New to recipe design - your feedback wanted please :-)

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PistolPatch wrote:Al, there are two important things missing from your recipe reports - the planned original gravity and volume of ambient wort (this is volume into fermentor plus your planned kettle trub). Most recipe reports lack information on this volume figure even though it its the most critical one.

Also note that Irish Moss should added at 5 minutes not 15.


PP

Thanks PP - those data were on my original notes, but there was a table in between them and the rest so they got left off - my error.
Irish Moss at 5 mins? All my other sources (and they are legion) say 15 mins (some also say to re-hydrate, is that important, opinion seems divided?). I don't want to doubt you, but either the vast weight of internet forum opinion disagrees or I have sampled around 25 non-representative sources regarding Irish Moss.

Oh yes, and the CT added in the boil - erm, I dunno really. Looks like I should be adding to mash water, which will occur from now on (unless I can be bothered to try experiments to see if there is a difference in beerjoy depending when it goes in).

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I suspect this is getting to be running before I can walk, it being my 8th brew and all. Still, aim high, especially since I harbour a quiet ambition to go part time on my day job and brew beer as a paying hobby one day.
So I downloaded the BIABacus files and had a poke about. Then my head hurt so I had a beer and watched TV for a bit. Then I came back to it this morning and LO! it all made much more sense.
Those other posts you directed me to were also helpful, especially the "entering your recipe" walkthrough.

My pot is a big old 70L SS pan. It's 45x45cm which is nice and easy to calculate I guess. I still have the box it came delivered in, with a bit of insulating foam in the bottom of it. It dropped 3 degrees C in 90 mins last time I used it on a mash, but that was half sized as I was using up some elderly spraymalt as well. Prior to that it dropped 2 degrees over 90 mins with a grain bill of 5kg mashed in 20L of water. Since I have to pick the damned thing up and move it around I try to keep my total mass under 30kg for safety. I almost had a serious accident with a heavier load the first time I used it!

Now I am looking at BIABacus I wonder how to tweak my settings to allow for that. Alternatively I guess I could leave the pot on the stove and drop the box over it - leaves it open at the bottom, but heat rises, right? One less chance to tip hot sugary liquid all over myself has to be a good thing.

It's telling me to use 40L of strikewater - this seems like a very dilute mash for 4.5kg of grain - will it be ok like this?

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Well, I think BIABacus and I need to have a little chat. Once I have taught it the error(s) of its ways I am sure we will work well together. I am not too cross about it in the end though. Not bad for a first try working together.
The 40 litres was way too much. My losses were about 9 litres, so in the end I got 8 litres of free beer. My efficiency must have been high though, as I have 31L of 1.030 wort at 49C, which equates to 1.041 at ambient temps according to the calculator I used. If it ferments down to around 1.010 I should have a mild easy drinking hoppy ale at around 4% so happy days.

How would I go about modifying the data for my reduced losses? Is it as simple as entering a new value in the section X evaporation bit?

It's all cooling now, including the 2 DJ's of extra beer
Clearly extra beer = experimental beer, so I guess no dry hops for one of the DJ's, and for the other one a slug of Brett yeast I have been saving for a time like this. Should I pitch pure Brett or use normal yeast, then drop the brett in for a secondary fermentation?

So many questions, I know. Sorry about that, still lots to learn. Thanks for all the help though folks

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PistolPatch wrote:Howdy Al,

Firstly, did you check out the above links? If so, I hope that answered the rolling boil question. If you didn't have a rolling boil going, this could have also contributed to your trub problem which we will get to in a minute.

I think the plastic container is about 100% likely to have caused your woes. Firstly for the reason you gave and secondly, it is quite probable that the 5 L containers aren't even 5 L. You'd be surprised at how inaccurate labeling and markings are. The BIABacus makes volume measurements really easy...

Look at Section S. On your brew, if you were using cold tap water, all you would have had to do is fill your kettle to a depth of 24.8 cms (9.76 in). Or,if you were using hot water from the tap , as you did, you would just fill the kettle to a depth of 25.3 cms (9.96 in). So buy a stainless steel ruler from the hardware before your next brew. (Note that section T allows you to measure headspace instead of depth.)

Also, be careful if using hot water from the tap. Some hot water systems can add a bit of unwanted flavour/chemicals to your brew. Instantaneous gas hot water heaters are fine though.

Algernon wrote:To rectify this will require tools and equipment I don't yet have, but are almost as expensive as the damned pot was.

No fancy tools are needed. Use your BIAB bag as a hop sock. (I am assuming your BIAB bag is of the correct porosity. If you have a magnifying glass, you want it to be 30 to 40 threads per cm.) Secondly, give your brew time to settle before you transfer it. Finally, do your transfers gently. (How large is the hose you are transferring with?) There is actually no need for any fancy equipment. In fact, often these will just cause you problems such as clogging.

Problem with your File

See in the BIABacus file you posted, in Section C on the first line, the 1.053 you typed in needs to be on the left hand side. Type this in and you will have the correct hop bill appear on the right hand side of Section D.

Not to worry as this little error will probably be in your favour on this brew .


PP

Cheers PP
Right, rolling boil I think I had going on, lots of churning and burbling, my pot goes over 3 rings on the gas hob, one of which is a wok-ring so pretty huge and burny.
As for the 5L container I didn't trust it in the first place, so I calibrated to a line with a 2L water jug first, so I was probably nearer the truth than I would have been otherwise, but the flexing with hot water was noticeable. I did wonder what those numbers were in the BIABacus... from now on I can just measure down from the top of the pot and get a pretty accurate idea of how much is in there. Does it take into account the temp of the water? If so that is clever stuff! Looks like it does - measure 19.7cm from the top to the surface for my strike volume. Haha - no more titting about with piddly containers working out my volumes.
Hot water comes from a combi-boiler, heated on demand, not stored in a tank in the roof with a dead rat floating in it, so that should be fine.
Not sure how much difference the location of the 1.043 is, as it is a recipe I pulled out of my arse anyway, so if the software wants a few more hops or a few less it's fine, since there is no benchmark to compare it to other than my amateur guesswork of "yeah, that looks about right, let's find out". EDIT: I had another look at the info and I notice it modified the amounts of hops to ensure the target bitterness was achieved, so it DID offer an improvement, even though it was a made-up recipe.

Well, yeast was pitched last night at around 24c which is as cool as it would get upstairs. I could have taken it to the cellar to cool a little more, but I am not opening my brew up down there. I pitched, lidded, airlocked and then took downstairs with a clear plastic bag over it. It's 20c down there pretty constantly.
Thanks so much for the help with working out how to use BIABacus, it isn't initially an easy thing to look at, but it starts to make sense after a while. There are still plenty of sections I have no idea about, but we can look at those later on.

many thanks, as I said
Al

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