This weekend it was time to start brewing another all grain beer. The great guys at
http://cervejartesanal.com/ sell some all grain recipes, all the ingredients already weighted and complete with instructions. No need to make a list of what to buy, no leftovers, so I got a Blue Chimay clone and a Triple Karmeliet clone as well. Something new was the liquid yeast, this time I tried Wyeast Propagator instead of the Activator, the difference is that you don't need to make a starter, just put the yeast right into the wort.
First I thought I could make both recipes in one day, but as it turned out, it was too much since I started at around 15:00. Blue Chimay was the chosen one to start with, so while the water started heating, me and Gil started grinding the grains:
The difficult part was to tune the size of the crushed malt, but after a few tries we figured out what we believe was a good size:
The process of grinding all the malt didn't took that long, we both took turns and we finished with the grains for both recipes in around half an hour. Meanwhile the water was hot enough, so we went ahead and added all the crushed grains to the water. Mashing temperature was 65ºC and it took 90 minutes.
The first mistake was done here, for some reason I thought the candy sugar was added at this stage, so I went ahead and added it, just to find out later I should have added it during boiling. I guess I won't forget on the next one. So after 90 minutes, I transferred everything to the mash tun, and while waiting for the grains to settle, I started heating the sparge water to 77ºC as the recipe pointed out.
Around 15 minutes later, I started slowly circulating the wort until it started to came out clean, and at this time I started to add the sparge water at 77ºC. Sparging was a new technique for me, since on the first batch I just extracted the wort from the mash tun and did not add any water. It went pretty smoothly, but I was not patient enough for the wort to be extracted too slowly, I believe the process took around 20 minutes.
Since I do not have a wort chiller, I decided to measure gravity here, it was 1.069 which I tough was pretty reasonable for this kind of beer. After the sparging was over, time to move the wort back into the heat and boil it. Boiling would take 60 minutes, first hops would go in as soon as it started to boil, other hops were added 45 minutes later, coriander seeds and orange peel for the last 5 minutes only, and last hops for the last minute only.
After the 60 minutes, I filtered everything again with the mash tun to get rid of any solid left, and since I do not have a chiller I just transferred everything to the fermentation bucket.
The bucket stayed overnight sealed until it cooled down, I then used an aquarium pump to aerate the wort (I know, not the best method...). After around 2 hours, I added the yeast. For some reason I forgot to measure the gravity, so the only data I have is with warm wort before boiling, which is not very good.
This yeast took a long time until it started bubbling, one day to be exact. This is very different from when I used Wyeast Activator and created a started, that way bubbling occurred just after a few hours.
Now it's time to wait, first fermentation should take no less than 10 days.
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Ah grandes mestres!!! A ver se guardam um garrafinha pó zarroba.
ReplyDeletePodes contar com isso, tens é que vir cá para a beber =D
ReplyDeleteCongrats Ricardo! Very good start, you are on the right track for sure! Getting first bubbles in 24 hours is perfectly, getting them much sooner can indicate some contamination (assuming you don't use a BIG starter). Adding sugar to the wort is not a big issue for this type of beer, you probably lost a couple of IBU points because of high gravity wort, but for Belgian beers it is not a big deal. Next time i would suggest to read manual till the end ;) ... 2 hours aerating the wort is probably too much, you are running a danger of introducing air bacterias to your beer (would be desirable when you do your next Labmic though :) Now the most difficult part begins, waiting for your beer to get ready ... As people used to say (and i fully agree) , the best bottle of beer of the batch is the last one ...
ReplyDeleteThanks Alex! Regarding aerating, you are right, too much time. I'm going to build a wort chiller in the next few days, so next time I won't have to wait overnight for the wort to cool down, and I can properly aerate it just after boiling.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, some bottles are already set aside for your next comeback to Portugal, together with some chicken wings and cheese =D
Looks interesting..
ReplyDeleteHow about the first experience? When can we try a glass of your first beer?
Hmmm....Guarda uma para a prova!! :-)
ReplyDeleteThe first batch will be ready next month, I'll bring some to work for a taste, but don't expect much of it, lots of serious mistakes were made and the beer may not taste very good...
ReplyDelete"I won't have to wait overnight for the wort to cool down, and I can properly aerate it just after boiling." This is the last thing you want to do to your beer. There is a very important step that improves a quality of the beer is a fast cooling, you want to bring a beer temperature as fast as possible to something below 25C. Otherwise you are running a risk of beer oxidation (exposing a beer to oxygen or air) that usually leads to really nasty off flavors. So chill the beer first and then aerate it.
ReplyDeleteThat's on my list on things to build. Wort chillers are very expensive, I'm going to build my own. Currently I'm searching for the cheapest place to buy copper tube, probably the making of the chiller itself will be another post.
ReplyDelete