My maiden voyage..

[Trough Lolly]

Also... i am seeing that the first ale that i made and bottled is still cloudy after 2 weeks in the bottle and it also tastes a little grainy. I thought this might be due to a combination of a bad crush and a pH that was too high... hence i have started to add the caso4... its not an infection... do AGs take longer to settle?

And finally... my first AG pils i used koppafloc, and i did notice that a little of the flocculation material has finally made its way into the bottles.. its a fine layer of shit on the bottom of the bottle.. will this eventually settle as well as yeast, or can i expect to see this floc material making its way into my beer glass?

Cheers

James

Congrats James - your hobby will soon turn into an obsession!
Cloudy beer can occur from a number of reasons. For reasonably new AG'ers out there, it's often due to an incomplete mash where starch gets trapped in the mash and by not stirring, it doesn't get converted by the enzymes in the mash and when sparged out, clouds up the beer. Another common problem is hot sparging which may contribute to a cloudy beer - just keep the sparge water under 75C and you'll be fine.

The koppafloc should settle out and all you need to do is pour carefully and gently.....or keg!

Cheers,
TL

[James L]

I think it already is an obsession...

i might get my hands on a mashmaster HLT temp controller... i think not being able to accurately control the HLT temp it is a contributing factor for my problems.

I'll get it eventually... but i really enjoy the experimentation and trial and error involved in getting my equipment and method as efficient as i can, and end up with a beer i can be proud of.

[hoohaaman]

For the old school .7 is around 40thousanth of an inch,good luck with that.
My advice,just get a beerbelly false bottom and never worry.

Crush to flour,although the high effieciency kills you

Never a stuck sparge .

Sorry to disagree with these mathematics, but 40 thousanth of an inch is about 1 millimetre.

1 inch = 25.4 mm (close enough)
thus: .040 x 25.4 = 1

I set my MillMaster at a 1 mm gap, and have no trouble achieving 80+% efficiency into the kettle. Any smaller for the crush, and IMHO you will start to slow your sparge down.

.

[James L]

The crusade continues....

I brewed twice on the weekend, and bottled once.. the beer i bottled was a SNPA clone, and it tasted wonderful.. it was the first beer that i managed to get decent efficiency with.. no off flavours, and the hop balance was fantastic.

i brewed an oktoberfest lager on sats, and had no dramas..

the brew i did yesty was the bright ale clone that rwh put on the forum..

I added the irish moss, and the brew floculated, and settled nicely, but no matter how careful i was, i managed to transfer a heap of this floc into the fermenter. I didnt put the sediment reducer on the tap, so i think i might be expecting a result similar to the first brew with the 5mm of sediment.

How do i overcome this floc issue? This seems to be the only remaining thing that's cramping my style...

[drsmurto]

You're not getting hot break and cold break mixed up?

Using a plate chiller means you will always end up with cold break in your fermenter. Some people then rack the beer of this before pitching but like most people, i dont.

[James L]

i think its the hot break becuase the beer is slightly cloudy before it goes into the plate chiller...

I think i'll just have to start using a sediment reducer again... that'll sort the majority of the floc transfer problems out when it comes to transfering from the fermenter.. and if the problem is realy bad, i'll have to rack for a few days before bottling... or i could keg....

[drsmurto]

How much irish moss are you using and when do you add it?

I use 1/2 a whirlfloc tablet per batch and get crystal clear run off into he plate chiller.

How vigorous do you whirlpool after flameout? How long do you let it settle before starting to drain the kettle?

[James L]

yep... 1/2 a whirlfloc tablet....

i give it a pretty good mix,

I guess i can put it down to two things...

I have the pot on a slight angle so i can retrieve the most beer from the kettle. the pick up is at the lowest part of the pot.. therefore some of the settling floculant will get sucked into the chiller...

Second is i am not letting it sit long enough to settle... i wait about 5 -10 minutes.. i'm guessing more time is needed... i still do get a huge amount of shit left at the bottom of the kettle at the end...

Ok... next weekend... i'll add the whirlfloc and when the boil has finished, i will give it a huge whirlpool and let it sit for 15 minutes... I dont think the pot on the angle will acount for a huge ammount of floc transfer if i mix it well enough to start with.... and i'll see how that goes...

The slightest things make all the diff....

[drsmurto]

I use a beerbelly hopscreen to prevent hop debris etc from getting into the plate chiller. It works a treat!



I am a tipper too. I choc the kettle up with a lump of wood so i leave less than 1L behind in the kettle. Cant waste the precious beer.....

Here is a pic of the thermo on the plate chiller showing the wort coming out at 18C. I love being able to pitch the yeast asap.

[James L]

I have all that too mate... it was your pictures that prompted me to get the same gear....

i have the same setup with the thermo on the plate chiller too..

I just cant get the wort down to lager temps with just the tap water, but a few hours in the brew fridge, and the lager wort is at 11... i could invest in a few 8000L tanks though... ales however are fine...

