Wort Happens [ homebrew/ ]

Adrian commented rather extensively on my First Brew with the new rig, and, rather than just reply privately or in an additional comment (where it'll just be lost in the noise), I thought I'd reply more fully here.

Adrian wrote:

Your low extraction might not be the fault of the crush - it could be the grain mix. You didn't mention what proportion of pale malt you'd had in with your home made crystal. I've found my home kilning for crystal doesn't always convert all the starches to sugar in-situ so a good proportion of enzymes are required from the pale malt. Also - upping the steep time and good 'flushing' of the grist will help.

Naaahhh... it was the crush, followed by too-fast sparging. I ran the second brew last Saturday with the help of the latest addition to the arsenal: The Crushinator Mk 2!

The Crushinator works like a charm, though I will adjust the gap between the rollers down by perhaps 0.1mm next time. A little too much paranoia about stuck sparges, I guess. ;-) Sparging took almost a full hour this time around, and I ended up with 19l of 1.042 gravity wort now sitting in primary ferment. Actually first fermentation is almost done. Already! I washed and re-used the yeast from the first batch, and it seems to have worked out fine.

The aim of the first brew was really to shake down the entire system and iron out some of the (inevitable) bugs. The goal for the 2nd brew was to establish what I'm calling the Baseline Ale: a very plain, simple, straightforward Pale Ale that will serve as a "standard" against which I can compare other experiments and recipes. For example, I'm planning a series of brews where I vary only the water and its constituents. Then another series where I can play around with various hopping techniques. (No! Not "jumping up and down on one leg"!) Then maybe some brews where I play with different yeasts. But changing only a single factor at a time, so that I can compare the result against Baseline Ale and know exactly what is going on.

As a result of the brew being about Baseline Ale I used bought Crystal Malt for both brews, and not my own homemade; that will await a future experiment: I need to be able to taste the differences between my own Crystal and "professionally made". Conversion was almost certainly not part of the problem: my recipe was 95% Pale Malt and only 5% Crystal (guessing that it's 60L) in a single-step infusion mash at 68ºC for a tad over an hour. I will probably extend the mash time a little the next time around.

Are you taking pics of your rig, if so.. are they online anywhere? I'd love to see your setup.

Most of the pics of the rig (and its construction) are now up at http://picasaweb.google.com/mikro2nd/BraamekraalBrauhaus02?feat=directlink

It's a long shot (and some way from you) but when I was down there I did visit a small brewery near Hermanus (Birkenhead Brewery) and I think they malted their own grains from memory - they might flog a few sacks to you if you're passing.

Birkenhead Brewery is still going strong after changing hands and brewmasters (a couple of times?) The current brewmaster is very helpful to homebrewers - one friend regularly buys Crystal Malt from them. They don't currently malt their own grain, though. Pale Malt is all sourced from SAB Maltings in Caledon, and (as far as I know) they import specialty grains directly themselves. We go down to that part of the world fairly frequently, as we have a bunch of family who live in that region, and I am definitely planning to drop by and visit with Andy when next we go down there.

Here in Knysna we have the famous Mitchells Brewery. I went to visit Dave who runs the show there last week, and he, too, is very willing to help out; he offered transport from Caledon for my Pale Malt supplies, and I plan to take him up on that offer!

20.Oct.09 10:50 AM, SAST | Words (677) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks | Link Cosmos

First Wort [ homebrew/ ]

Ran the new rig through its first complete brew today. A delight! Everything went very smoothly, with only minor hiccups.

The mashtun's heat-retention was probably the biggest question of the day. Happy to report that it's brilliant. Less than 1º temperature drop over the full hour of mashing!

Burners are fine, though I may try swapping them around for a brew sometime, just as an experiment. I'm pretty sure the 2 burners are pretty unequal, and I don't need such a massive flame under the boiler; once it's reached a rolling boil, only a very tiny flame is needed to maintain the boil.

Pump behaved admirably. The drainage plumbing bits I added are unnecessary: Once the mashtun-drain is disconnected it works just fine as a drain.

The only thing that went wrong was an unexpected leak of coolant-water from the chiller! This after testing it 3 times and not experiencing a problem yet. The only challenge was to keep the leak-water out of the cool wort, since it is dam-water, so something I definitely don't want landing in the wort.

The crush was terrible, though, so very poor extraction. OG 1.030! OK, so I have a week to solve the crusher issue while this batch ferments out.

All done, including cleanup, in a fraction over 4 hours. Pretty good going for a first run, and possibly the most relaxed brew day I've ever had.

