My first AG experience

[AidanMatthews]

Hey guys,

I thought i might share my first AG run with you.

1. I did this whilst i have the flue.

Fired up my rabo burner for the first time and started heating 36.5ltrs of water in my shiny new 55ltr stainless steel pot.
The burner smoked up really badly and started burning off the shiny paint, it didnt smell nice but it settled down after it was all burnt off.

I used half a teaspoon of citric acid in the mash water as a guess to get ph about right as no hardware stores sells usefull ph papers, ie to measure around low 5s. Mashed in aiming for 68, got 67 i thought that will do. The mash was done in an esky with a cut out bit of foam sittting just above the liquid, on top a nice thick towell. It only dropped 2c over full hour, however next time i wont open the lid and i think i can reduce that to 1c drop.

Wife got home and ive got the esky ontop of the counter trying to siphon into my cube for temp storage before sparge, wort on the floor, sticky footprints everywhere, she wasnt impressed. I had to modify my siphon line to run better but all was good.
I realised here however that i changed my mash steps in beersmith and didnt realise it missed the mashout step. So i drained the first runnings from the initial mash temp of 67c not 77c, oops.
Batch sparged with 25ltrs of water @ 78c as per the instruction i now had, figured ill keep sticking to them..

The wort ran nicely into my kettle (which doubles as my HLT so there is some juggling) i added the first runnings in trying not to splash it, collected just under 30 ltrs. i noted some improvements for next time regarding water volume etc and then proceeded to top up my kettle to 31ltr for the boil.

I then did a SG reading and it came in at 1032, target was 1036 but then i realised this was after i watered it down with about 2.5 ltrs of topup water so i assume my efficiency was good.

Turned up burner full blast, did my boil watched for the hot break, added the bittering hops at correct timing, and completed the boil.

Once boil was complete i lifted the pot up onto my BBQ so i had enough height to siphon into my cube, whirpooled it and then siphoned. This all was going to plan untill i tried to seal my cube, i squeezed it with my legs stuck the lid on screwed tight only to hear the sound of air rushing back in when i let go. (this was the one thing i didnt test with my dry run) &^%#!!!. I realised then that all this good work could be brought undone with an infection.

I quite simply got angry and wrenched the lid so hard i almost tore the skin off my hand... and then it sealed tight as a drum

I woke up this morning to find the wort about 20*C and chucked it in the fermenter, FG was 1052 when it should have been 1044 so i boiled off to much, added 3 ltrs of water to bring it to 1044 and threw in the yeast. Tasting the wort you can instantly taste the difference between Kit/extract and AG. Cant wait to get it in the bottles.

So things ill do next time.
Mash out - wort seems to siphon out much easier when hotter.
Review total water used to get correct amount into kettle.
Find a more accurate way of measuring how much water is in kettle. (kettle is wide and not that tall, so measuring by height on a stick is a bit meh)
Buy a digital PH meter and some 5.2 PH stabiliser.

[AidanMatthews]

My recipe i thought i would share with you

Aidans Pale Ale (inspired by Vale Ale and will be start point as attempted clone)

Brewer: Aidan Matthews
Batch Size: 23.00 L (I Ended up with 22ltr)
Boil Size: 30.48 L

Est Original Gravity: 1.044
Est Final Gravity: 1.012
Bitterness: 26.3 IBU
Est Color: 8.9 EBC



2.75 kg Joe White Pale Malt
1.00 kg Weyermann Pilsner
0.50 kg Joe White Vienna Malt
0.30 kg Joe White Wheat Malt,
0.20 kg Light Crystal Malt - 20L

8.00 gm Nelson Sauvin [11.50 %] (60 min) Hops 10.4 IBU
10.00 gm Cascade [6.80 %] (60 min) Hops 7.7 IBU
8.00 gm Cascade [6.80 %] (15 min) Hops 3.1 IBU
8.00 gm Nelson Sauvin [11.50 %] (15 min) Hops 5.2 IBU

12.00 gm Cascade [6.80 %] (Dry Hop 2 days before bottle)
12.00 gm Nelson Sauvin [11.40 %] (Dry Hop 2 days before bottle)

1 Pkgs SafAle English Ale (DCL Yeast #S-04) [Starter 500 ml] Yeast-Ale

[squirt in the turns]

Nice one Aidan, sounds like you went alright overall. I'm still ironing out kinks in my AG process (although I can hardly claim to be a veteren, having done 7 batches).

