Huge brewday / weekend

[RubberToe]

Here goes another one. I just mashed in almost 10 Kg of grain for the RIS. I'm not recirculating the mash this time, nor using the false bottom. I hit mash temps pretty good, after 5 mins the temp was 65.3C / 149.5F and it's resting now. I forgot to add the minerals to the strike water AGAIN!

Yesterdays brew is fermenting along nicely (both carboys).

[RubberToe]

71.2% measured mash efficiency. If I can boil off enough I don't even have to add dextrose. Est OG 1.098. Well, I might add a little. You might have noticed I'm taking my time on this one. I did a long mash, watched some Breaking Bad, had some leftover ribs (yum yum). The bag was heavy and I let it drain for quite a while. Everything's going great though.

[mr x]

That's very good efficiency.

Sent from my Nexus S

[RubberToe]

I ended up with 21L at 1.099 and only added 200g of corn sugar to the end of the boil. Brewhouse efficiency was 70.2% (lost some from equipment loss, etc). BTW my mill gap is set to about 0.031" since you can get away with a finer crush with BIAB and not worry about a stuck sparge. The mash thickness was 3.6 L/Kg. The DIPA mash was under 2.5 L/Kg (dead space from false bottom).

The chiller worked great but hit the wall around 25 C. The ground water just isn't cold enough right now. After I racked I put it into the ferm cabinet to get it down further as I cleaned up. It will be neat to see how well it works over the winter.

Ths RIS is kicking up a little foam as the yeasties get going, and the DIPAs are bubbling away. One dipa is under the stairs and I'll be keeping an eye on the temps, it got off to a cool start though. I am woried about blow off on the RIS. I didn't leave a lot of head space there... I do have a blow off tube but I know it's going to over flow the blowoff vessel when it gets going; this should be fun.

Post Mortem:

-No more false bottom for large grain bills.
-Probably won't bother recirculating the mash water although I'd like to make a sparge tube / ring and try it some more.
-The DIPA had too much grain and hops for the system. We pushed it to the limits but at least I know them now.
-I don't need to go spend a bunch of money on an A/C unit for the under stairs fermentation area although I'll pick something up at the right price. It's only 20-22 C for a couple of months of the year.
-I may have overpitched 2 of the brews (mason jar yeast slurry + 11g dry yeast). We'll see how fast the RIS kicks up.
-Aeration went well. I still need a racking cane for the stone though. I just had it on t piece of gas line. The L/Min gauge on the regulator makes the calculations easy.
-Don't boil the pot dry when sterilising your aeration stone and you forget about it. I wonder if I damaged it.
-Reflectix is awesome.
-Use a coarse mesh bag for bagging hops. A really coarse one if you have leaf hops. Jimmy posted about this before and I forgot until it was too late.
-I like having hooks on the wall next to my brew pot.
-I need to remember to add the water mineral additions at the right time. It will just take getting used to.
-I need to secure the kettle return hose. I had it fly out and spray wort on the counter and wall both days. Luckily I was right there to catch it.
-I had some PID setting problems. I managed to fix one of them on Sunday though which resulted in a smooth and steady boil (vs pulsing). It's still overshooting though. I may have to auto tune again.
-A Brutus 20 system with a tippy dump on the mash tun would be awesome. I think the brew day would go quicker too. It will be awesome when LiverDance builds his, gonna have to check it out.

Brewing doesn't have to be this complicated or this much work: filtering water, mineral additions, aeration, doing a zillion calculations, etc, etc. You can still make wonderful beer without doing a lot of extra stuff. It is fun though and since I have the means I'd like to see the results and I really want to compete. Every brew I try to make some small change that will make the next brew day smoother and faster. Saturday was crazy though.

Thanks Jamie and Andrew for coming out. The next time maybe we'll do some simpler brews and plan it better for smoother operation. Hoptoberfest and Porter on deck...

-Rob

[sleepyjamie]

doing a 10 gal DIPA for your first 10 gallon batch on the system at least revealed most of the possible unknowns that would have poked its head over a few brews.

once u have that fermentation chamber going we should do a few 10 gallon lagers.