08.Oct.09 3:12 PM, SAST | Words (228) | 3 Comments | 0 Trackbacks | Link Cosmos

Brewery - Part 3 [ homebrew/ ]

Testing the Rig

Finally, having plumbed together all the pipework and gas-lines, added electrical wiring for the pump and a light, modified the stand to accommodate a taller-than-planned gas-burner, jacketed the 3 vessels, it's time to test the bits and pieces.

As any good programmer will tell, you, first you run your Unit Tests. Then, if they're successful, you run Integration Tests. So the morning was filled with testing the various pieces by themselves.

First the gas burners: I had the good fortune to run into a fantastically helpful gas expert, Brian from Knysna Gas. The moment he heard what I was up to, he leapt into action. When I told him which burners I was planning to use, he immediately said, "No! That's not what you want. You want High Pressure burners!" Dragged me out to the back of the shop, and started cobbling together a high-pressure burner setup out of odd parts lying about. Pretty soon he'd put together a burner that can melt all known Chinese restaurants, and roast an ox at 30 paces. This, together with all its pipework, and a high-pressure gas regulator (the Really Expensive Bit) he just gave to me. I ended-up buying another burner from him, once I saw how effective these are compared to the puny piece of junk I had back home. A thousand thanks to Brian for the bits of kit and the excellent advice!

After testing carefully that there were no gas leaks, I fired-up the burners. "All system ready for liftoff. T minus 5." I had to modify the new burner to fit beneath the boiler -- it's stand was too tall, and not needed in any case, since the bench provides its own support for the boiler.

Next the chiller: Finally plumbed in all the necessary fittings for the coolant water, and was ready for testing. My cooling arrangement is a little unorthodox, reflecting both my peculiar circumstance -- no municipal/piped water supply -- and our on-going shortage of rainwater driving our need to conserve every drop.

Cooling water is drawn from the dam near the house, pumped by the already-existing water-pump and pipework. The stuff that waters the veggie garden. After running through the chiller, the water is allowed to drain of via existing drainage back into the dam. Right now the dam is pretty empty, so the water is not as chilly as it should be with a more reasonable depth of water. At least I could establish that the chiller acts as expected with no leaks. T minus 4.

Next up, a cold-water test of all the pipework and the pump. Far better than testing with hot water and discovering that something leaks! Small hold during countdown, here. The pump is a little washing-machine drainage pump, and really quite weak. It has a couple of significant advantages, though: It will happily pump quite large bits of junk along with liquids, which is a very likely scenario when lautering as the mash is quite likely to initially contain bits of grain-husk. Then, too, it is unperturbed by pumping air, provided it is able to self-prime. The only problem with my setup is that the outlet pipe is a bit long, and dips down from the pump, with the result that the pump is prone to developing airlocks which stop it working. It's a problem easily solved, though, and happily caught during testing and not when I have tubs full of rich, hot wort. T minus 3.

Time to find out how well those burners work! 20l of water at 19C in the HLT (Hot Liquid Tank) took around 30 minutes to heat up to 80C. Not bad going, I thought. Pumping the hot water through all the pipes, back and forth between the HLT and the MLT (Mash/Lauter Tank) also served to clean-out any solvents, oils and odd smells from the pipes and pump.

Here's where I discovered the first needed mods to the system. First, there's a bit of clear "plastic" piping joining some plumbing to the pump inlet, and I have strong doubts about its lifetime. I'll have to find a replacement. Second, I need to add a drainage valve to the bottom-most bits of plumbing. right now I have no way to completely drain the whole system, and I don't particularly want to leave water sitting in the pipes -- especially not in the steel parts of the plumbing.

Still, it all seemed to handle hot liquids quite handily. I also learned that, left to its own devices with the stopcock fully open, the pump wants to drain the MLT far too fast. I guess it will be a bit of a learning experience for me to see just where to set that stopcock for a good flow-rate for lautering.

In the process I also learned that I need to preheat the MLT before thinking about starting the mash: The water drops about 10C in temperature just to warm-up the stainless steel tank! T minus 2.

Finally transferred all the water over to the boiler, and fired up the Really Serious Burner. 63C to a full rolling boil in just 13 minutes. Wow! A whole lot of other little concerns got settled along the way. Despite the effectiveness of the burners, the pipes supporting the tanks are easily up to the job, and they don't get significantly hot during a burn -- at least, not hot enough to scorch the wooden frame. Whilst they do get pretty warm, I can still touch them without fear. I was a bit worried that they might bend under the combination of heat and weight. Of course I still have to test them for a full 60- or 90-minute boil under a full 40litre load! but I can have a reasonable degree of confidence that I'm not inviting a disaster. T minus 1 and counting.

