Improved efficiency with better grain crush

Following on from my last post about the addition of a new mill motor (Wiper motor) to replace my "superfast rip the grain husks to shreds" drill, I did a brew on the weekend to test it out.
I brewed an English mild which had a simple grain bill of 95% Maris Otter and 5% chocolate, with a bittering addition of EKG at 60 mins and another wack of EKG at 15 mins.

The mill gap was set to 1mm and the mill took 15 mins to crush a 4.7 kg grain bill. A bit slow but whilst it was crushing I measured out my water salt additions and prepared other items needed for my brew day. Every so often I would just top the hopper up with more grain and I could hear the motor change when it had finished.

The result was a very easy and consistent wort flow through the mash bed, herms and back to the MLT with no stuck mash. And an efficiency of 82% which is fantastic, as I would have been happy to get around 70%.

As you can see in the photo the wiper motor gives the husks a nice gentle pull apart so the flour can get out but the husk is still able to act as a nice filter medium for the mash bed.

Grain mill motor

I've been using a drill to power my recently purchased grain mill but have been having mixed results. The drills speed is variable by adjusting how much you pull the trigger but only down to around 400 rpm. Because of this I've been having problems with stuck sparges due to my crush being too fine or having to mill at a larger gap of 1.2 mm but then suffering in my efficiency of only around 62%.

I couldn't afford a dedicated mill motor at the moment but I managed to score a wiper motor that a guy I know was using as a spit motor. It had a transformer to convert 240V down to 12V, a bridge rectifier to convert 12V AC to 12V DC and a switch all neatly housed in a steel box. I pulled it all out and mounted it on some board and connected it to my mill with a spider coupler. The board has rubber stoppers underneath and the whole thing sits on top of a 20 litre pail.

I haven't given it a test run yet but I'm keen to see if the constant speed of around 60 RPM will now allow me to set a smaller mill gap and hopefully improve my efficiency above 70% without risking a stuck sparge.

Don't be too stingy with home brew equipment, cheaper isn't always better.

I remember how excited I was when I first brought my 40 litre urn to use as my new brew kettle. Previously I had been using an 18 litre urn given to me by my father in law as my BIAB rig. It did the job but I was limited to around 14 litres per batch, which was fine at the time as I only bottled. 

But once I had decided to move to kegging I needed to brew batch sizes of at least 19 litres.

I used a measuring jug to mark out 2 litre increments on the side of my kettle and stuck labels onto the side so I could see at a glance what my volumes were.  However I always seemed to be out on my volumes and would blame it on miscalculations when transferring from my HLT, grain absorption rate higher than expected etc etc. But when things still didn't seem quite right I decided to double check my measurements using a different "more expensive" jug.

My measurements were out by nearly 2 litres because I had used a cheap measuring jug brought from a $2 shop. 

Green labels= cheap $2 jug. Black texta = expensive $20 jug.

The costs in this hobby can start to add up. As your quest for better beer continues you upgrade your system and add more equipment and brewery bling. So we are always after a bargain or a way to save money when we can but sometimes cheaper isn't always better.

I've brought cheap gas quick disconnects only to lose a full bottle of gas because they leaked. I've also brought cheap Chinese probes on ebay that turned out to be faulty.

So make sure you do your homework first. Ask on the forums or search for comments from others about a cheap product before buying it. 

Of course not everything cheap is dodgy. The STC1000 temp controller that you can buy on ebay is a fraction of the cost you pay for a complete unit from a home brew store. Providing you are handy with electrical wiring or know someone who is you can build a cheap temperature controller for under $30.00

My STC1000 temp controller mounted in a jiffy box. This model has both heating and cooling outputs so is good for
brewing all year round. I can plug my heat belt in during winter or my fermentation fridge in summer.

Batting for the other side.

This weekend I've changed teams. I'm batting for the other side. Im spending four days at the LaDolce Vita wine festival in the King Valley in Central Victoria.

I've headed up here with my wife and her brother and his wife and were staying in a guest house at one of the wineries. 

It's a big weekend up this way with many of the wineries putting on live bands and food and most of the wineries setup with tables and chairs out on the lawns to cater for large crowds. Unfortunately not a beer in sight but luckily for me I brought along an esky full of home brew which my brother in law and me are hooking into right now.

The guesthouse had a fully stocked fridge so we had some nibbles of cheese and biscuits, olives, pate etc washed down with my Hoegaarden clone.

Cheese, biscuits, sliced meats and a nice wheat beer clone to wash it down.

Homebrewing to save money???

Although most people start out in this hobby to save money by brewing there own beer instead of buying it, nothing could be further from the truth.

