Brewstand Review. First brewday done
The videos I took of the first brewday are on here. You may have seen them. In this post I wanted to sumarise how the day went, and mention the good and bad I've found out about my system after just one brew. Interspersed with pics of the day of course!
Lovely Saturday morning so decision made for me really (we've had so few nice days). This was to be 'first brewday'.
I had ingredients. Keeping it simple: two 'Spank' mash kits and 7Kg of Pale Malt. I like Blueball Brewery's Spank industial IPA, so it seemed a good idea. And it will give me a benchmark for my beer!
Quick look indicated that I'd need to get a few final bits. Like a clean hose pipe to supply water and feed the wort chiller. And, given my worries on pilot lights in wind, one of those gas igniter thingy-ma-bobs.
Those acquired we kicked it off and overall the day went well.
The Operator got a bit too wrapped up in the automation and didn't think enough about the process, the result being that when I was well under the volume I wanted (post-sparge) I added some water. The problem here was twofold. That water would have been better added upfront and pushed through the mash in the recirculation (we've already said this sort of sparge is going to be less efficient than a fly or batch sparge). But it wasn't added. So not only was the sparge inefficient because I'd not got enough water to rinse the sugars, more inefficient that it would have been, I then added water.
Not thinking. Luckily a mate, Nick (@freddiespedalo), had popped round. He spotted the problem. And supplied the DME. We finished with a OG of 1040 - just. The 'Spank' benchmarking went out the window I guess.
I also had no idea about liquid loss rates throughout the system. In the mash, in the boil, and in the drain off. It lost more than I expected. I started witth 50 litres in the HLT. I reckon I ended up with 38 litres of beer. despite adding 5 litres water post-sparge!
But, no problem. The dynamics of my system are now known. I reckon I'll start with a 65 litres of hot liquor next time. And possibly add a bit more pale malt to allow for the sparge inefficiency.
Information overload. Two digital thermocouples (to the control panel). Two analogue thermometers. One brewers thermometer and a multimeter with thermocouple attached. None of them agreed with each other. But the digital thermocouples to the control panel were way over - by 6 and 8 degrees (celsius). So I had to account for that in the temp settings on the controllers - setting them high.
This was odd as I'd tested in cold water and all the sensors concurred more or less. I think the key to calibration is to test in the domain in which you plan to use the kit.
This is me sorting the problem the next day. In a kettle.
Result. All calibrated. Current temp in sync, from 70 down to 30 degrees. And agrees with the analogue thermometers to within 1 or 2 degrees. That's enough for now.
By far the biggest problem: my Wort Chiller does not work. At least not in the way I'm trying to use it.
You can have the copper vs stainless steel conduction argument or you can just agree it's mounted too low in the HLT. Hot liquids rise, cool liquids fall. I know that from A Level Physics. The result of my configuration is that cool liquids stay at the bottom and get colder. Hot liquids stay at the top and cool very slowly. You could actually feel the two different layers in the HLT.
Of course the temperature monitoring is all down the bottom of the pots, which makes it really difficult to cool to a temperature you can reliably pitch your yeast in. I decanted to 2 x 23 litre fermenting bins at 22 degrees (celsius) on the pot and later found one of them to be over 30 degrees when tested later. One bin started fermenting really slowly, the other didn't start and needed to be repitched (I think I'd probably wiped out the yeast at 30 + degrees) with a generic beer yeast.
Nick, good man, evolved my idea of using the wort chiller to recirculate the mash through to maintain heat into one that would recirculate the hot wort through an cold/ice water bath using the Mash tun (once cleaned). All I need to do is swap the pots over. This will work.
A note on the pilot lights
They did blow out when set low. But set too high they supplied enough gas to make the whole burner flame burn inefficiently which I was surprised at. So I set them low, and used my gas igniter thingy to restart them easily. It worked. I may look at revising the pilots. Or buy a windbreak ;-)
And that's all I've got. Apart from this...