Finally, plugged the chiller onto the (still extremely hot) boiler, plugged in the coolant hoses, and let 'er rip. Incoming water (soon to be boiled wort) at a high 90-something C; water falling out into a fermentation vessel: 24C. Good enough for me, and I was really running the coolant water quite slowly. I stopped the coolant water once I was satisfied that the chiller was working well, as I wanted the hot water to clean out any gunk in the chiller copper-inner before I run real wort through it! I do need to figure out a better way of coupling and uncoupling the chiller from the boiler, though. The way I'm doing it now is quite unsatisfactory, and the brass parts probably won't last very long under current conditions.

Zero.

Now if Vincent at beerkeg.co.za will get his arse in gear and get me my ingredients, we might even have a liftoff!

26.Sep.09 1:43 PM, SAST | Words (1118) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks | Link Cosmos

Brewery Part 2 [ homebrew/ ]

Good progress yesterday and today. Having cleared the shed and built a sturdy bench for the pots to stand on, today was about testing and refining that design. The pots are now insulated with pink-stuff, and I have some old aluminium printers' plates that I'll use to encase them in Full Metal Jackets. (Duct tape doesn't work in the heat! ;-)

I've assembled the main plumbing bits and pump, and added supports to the bench for mounting all that plumbing machinery. I would have like to get stainless steel pipe-connectors, but sourcing it in a small town has proved too challenging. Instead I've gone with galvanised steel. Yes! It'll rust in time, but I should get a good bit of use out of it first, and -- who knows! -- by then the brewery might be able to pay its own way for new parts...

I've also added mounting structs and steel shields for supporting the burner, and more-or-less decided that I need a second burner. As much as I want to keep the whole setup as simple as possible, initially, I can see that shunting the one burner back and forth between the Hot Liquid Tank and the Boiler is

way too much hassle, and
a recipe for a disaster involving very hot liquids!

So a second burner and the various bits of gas piping, T-pieces, etc. are on the shopping list (subject to price.)

I also built a support frame for the counterflow chiller I built yesterday. Just a simple, lightweight wooden frame so that I can hang the whole affair up and out of the way while it is not in use. The only real cock-up so far is the connector for hooking the chiller onto the boiler: The guy at the hardware shop gave me the wrong size. :-( Not serious -- I'll just exchange it -- but it set me back from testing the boiler/chiller system today or tomorrow, as they won't be open again until Monday.

The major Outstanding Obstacle at this stage: The Crushinator.

I have a couple of designs in mind for a crusher, but none of it is simple, despite the simplicity of the concept. As with anything, the devil is in the details, and the details ramify out fractally.

Update: I forgot to mention -- I'd post some pix, but I seem to have mislaid the connector lead for the camera. Oh the joys of aging memory...

19.Sep.09 3:02 PM, SAST | Words (398) | 1 Comments | 0 Trackbacks | Link Cosmos

Brewery - Part 1 [ homebrew/ ]

Building a new brewery... a 40litre system this time. I'm tired of hacking around with buckets in tubs of ice, so the aim is to "do it properly". Amongst my design goals:

Keep things as simple as possible to keep costs down for now
Keep the design as open-ended as is realistic. This is just "good OO design 101".
Budget limit R2500 (around EUR230/USD335 today).
Must be easy to clean/sterilise the dirty pots. (Having been party to a pretty terrible-tasting brew once before...)

What kick-started the whole affair was scoring 3 used stainless-steel kegs via a friend for R750. I could possibly have knocked the price down a little, but... new, half-sized kegs go for R1250 and up... and used kegs are like hens' teeth around here. So: a bargain at the price, especially as the kegs already had the tops cut our and various holes cut with threaded fittings attached. (Stainless-steel welding goes for around R300 per weld, so I scored R900-worth just in welds!)

My basic plan is a 3-tank system: The first is simply a Hot Liquid Tank -- the source of hot water for mashing, sparging and cleanup. The 2nd will be the mash/lauter tun, and the 3rd the boiler. I could get away with only 2 tanks, but I have definite intentions of converting it all to a HERMS system pretty soon for the extra control and precision it gives for mashing temperatures.

First stop has been to clear the shed nearest the house (just outside the kitchen door!) of junk, and to build a sturdy bench to accommodate the 3 pots, gas burners, chilller, etc. The shed was the most logical place for the brewery: electrified (for pumps) and plumbed (it houses the house-water pump) and close to the dam for cooling water. This much is pretty-much accomplished. All that's left is to arrange a stand/support for the gas burner. I'm sticking with gas heating, since, sooner or later, we want to get off the grid, and then electrical water heating is a no-go. I also have some vague ideas of trying to build a wood-gasifier for heating at some later date...

Still to do: