% which gives you around 309. this is the total gravity you can get with 1 kilo in 1 litre but it is near impossible to get this, this is 100% efficiency.
the same goes for american calcs but its in P.P.G which is the gravity of 1 pound in 1 gallon. The same specs are used ie. 81% for pale malt gives you 37 points of gravity.

I'd strongly recommend you spend about $25 and buy BeerSmith. It's invaluable in AG brewing, in spite of some well documented foibles in the program.

So a simple example to work out total potential for 5 kg of pale malt in 23 litres is
5 x 309 / 23 = 67 (1.067)

Now to work out your efficiency you divide the gravity you got with this brew. Say you got 1.050 so 50/67 =.74 you got 74% efficiency.
Then next time when you do the calc. 5 x 309 /23 =you simply times this by .74 .
This gives you your expected gravity,

For your first batches i would stick to using 65 to 75%.
So do the 5 x 309/ 23 = 67.
then times 67 by .65 = 43(1.043)

P.S. the H.W.E. numbers are often on the maltsters website. Other malts like crystal malt are around 75% some malts can be lower and some higher.
To get the number times 386 by the percent as a decimal point ie pale malt at 81% gives you 386 x .81 =312

Some indicitive examples, noting they vary from batch batch and malster to maltser to some degree.:
Ale -------81% X 386 = 312
Pilsner----------------81%
Munich----80%
Melanoiden--------- -80%
Caramalt pils---------79%
Crystal---------------- 75%

Say the HWE is 308 litre degrees per kilogram for a malt.
That means 5kg in 20L will give you : (308 x 5)/20 = 77. i.e. 1.077 SG at 100% efficiency. Multiply that by your efficiency (eg. 75%) gives you 77 x 0.75 = 57.75 or close enough to 1.058.

I'd strongly recommend you spend $25 or so and buy BeerSmith. It's invaluable in AG brewing, in spite of some well documented foibles in the program.

[chadjaja]

We just did the Dr's golden ale as Dr Smurto actually guarantees it to be a success or he sends you a slab of top shelf belgian beer

My LHBS was out of Caramunich 1 so I had to get the darker version so we took off a bit and added a bit more pale malt.

The grain bill was then
2.45kg pale malt
.800g munich 1
.800g wheat malt pale
.200g carmunich II

All the other info is above but I'm sure Al will have fun with your post above and work it all out, me personally I'd rather let the program do it LOL

Cheers thanks for the info Warra

[svyturys]

Thanks heaps, Warra.

As a matter of fact I would prefer to do things the long way, at least till I understand them.

Personally I don't mind a bit of math when I have the time.

OOOPs ...just looked down and found Chad has pre empted me on that one.

Thanks again, Warra and I hope that you don't mind me asking some stupid questions after I've looked more closely at your post.

BTW... it was almost exactly one year ago since I put down my first K&K and had to run to Warra and Co to ask for assistance for something that was quite basic. Thanks to all you guys for a really great year...and fancy that.... I'm half an AG virgin.

Cheers

[warra48]

If you collected 29 litres at SG 1.040 pre-boil, you have a mash efficiency of around 91%.
Very impressive, particularly for your first AG.
That's the sort of mash efficiency I get myself.

[chadjaja]

Thanks Warra, I hope Al works it out before he reads this or he'll be pissed LOL

And yeah when we took the pre boil gravity, punched the temps into the converter to adjust the SG for temp and got 1040 we knew we had done well as it would surely increase the SG with the boil and evaporation. But I wasn't ready for one in the 90's!

We collected all the runnings into a fermenter and Al can confirm it got a good stir to make sure it was all mixed so we didn't just get the first higher gravity runnings. We used an esky with a braid that runs the length of it and back a bit more and batch sparged of course. Made sure all the grain was stirred well each addition and I thought our sparge water was a bit low a few times as we missed the mark by a few degrees but clearly it was hot enough to rinse all those sugars.

I've often read peoples first few AG's go better than the ones later on as you pay more attention to the numbers you have to hit, put the pressure on to keep up the numbers and I'm guessing that efficiency is only going to go down from there

We have a log sheet with all the temps, volumes etc and were pretty particulate about getting all the readings so happy and confident in our numbers. Two heads is always better than one.

Thats one small step for man, one giant step for Chad and Alan

[drsmurto]

Congrats to the both of you, sounds like a successful day.

Keep us updated on the final product, after all, that's what its all about!

And where did that guarantee come from?

Had a taste of a brewers 1st AG last night, a golden ale and as always, tastes slightly different to the last one i tasted but a nice drop all the same. I drained the pint in no time, can't get much better feedback than that!

