12
If you're grinding a small amount of grain for a partial mash or speciality grain additions to an extract brew, you could use a Corona mill. They don't provide a particularly good crush, and your efficiency will suffer, but if the bulk your fermentables comes from extract, it won't matter too much. And it'll be miles better than a food processor.
You can ...
12
This screams out "mash water problem" to me. Anytime you go from good extract beers, to "bitter/astringent/chalky/burnt" flavors in all grain, you can bet your buns that its a mash water pH problem. Also, a mash pH of 5 sounds really low to me. I shoot for 5.5 on average.
Water chemistry for all-grain is honestly the most "sciency" part of home brewing, and ...
12
Some things I can think of to increase body:
Milk stouts use lactose, or milk sugar, to increase perceived body and sweetness. Lactose is unfermentable by yeast and so passes to the finished beer.
Dextrin malt (CaraPils, CaraFoam) will impart a nice bit of body without adding crystal-malt-flavor (something I don't like in stouts).
Mash high. Try 156°+ for ...
11
A non dissolvable solid like yeast in a liquid does not increase specific gravity. Its like dropping stones in to a water, the water still has the same density as it did before as the stones (and yeast in your example) are two separate phases. The solids simply displace the liquid but do not become a "part" of it, as in the example of salts or sugars or ...
10
If you have designed your recipe to account for adding the extra water at the end of the boil, then I see no issues what so ever.
I would personally add a couple of litres of boiling water every 10 min or so rather than adding it all at the end, just to avoid over concentrating the sugars in the wort, which may encourage caramelisation & Maillard ...
9
Flaked wheat is raw wheat - it's not been malted. This means that the enzymes that would normally help convert the starches to sugars have not even been created yet, since this is one affect of malting.
"Normal" wheat is also called "red" wheat, due to the slight reddish hue it has. The grain is malted, and so has the ability to convert it's own starches ...
9
The first temperature is of the water you are adding while the second is the expected temperature of the mash after it has been added.
So by adding 12.81 qt of water at 163.7 F to the grain (presumably at room temp) the mixture should land around 152 F. Mashing out is an optional (though common) step that is meant to bring the mash above the temperature ...
8
You can make a flour from the grain, and follow any of the recipes listed here: Spent Grain Chef.
8
I used to use the clear vinyl tubing also. The pros for this kind of tubing are
it's transparent, so you can see the contents clearly
it's relatively inexpensive
it's food safe at room temperature
But there are some significant cons also
at typical mash temperatures, the tubing becomes soft, and doesn't support the weight of the wort, so it collapses and ...
8
No, you don't have to boil the full volume in AG brewing. I only had a 7 gal. pot when I started AG so I's boil about 5 gal. down to 3.5-4, then add top off water. Boiling less will reduce your efficieny because you don't collect as much wort. You need to use more grain to make a higher gravity wort at less volume, so you can top off afterward. That was ...
8
A good starting point for fruit additions in 1lb/gl. Strawberries are pretty subtle, though. I added 7.5lb to 5gl of blonde this summer, and the flavor was easily noticable without being overpowering.
8
This gunk is what's known as "trub", and it is proteins left over from the hot and cold breaks.
The experiment conducted here:
http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/
seems to show that it doesn't really matter whether it's included in the fermenter or not, but most people still remove it/don't add it.
8
The only definitive information I could find specific to your question was in the book Malts and Malting:
'[Malt] must be stored cool and dry in sealed stores [...] to arrest the decline in enzyme levels'
One brief and somewhat vague sentence in 750 pages may give you an idea of how little professional maltsters and brewers seem to concern themselves ...
7
Dissolved solids, such as sugars, increase the SG since they increase the mass of the solution without any significant volume increase.
Suspended solids, like yeast, may increase or decrease the SG depending upon the relative density of the solids compared to the density of the liquid.
In the case with the yeast, we know that yeast settles out eventually, ...
7
A full wort boil is not absolutely necessary, but you shouldn't be topping off too much of your volume. Your efficiency will suffer greatly from topping off. Even if you're able to hit 80% effiency with 11.5L of wort (a big if), after boiling and topping off to 23L you'll end up with below 40% brewhouse effiency. You would also definitely be limited in ...
7
Seal the beer off from oxygen as soon as possible. If you decide to use the airlock, use sanitized water only.
If you have access to CO2, put a layer of the gas over your beer as soon as possible (then close it off). If you've achieved your desired final gravity and you don't need to let it sit in the fermenter any longer, you could also bottle it or keg it ...
7
The prevailing wisdom on these so called "east coast" IPAs is three fold: The use of ~10% of flaked oats in the grist. A combo of super huge late kettle additions as well as dry hopping. Lastly, the use of London Ale III from Wyeast (Wyeast 1318). Despite London Ale III being a great flocculating English Ale yeast, in the presence of huge amounts of hop ...
7
Well BIAB is all grain brewing. Not to be confused with just steeping specialty grains in extract brewing.
If you have a kettle big enough to do a full mash, doing a partial mash and extract is pointless. Unless it's a high gravity beer that would normally need a much larger mash. Basically if you're mashing at all it doesn't save time doing only partial. ...
7
Q1) No chance of off flavors just from this.
Q2) Yes, this is normal. The post boil gravity will always be higher than pre boil because of the water lost to evaporation.
In your case about 12% of the water was boiled off, resulting in a 12% increase in gravity.
Assuming a 5 gallon batch, you boiled off about 0.6 gallons.
7
There are two potential, but not serious, issues with boiling the volume lower than full:
1. Maillard reactions (not caramelisation) at higher wort gravity tend to be more prominent. Sometimes it's good (e.g. when you boil down first runnings when making dubbel), other times not so good (witbier and other light stuff).
2. Hops tend to be under-utilised in ...
6
Yes, it can be fixed and the plan sounds fine. Make a log of this, and review when brewing in future so you can fix the process and avoid these problems in future brews.
Kölsch is lightly hopped so don't worry about adding additional hops. Your lower gravity will have increased utilization slightly so adding non-hopped wort will go some way to balance this ...
6
Yes, you can make a concentrated wort and the dilute that after the boil as with extract.
The key differences are:
lower mash efficiency: higher gravity mashes tend to have lower conversion efficiency. To keep boil volume to a minimum, you might even choose not to sparge, and just use the first runnings - expect conversion efficiency around 50%. More grain ...
6
First, keep in mind that Mr. wizard is a commercial brewer and his answers come from that point of view. It may not be applicable to homebrewers.
Using wheat may be about the only case where using a protein rest may be of benefit. But it'a not a given. There are still proteolytic enzymes left in the malt. Due to the high protein content of wheat, it can ...
6
The core question is … Why? Different ions lead to different perceived properties in the finished beer; for one example: higher concentrations of chloride emphasize malt character, whereas higher concentrations of sulfate emphasize hop character and dryness.
When? Both in the mash and in the sparge water, mostly based on the ratio in volume, with some ...
6
There is a distinct difference between chloride, which is a dissolved Cl- ion, and free residual chlorine (or the longer-lasting chloramine ions). The chloride is likely fine. The 61ppm concentration would make your water smell like a pool (or stronger) if it were chlorine.
A chlorine residual test must be conducted within 15 minutes of taking the sample. ...
6
As someone noted, chlorine and chloride are two different things.
Basically, zero chlorine and chloramine is desirable in your beer. Chlorine can bind with phenols in beer and form chlorophenols, a common homebrew flaw that leads to off-flavors described as medicinal, plastick-y, band-aid-like, or sometimes like electrical smoke.
There are many ways to ...
6
Brewing textbooks I referred to universally state that the gap between the rollers of the mill needs to be much closer together for wet-milling. You don't mention making any adjustments, so I'll assume you didn't. Since the husk is made more elastic by conditioning, the dangers of pulverizing it with too tight a mill are eliminated, and in fact it may do a ...
6
Well you don't steep any grain "during the boil". But to avoid upsetting mash pH you can steep all your non mash required grains in the wort during runoff in the kettle before you start the boil. I routinely add my roasted and crystal malts to a grain bag and steep them this way when I make stouts.
Another application of steeping malts is to actually make ...
6
I add nearly freezing water to chill it quicker to pitch temperature. 1 gallon of near frozen I add to 4 gallons of wort to chill it to lager pitch temperature quicker. Once my immersion chiller cannot reduce the temperature any further, I introduce the near freezing water into my wort. I do not notice any negative effects. The hops are still very nice ...
5
The best way to do it is with a grain mill. By buying in bulk, you can use the savings to amortize the cost of a mill pretty quickly. If you have a friend who also brews, you can go in together on a mill to cut the cost. The ease of use and increased efficiency from a proper crush will make you glad you got the right tool for the job.
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