O.G. 1.046
Water Treatment
Lactic acid: 7ml to Mash water (17l)
CaCl: 4g to Mash, 4g to Sparge.
Epsom salts: 4g to Mash, 4g to Sparge.
Ingredients
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Mash
This was the first go at a non-standard mash for me. Previously, all my beers have been the product of a single infusion mash, occasionally cold steeping dark grains when I feel adventurous! This time, however, I went all out crazy for the complicated mash!
The simple bit first, most of the Pilsner and Munich malts went into the mash tun as usual with around 7 litres of water. The water was heated to result in a mash rest at 50C. I put the lid on and left it there to do what it does while I dealt with the next few steps.
Most of the Wheat and Oats were put into two 5 litre pots on the hob - it would've been all of the wheat and oats but my pots aren't big enough! Some Pilsner malt was mixed in too, to add some diastatic power. Unmalted wheat and oats have no enzymes, so won't convert on their own. I then added water to each of these mini-mashes at a rate of (behold the inconvenience of imperial - metric conversions) 9.222L water : 2.56kg grain!
With my mini-mashes perilously close to the tops of the pots I followed (as best I could) this schedule:
50C for 15 mins
65C for 15 mins
Boil for 15 mins
I'd love to say this went off without a hitch, but one pot heated up much quicker than the other, and unfortunately I was measuring the temperature in the other on at the time! So one mini mash overshot the first rest quite a bit and then had to drop back down to 50C, but hey ho!
After following this schedule and miraculously avoiding any boil overs, the mini-mashes were dumped into the main mash. This magically brought the main mash temp up to approximately 70C (plus or minus a couple of degrees) where it was left to complete the mash for 30mins.
Just to add a bit more variety amd margin for error in the brewday, I also decided to batch sparge this one! This was surprisingly easy I thought, though I have zero experience. I think it was a bit quicker, which was great as the uber-complex mash had extended the brew day somewhat (not to mention the hangover I had), But it did mean I had to stand by the mash tun. I has a hose coming from the HLT which I ran liquor through slowly and sprinkled over the grain bed. Maybe not textbook techniques, and certainly no automation involved, but I'm winging it here! Did I say I had a hangover?!
The rest of the day was fairly run of the mill and much more like a standard brew day. The 40g of Orange zest that I added was the weight of zest from six navel oranges. The coriander seeds I weighed out into a plastic bag and then whacked with the back of a spoon to 'crush' them. And the chammomile was the equivalent of the contents of two tea bags.
The 'curse' of our surprisingly good summer here in Bristol meant that cooling the brew post-boil was a pain in the arse! I got it down to around 37ish and then just ran it off into a sanitised fermenting bin and sealed it up. I sat it in a cold water bath and left it to cool down overnight. With the heat of the cold water coming out of the tap that was running through the immersion chiller, I reckon I could've dropped the temperature to 20C. But the quantity of water that would've used, and for the amount of time it would take, it just wasn't worth it.
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| This is actually from 20/08/13, but you get the idea. |
After pitching the yeast there was a little lag for it to get going, but then it formed a big fluffy krausen in the fermenter and seems to be going about its business quite happily. I have no real means of cooling the ferment so it's just been left to rise with the weather. But I think an average temp of 23 is realistic.
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20/08/13 (day 15)
S.G. 1012
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| Close, but not quite there yet... |
I had thought the ferment would be done by now, but apparently not. Having used this yeast before I'm sure that the gravity will drop further than this. I haven't been taking regular readings, so I don't know what the profile of the ferment has been. That might be interesting to do in future, to see whether it slows or stalls a bit. But I gues this carries a risk of infection when brewing on such a small scale.
Anyway, I can't bottle it yet so I'm leaving it for another week while I go to a festival! Hopefully it'll be done by the time I get back.
As a side note, I think the average temperatures have dropped and it looks like it's fermenting more in the range of 18-21C, which may explain the slower ferment but is also more in the range I wanted.
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31/08/13
F.G. 1.005
A surprisingly low final gravity, probably 4-5 points lower than I was expecting. The beer tastes great though! Good body despite the low gravity, and a nice dry finish. The fruit and spices have mellowed in the brew and combined really well. There is a great aroma of bananas too, which I am really pleased about. This is probably from the drop in temperature allowing a cooler ferment.
Will bottle today with 100g of sugar.
Quite prematurely I have already entered this into the National Homebrew Competition! Luckily I think it's turned out quite well, so it'll be great to get some proper feedback on it. Now I just need it to bottle condition beautifully over the next two weeks before judging. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute!
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