Hi again Jeff
,
Looks like you have taken on board all the good advice above already - sweet! Here's a few more things that I noticed...
You really need to increase your mash time for 60 to 90 minutes. On nearly all grain bills, doing so will make a significant difference. In traditional three-vessel brewing, the mash and sparge are separate. The mash is often 60 minutes and is followed by 30 or more minutes of sparging. In pure BIAB (full-volume brewing) we do the mash and sparge at the same time. The contact time your grain has with water is important. Tests we've done here show that. So, change your mash time to 90 minutes.
Your whirfloc tablet addition should be done at 5 minutes, not fifteen. That's a really common error and I'm not sure where it originated. Whirfloc actually denatures in the bil after ten minutes and becomes ineffective.
I'd like to see your mash temperature at 66°C or even 65C on this single infusion mash so don't be scared to go lower than 66.7C.
This looks like a great recipe so all should go well
.
Here's two rambles for you...
Ramble 1
I've always advised aerating the wort and then sprinkling the dried yeast on it. Now, I'm not sure though that a single 11.5 gram sachet of US-05 is enough for pitching into a 23 lt VIF of 1.053 wort. I'm super-sensitive to a few flavours such as acetaldehyde and, on reflection, I never had any acetaldehyde in brews I had pitched with washed US-05 yeast.
I haven't been brewing enough lately with US-05 to warrant washing it so have returned to my olden day ways recently - rehydrating and then, while the wort is chilling and aerating, adding wort to the rehydrated yeast. This works really well and is proof how easy it is to forget a successful brewing practice.
I'm in two minds though as to what advice to give. Sprinkle 1.5 sachets of yeast (which is a PITA) or rehydrate and "educate" the one sachet. The reason why I hesitate on the second option is that the instructions given are really poor.
You must use sterile water to re-hydrate and you must get the temperature right (around 27 °C). Boiling some tap water for 20 minutes and letting it cool is fine to get the sterile bit. Add 115mls to a jug and then sprinbkle the dried yeast on top. Have a santised tea-spoon sitting in the jug and cover it with plastic wrap. Let is sit for 30 minutes and then give it a bit of a stir. 15 minutes later, add about 80mls of wort that you collected at the end of the boil in a coffee mug, covered and cooled. About 30 minutes later, add the rest of the coffee mug (another 120 mls). By this stage, the yeast will have really woken up and you also will have chilled and aerated your wort. Pitch it!
Ramble 2
You mentioned above that the BIABacus default on estimating fermentable sugars seems to work well. And, it does.
One other thing though to note with the BIABacus is that it is very transparent whereas other software is not. For example, in BeerSmith, if you change the moisture content on a fermentable from say 4% to 50%, the "yield" (very vague term) does not change nor will the OG of your recipe. This is totally incorrect. If you gave me 1000 grams of sugar but told me it had a moisture content of 50%, I would know I would need to add two teaspoons into my coffee if I normally had one.
So, the first thing to realise is that vague software terminology allows pretty much anything to add up
.
The second thing is that one batch of say Weyerman Pilsner Malt is not the same as the next. Moisture content, colour etc can vary significantly from batch to batch, more so from year to year. Go to the Weyerman site and you'll see that
Weyerman Pilsner Maltcan range, in colour, from 2.5 to 4.0 EBC. If you were able to get a spec sheet for each batch, you'd also notice moisture content will vary.
Basically, unless you are using something like sugar or you do know the actual specs of every grain in your recipe, there is no point in using Section Y. The BIABacus estimate will serve you better.
So, rest easy
,
PP
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) Also, you filled out both OG areas in section C with the same number. If you are sticking with the original recipe I think you need only fill the first, but again, as before, this didn't change anything because you used the same number in both places.