[rwh]

OK, a few things:

1. Floc is short for flocculate, which means "form aggregated or compound masses of particles." In brewing, it almost always refers to the yeast sticking together and settling out of beer once it's reaching complete fermentation.
2. Break material is coagulated protein. It forms when temperature changes in the wort cause the proteins to become insoluble and thus precipitate out of solution. Typically, 90% of the break material is hot break (formed during the boil) and 10% is cold break (formed during chilling).
3. The junk that appears at the bottom of the pot after boiling is a mix of hop debris and hot break. The two together are often referred to as trub (pronounced troob).
4. When you run your wort through your plate chiller, the cold break will form, and there's nothing you can really do to stop this going into the fermenter, but because it's only 10% of the total break, it's not normally too much of an issue.
5. The traditional means of preventing the hot break from entering the fermenter is to whirlpool and draw from the edge of the pot. This causes the hot break and hop debris to be drawn to the centre as they are more dense. When you start to draw the wort off from the edge however, the break material and hop debris will still be pulled toward the outlet unless you continue to whirlpool. I've found whirlpooling to be too fiddly for my kit, and I generally just try to get as much wort out as I can without pulling in too much hot break. Or sometimes I just get really lazy and don't even bother syphoning and just pour the lot into my fermenter and just deal with the extra trub later (see point 6).
6. Break material isn't the end of the world. There was a study done recently that showed that the presence of break material in the fermenter had two effects. First, it increased yeast health (due to better nutrition provided by nutrients in the break material, presumably). Secondly, it slightly reduced the finished beer's stability (shelf life). To be honest, in the homebrewing context, I don't think it's really clear cut that keeping the break material out is really all that necessary.

[Trough Lolly]

i think its the hot break becuase the beer is slightly cloudy before it goes into the plate chiller...

I think i'll just have to start using a sediment reducer again... that'll sort the majority of the floc transfer problems out when it comes to transfering from the fermenter.. and if the problem is realy bad, i'll have to rack for a few days before bottling... or i could keg....

James,
How does the beer present in the bottle at room temps - is it still cloudy in the bottle after a week or so?

Cheers,
TL

[James L]

yep... they are all still rather cloudy, some more than others.. the only one that isnt cloudy is the one that i added koppafoc to, and that has 5mm of sediment instead.....

I just figured that they would all clear after about 3-4 weeks... the majority of the beers have only been in the bottle for 2 weeks, and the only one that hasnt was my first apa which is the cloudiest... still....

[Trough Lolly]

Hmmm....based on the evidence to date, I wouldn't rule out an incomplete mash, James. It's easy to do and residual starches in the wort will not go away no matter how hard and long you boil the wort for.

Cheers,
TL

[Rob C]

Will be putting down my first AG this weekend. TL is there anyway to tell if your mash is complete?

Cheers
Rob

Oh ill be doing your SNPA Clone.

[Trough Lolly]

Will be putting down my first AG this weekend. TL is there anyway to tell if your mash is complete?

Cheers
Rob

Oh ill be doing your SNPA Clone.

Hi Rob,
Firstly, a disclaimer - there's no real need to test your mash for conversion unless you have real doubts over your ability to control temps before and during the mash.

That said, there is an easy way to determine whether you have unconverted starches in your mash, by using Iodine (eg, Betadine, or Iodophor if you use this highly recommended stuff for sanitising your gear). To save me typing, I'll quote John Palmer:

Conversion Check
The brewer can use iodine (or iodophor) to check a sample of the wort to see whether the starches have been completely converted to sugars. As you may remember from high school chemistry, iodine causes starch to turn black. The mash enzymes should convert all of the starches, resulting in no color change when a couple drops of iodine are added to a sample of the wort. (The wort sample should not have any grain particles in it.) The iodine will only add a slight tan or reddish color as opposed to the flash of heavy black color if starch is present. Worts high in dextrins will yield a strong reddish color when iodine is added.

....and don't return the wort sample to the mashtun!!

With the well modified malts at our disposal nowadays, you only need to keep the mash thickness in order (2 to 2.3L per kilo is recommended) and keep the mash temp under 75C and you'll be fine in an hour.

Good luck with the AG brewing this weekend - once you've done it, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about!!

Cheers,
TL

[Rob C]

Thanks TL ive done a few partial mashes that have came up great compared to my kit brews. One question on the 2-2.3 ltrs per kilo of grain, Is this before the grain soaks up about a ltr or after?

Cheers
Rob

[Trough Lolly]

Before mate - a 2.3L per kilo dough-in volume will allow for grain absorption.

Cheers,
TL

[Rob C]

Thanks ill use 2.3 from now on. My beersmith was set too 2.61.

Cheers
Rob

[James L]

Thanks for the tips TL, i'll attempt to determine whether my conversion has been complete, but from what you have explained about incomplete conversion,

i believe that what i have done is right... I have my strike temps at 79, which gives a mash temp of 64-65 (i change the stirke temp depending on the style of beer i want to make of course).. i mix it 3-4 times over the space of an hour, and the temp never drops more than 2C over that hour.... I sparge with water at about 75C...

I must admit, its actually more of a confession... the beers that i am refering to as being still cloudy were my first 4 AG beers... For some reason with these 4 beers, i never mixed the mash whilst it was sparging and i put the cause incomplete conversion soley down to my technique... I do point out that the wort leaving the mash tun didnt look overly cloudy though...

The beer i bottled on sunday was my first beer that i made that went off without a hitch.. i got spot on mash temps, from the mixing i got 85% efficiency, and the sparging was good. It has only been in the bottle for about 4 days and already it is clearer than the first ones i did which have been in the bottle for more than 3 weeks.

I will keep you posted, and i will get some iodine from work to test for the presence of starch in my next brew...

I'll get it right eventually....