You start out buying a cheap Coopers brew kit from a garage sale, buying some tins of extract from Coles and you make your first beer.

Once it's fermented and bottled and allowed to age for a few weeks the tasting day comes around. You may or may not invite some mates over to try your awesome beer, complete with MS publisher designed labels featuring your witty brewery name and even wittier beer name, "Michelle's Pale Ale", (Usually named after your spouse or a sibling.)

You pour the beer into a glass, looks ok if a little cloudy, but a nice head to it, take a small sip and bluhh...... That's the sound your mouth makes as you open it slightly and think, this isn't the most amazing awesomest beer in the world that I'm going to start a micro brewery with to rival the likes of SAB Miller or Lion Nathan. Your mates all take a sip and give you a strange look on their face as they try to hide the fact that your beer tastes like chilled cats urine. They tell you "Umm, yeh It tastes ok" or "It gets better  as you drink more". But they never seem to want anymore, ever. 

At this stage more than half of new home brewers give up and put their kits on eBay or sell it at a garage sale and the cycle continues.

For those that are left the journey begins. Reading books and home brew forums we learn that temperature control whilst fermenting will improve our beer. Buying better yeast, steeping grains and adding hops, so we buy temp controllers, liquid yeasts, hops and grains, and old fridges to control our fermentation temps. Then we want to improve our beer even more so we start doing all grain brewing. 

The stove top brew in a bag method is what most people start out in all grain brewing. A cheap $30 BigW pot, some Swiss voile made into a bag and a temperature probe is added to our increasing brewing equipment stock, along with a stainless ball valve fitted to our pot to make wort transfer easier.

Then we decide to go 2v 3v or 4v Herms so it's more vessels, more ball valves, stainless coils, march pumps, elements, an electric brew controller with pids and a fancy brew stand to put it all somewhere. Add to that a grain mill, Bulk grains, more temperate controllers, a stir plate for making yeast starters, conical flasks, jugs, buckets, kegs, a kegerator, co2 bottle and regulator..........the list continues and is virtually endless.

Just "some" of the equipment I have added to my brewery over the years.

Not to mention that you then start buying craft beer instead of cheap mega swill as your taste for real beer improves. And we all know that a carton of decent craft beer can be upwards of $60 a carton.

I've lost track of how much money I've spent on brew gear but at a guess somewhere around $600 for my 4v Herms system. However I've been lucky and have managed to score a lot of my equipment at a good price or free of charge. It's probably worth well over $1200 if I had to pay for it all in full.

But home brewing can be as cheap or as expensive as you make it. There are plenty of beers winning awards that are still brewed on a kitchen stovetop in the BigW 20 litre pot, using the BIAB (Brew in a bag method), and having a 3v or 4v brewing system doesn't make you automatically brew better beer.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though. Once your initial investment has been recouped, brewing craft beer is a lot cheaper than buying it and you will start to save some money.

As an example a carton of Matilda Bay Fat Yak from Dan Murphy's will cost you

$58.89 per carton

$15.90 per 6 pack

$4.09 per 330 ml bottle

To brew a 25 litre batch of the same beer cost me approximately $35.00 in grain hops and yeast. Let's allow an extra $5.00 for water and electricity usage on brew day and an extra $5.00 for incidentals. 

This may or may not be a picture of a 
Fat Yak clone I recently brewed.

So that's $45 for 25 litres or $1.80 per litre. Which works out to

$14.16 per carton

$3.54 per 6 pack

$.059 cents per stubbie.

That's a huge saving on buying the same beer and in most cases my own beer tastes a lot better than what I'm buying.

Hop spider

Here is my hop spider in action. Made with 3 long of coach bolts, some 100 mm PVC pipe, a large hose clamp and some paint strainer bags. I throw a stainless nut into the bag to keep it under the wort as the boiling action has a tendency to lift the bag to the surface. 

It certainly helps with my losses to kettle trub and I get a bit more precious wort into the fermenter at the end of brew day, but I have noticed a slight decrease in hop bitterness so need to allow for this when formulating recipes.

Today's lesson

I went into the blogger app on my iPad today and noticed there were 3 posts listed on the left hand side. As these were the only posts listed I assumed they were locally stored drafts. And because I had already finished and published these posts I decided to delete them.

OMFG. I deleted the actual posts from my blog. And what's worse is that they were recipe posts and tasting notes for brews I've recently done, so they took me awhile to do.

I did a search and tried some of the steps I found on restoring deleted posts but had no luck.

So lesson learnt, look before you leap....

Krausen Monster

This is a West Coast IPA fermenting happily in ferm fridge No 1.
I pitched a slurry of American Ale 2 yeast that I had saved from a previous batch.