How long did you boil for? Was the 22 L batch size after topping up with 3 L water? If you got 19 L in the cube, then you lost around 11 L from the start of the boil. This includes loss to cooling and kettle trub as well as evaporation, but still seems like quite a bit to me. Of course, if you can work out what your volumes and losses were at each stage, and plug the numbers into Beersmith, it'll do a better job at guiding you next time.

Like you, my HLT (a Crown urn) also doubles as my kettle. I did a couple of batches where I drained the mash into a cube/fermenter while keeping the sparge water in the kettle. What I do now is:
1) Heat only my strike water to start with, and mash in
2) While mashing, heat my sparge water to 80-85* (heat a little more than Beersmith calculates in case I fall short of target when draining the first runnings)
3) Dump the sparge water into a cube or fermenter and wrap in a blanket to keep hot
4) Drain the mash directly into the now empty kettle and check volume
5) Check the temp of the sparge water, adjust with hot or cold water to achieve roughly 78*, then add required volume to grain, stir, rest for 10 mins, drain to kettle

A little bit less juggling, and saves time as you are heating a smaller volume initially, and can fire up the kettle as soon as you have enough liquid in it. I usually wait until the first running are just about done - I like to drain/sparge slowly and if fire it up as soon as the element's covered, it's usually boiling before I've barely started sparging!

You also won't be splashing your pre-boil wort this way as you try to get it from cube to kettle, although the general consensus is that pre-boil splashing does no harm anyway - any oxygen introduced is driven off by boiling.

[drsmurto]

What water did you use?

Adelaide tap water requires no pH adjustment for a beer of that type, in fact it works well for a lot of beer styles.

Playing around with water chemistry is tricky and few brewers really understand it.

Congrats on your 1st AG but my advice would be to leanr to crawl before you walk. Work out all the other aspects of brewing and leave water chemistry till last, even those with PhDs in chemistry take years before dabbling in it.

[AidanMatthews]

My extra loss of water can only be equated to acidently leaving to much in the mash tun whilst still getting used to siphoning.
Also i started the 60min boil timer when it started boiling - thats right isnt it?

Only other thing would be my pot is exceptionally wide so it has much more surface to air, meaning it would evaporate more than say a tall narrower pot.

Also dr.Smurto if adelaide water is good for mashing as is for now im happy with that.

Edit, dr smurto, i used plain adelaide tap water, didnt even filter it, figured the chlorine will evaporate and leave me with the good stuff.

[NickMoore]

Be sure to let us know how it tasted, compared to what you used to do.

[rotten]

my advice would be to leanr to crawl before you walk..

Is that a spelling mistake drsmurto?

[AidanMatthews]

This beer tastes great,

In regards to comparison with kits and extracts.... The smell, the body the taste of malt (the things that make a beer a ture tasting beer) are all present as aposed to kits thinking "its still missing something". Extracts/partial mash still a big fan of this process you can brew some damn good beers with a smal budget.

Cant wait to do my revised recipe for this one...as i have now got my mash process downpat.


Also dr smurto you would be interested to see this recipe it is the one you judged and liked of mine.

[drsmurto]

my advice would be to leanr to crawl before you walk..

Is that a spelling mistake drsmurto?

No, that' s a typo.

This beer tastes great,

In regards to comparison with kits and extracts.... The smell, the body the taste of malt (the things that make a beer a ture tasting beer) are all present as aposed to kits thinking "its still missing something". Extracts/partial mash still a big fan of this process you can brew some damn good beers with a smal budget.

Cant wait to do my revised recipe for this one...as i have now got my mash process downpat.


Also dr smurto you would be interested to see this recipe it is the one you judged and liked of mine.

Very nice it was too. Very clean beer that would have done well in the specialty section as a 'new world' pale ale (this allows any new hop from NZ, Aus or the US to be used)