I must have been given more than a dozen versions to comment. Love tasting just how different each brewers version turns out.

[chadjaja]

Well its kicked in just fine it seems and at a nice 18 degrees fermenting away. Its got layer of krausen building up and airlock is bubbling. Bit more of lag than I like but the starter was chilled and decanted not pitched at the height of its activity. Looks like you saved yourself a carton of Belgian ales Dr

On to planning a wheat beer next once this is a keg.

[billybushcook]

Good on ya guys,

As a relative newcomer to AG, here are some things I tweaked.

I started out with the S/S braid too & had some stuck sparges so I started adding 1/2Kg of rice hulls to the mash & it was better but still not great, I ended up getting some 0.5mm S/S mesh from work & made a false bottom for my esky, in addition to this I have another 1mm mesh strainer on the outlet under the false bottom to catch any grains that make it past the false bottom.......works great, nice clear wort & plenty of flow.

Another one is that I was starting to "stuff" with my mash too much, I now make a point of hitting a suitable mash temp & then leaving it alone, 90 Mins I mash for now, I try to mash at 63 - 64 but if I'm a little high, leave it as long as it is not more than 2 - 3 deg & if it is a little low I just decoct some off & heat it, I put the grain in first & fill, straight from the kettle through the outlet on the bottom of the Esky, Um, mash tun, after reading Doc's methods (Thx Doc) just gently stirr out any dough balls & leave it!!

I find that the temp can vary a few degrees from one spot in the tun to another, don't worry about it, as long as the average is what you want, it will even out over the first 15Mins.

Only other thing would be to get yourself some copper coils for a chiller, & leave them in the kettle during the boil to sterilise them. I use 6m of 3/4" copper tube (1/2" would be fine) & it only takes 15Mins to get it down from boiling into the high twenties (at current ambient water temps, winter brings it below 20) I then switch to circulating it through a bucket of ice water with a pond pump.

Cheers, Mick.

[svyturys]

I started out with the S/S braid too & had some stuck sparges so I started adding 1/2Kg of rice hulls to the mash & it was better but still not great, I ended up getting some 0.5mm S/S mesh from work & made a false bottom for my esky, in addition to this I have another 1mm mesh strainer on the outlet under the false bottom to catch any grains that make it past the false bottom.......works great, nice clear wort & plenty of flow.

Thanks Mick,

Would you believe it? Chad and I started working/ thinking in the same direction later that night . A mesh / grille / S/S type of false bottom. So glad you posted as it means that we were thinking in the right direction.
We managed to clear our stuck sparge very quickly. Unfortunately we don't know which method of clearing was effective cos we tried about three methods at once.LOL.

Cheers

[chadjaja]

Racked to secondary and dry hopped with 15g of Amarillo. Smelt great but a bit darker because of the grain bill change I had to make. Lost 1L to trub so next boil will get either the giant stainless hop ball Alan dropped by or a hop bag. Pouring wort straight from the pot doesn't let me leave behind all the break. Was down to 1013 almost done but racking normally makes it drop a few more pt's.

One week till kegging!

Hey Dr how long do you condition your golden ale for at cold temp? I normally leave my kegged stuff for two weeks.

[drsmurto]

I kegged 2 batches of golden ale last night and had a cheeky taster after carbing up.

they are for a camping trip on Friday.

Normally beer is tapped as soon as there is a free tap. Darker beers like porters and stouts tend to sit for at least 4 weeks as they get better with age. English and American beers are better fresh.

[chadjaja]

I sneak a few pints myself the first week or so but I find I usually start about the 2 week mark. I have my fridge set a bit cooler than yours so I'd say they age pretty slowly and some of my APA's are still very hoppy months after. Al got to sample one of my new world IPA's the other day and its certainly hoppy

Cheers Doc and thanks.

[chadjaja]

WHOOOO HOOOOO!

I know I know its two days till i keg this thing but if it tastes HALF as good as it does warm and not carbed out the fermenter I'll still be happy!

Damn near perfect

[chadjaja]

LIQUID GOLD DR SMURTO!

Ahhhh summer quaffa and god I love amarillo

[drsmurto]

Good to hear mate. It wont last long so make sure you have another beer ready to keg before that one empties!

The 2 kegs of golden ale i took camping last weekend got smashed in record time. I did suggest I could brew something different next year but they demanded at least 1 keg of golden ale makes the trip again.

Yup, 'tis crowd pleaser. I like to think of it as my crossover beer. It's not too confronting for the megaswill drinkers and has enough malt/hops to keep fellow brewers interested.