She kicked off straight away and produced this big krausen monster that spewed out under the gladwrap. I had to replace the gladwrap twice before it finally settled down.

Hoegaarden Wit bier

Ive really been enjoying this Belgian Wheat beer lately, Hoegaarden Wit bier.
Its brewed with Coriander and orange zest added late in the boil so has a nice spicy, peppery, citrus type flavour to it. Has a slight sourness at first then turns fruity and a nice light white head.A very refreshing beer that I will be enjoying more of with summer only a month away.

So of course being a home brewer I had to find a clone recipe for this.  My attempts were okay although mine is a bit darker than the original Hoegaarden and I probably used a bit too much orange peel as it slightly overpowering. Will post the recipe and some pics up in another post.

Bayside Brewers Oktoberfest

I am a member of the Bayside Brewers home brew club which covers the South Eastern bayside suburbs of Melbourne. Every year in October we have our Oktoberfest at Hickinbotham Winery in Dromana.
The Saturday is the judging day for competition entries then on Saturday night many of our members camp in the horse paddock behind the winery.
Sunday is the family day. All the beers in the competition are served and there are German foods available and an Oompah band.
I brewed a Munich dunkel for the competition. I had set my grain mill too fine so ended up getting a stuck sparge on numerous occasions during my stepped mash.The result was I didnt hit my mash temps properly and the beer didnt attenuate out resulting in a slightly watery beer.
So I didnt place in the judging, however I had a number of fellow members tell me that they enjoyed my beer. So I might have to put this one down to brew again.

It was a good day with a huge turn out. I enjoyed the beer on offer with a Hefewiezen being my favourite. It had a nice bubblegum after taste, and Im certainly going to add this to my brew schedule.



Authentic German barman..or not.

More authentic Germans..

 


Ok well at least this was an authentic German Oompah band.

My latest Brew Rig

And finally on my quick tour through the brew rigs and setups Ive used since starting this hobby we come to my current setup.
I started with an old steel framed bench they were throwing out at work and turned this..

Into this..

The brewery controller swings out parallel with the stand on brew day, then folds back away as shown in the picture when not needed. My HLT is on the left, Mash tun in the middle and boil kettle goes on the right where the Mash tun lid is sitting. My pump is mounted to the bottom shelf and I have room for the storage of leads etc either side of the pump.

Its a great rig to brew on and I love the castors as I can move it in to the middle of the garage on brew day, which means any spills can be hosed out the garage and down the driveway.

New House..New Brew Rig Design

I moved house in November 2012 and the new house had a double garage, which meant more room for an upgraded brew rig setup. So I decided to give a 2 tier setup a go.
My HLT was on the first tier with my MLT and boil kettle on the second tier, and a pump below this.

Heres a panoramic shot of my setup. (Note the brew controller box that I was building at the time I took the photo...details on the build will follow in another post)

My first brewery

If I had started this blog when I first started brewing I would have a nice chronological order of my brew rigs as I updated them and added or improved them. Instead Im going to just do some catch up posts here outlining my brew rig setups since I first started.

My first adventure into all grain brewing was using the old faithfull Big W 20 litre pot and a Swiss voile bag. This method is called Brew in a bag or BIAB and is a great and cheap way for new or K&K brewers to get started in "All Grain" brewing.
My first brew was a Stone and Wood Pacific Ale clone and it turned out fantastic. I was immediately hooked on All grain.

I was then given an 18 litre urn so started doing BIAB in that. Eventually after reading about various systems such as RIMS and HERMS, 2V 3V etc etc I decided to build a simple herms system and setup a 3V brewery. This used my small 18 litre urn as a Hot Liquor Tank or HLT, an esky for my Mash tun MLT and a new 40 litre urn I had brought as my boil kettle.



Brew rig on stand showing my HLT bottom left, herms vessel bottom right, and mash tun and boil kettle on top shelf.

Upgrade to Beersmith

Well after a few years of using trusty old Brewmate as my brewing software of choice I have finally bit the bullet, lashed out and brought Beersmith and Beersmith mobile for my iPad.

My original hesitation was due to the fact that Brewmate was free. However it does lack some features that I like in Beersmith. Such as the inventory and stepped mashing. And also now that Beersmith mobile is available I like the idea of being able to run my brew day from my iPad.
So I've spent the night setting up my equipment profile and adding my hops and grains stock to Beersmith and played around with the recipe cloud account swapping between my iPad and PC. Beersmith is certainly a lot harder to use than Brewmate which I would certainly recommend for beginners.
But I think once the equipment profiles are all setup and the basics are grasped that Beersmith will be a much better program for the real beer nerd like myself.