I was going for a simple singe infusion mash ...
Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 8:47 pm
Guys, I guess I pulled my 1st Justin today:
Still being in temporary housing, I thought I'll brew another batch so I will have home brew when I'm in the new house. Since this will be 2 weeks from now I thought I do another Weissbier. I already brewed the recipe once with an step mash which included a ferulic acid rest. The beer came out with a nice clove aroma, as I intended. Now I wanted to brew the same recipe with a single infusion mash so I can compare and justify the more elaborate mash schedule.
The recipe calls for 60% wheat and 40% pilsner malt.
It started with the fact that I went to a different home brew store and that I had to watch our 2-year old. Once in the store I was told that they are out of light wheat, but that I can substitue with dark wheat. So I do that and take 6lb of wheat and 4lb of pilsner. Usually I don't need 10lb of grain for a 12P 5.5 gal batch, but I don't have a scale at home and wouldn't have a problem with the excess wort.
Now I have to mill the stuff. When I put the grains in the mill I noticed that some of them fell through. That can't be good went through my head. And after milling lots of the wheat kernels weren't even boken. I tried to adjust the mill, but it didn't seem to work. Meanwhile my daughter is starting to destroy the store and I need to rush.
When I milled the pilner I notice that most of the husks are shredded. Once in the car I started thinking about the poor crush and how this will effect the efficiency and the sparging. I don't use rice hulls for sparging since I never had problems sparging up to 60% wheat. So I decide to add a protein rest and with it a decoction to the mash. The decoction is expected to help with the poorly crushed grain and the flow of the sparge.
So I pull a decoction 20min after the start of the protein rest and give it some time to convert since it contains a significant portion of the grains. Then I let it boil for 20min. Now we are not talking about a weissbier anymore. It's more of a Dunkelweizen now. 40 min after pulling the deoction I combine the mashes to get to 65.5C. No problem there since I don't dump all of the decoction in at once.
40 min into the saccrification rest I look at the mash again and see that the decoction didn't help breaking some of the uncrushed grains open and I take a hydrometer sample. The first wort measures at about 16P, wich is, based on previous mashes, to low to get me to a target gravity of 12P for 5.5 gal. Since I don't have DME around anymore I decide to add some of the malt that I have left over from a previous batch. In go ~1lb of Munic and ~2lb of Pale Malt.
After 3 hrs of mashing I started sparing and it got stuck pretty fast. Luckily I batch sparge and have to stir the mash once in a while anyway.
After an hour of batch sparging (usually takes only 20-30 min) I have 25L pre boil wort at 10P. This can give me a 11.5P wort after 70 min boiling, but my efficiency was a mere 55%. I'm usually in the high 70s for 12P worts.
Needless to say that I will soon get my own mill (as planned) and all these worries should be gone. The grains for the last batch were ground at a different HBS with a Phill Mill 2 and I had an efficiency of >80%. So I might get one of those. I also liked how the crush looked.
The crush that I had for this batch looked as if it was done with a food processor
now back to brewing
Kai
Still being in temporary housing, I thought I'll brew another batch so I will have home brew when I'm in the new house. Since this will be 2 weeks from now I thought I do another Weissbier. I already brewed the recipe once with an step mash which included a ferulic acid rest. The beer came out with a nice clove aroma, as I intended. Now I wanted to brew the same recipe with a single infusion mash so I can compare and justify the more elaborate mash schedule.
The recipe calls for 60% wheat and 40% pilsner malt.
It started with the fact that I went to a different home brew store and that I had to watch our 2-year old. Once in the store I was told that they are out of light wheat, but that I can substitue with dark wheat. So I do that and take 6lb of wheat and 4lb of pilsner. Usually I don't need 10lb of grain for a 12P 5.5 gal batch, but I don't have a scale at home and wouldn't have a problem with the excess wort.
Now I have to mill the stuff. When I put the grains in the mill I noticed that some of them fell through. That can't be good went through my head. And after milling lots of the wheat kernels weren't even boken. I tried to adjust the mill, but it didn't seem to work. Meanwhile my daughter is starting to destroy the store and I need to rush.
When I milled the pilner I notice that most of the husks are shredded. Once in the car I started thinking about the poor crush and how this will effect the efficiency and the sparging. I don't use rice hulls for sparging since I never had problems sparging up to 60% wheat. So I decide to add a protein rest and with it a decoction to the mash. The decoction is expected to help with the poorly crushed grain and the flow of the sparge.
So I pull a decoction 20min after the start of the protein rest and give it some time to convert since it contains a significant portion of the grains. Then I let it boil for 20min. Now we are not talking about a weissbier anymore. It's more of a Dunkelweizen now. 40 min after pulling the deoction I combine the mashes to get to 65.5C. No problem there since I don't dump all of the decoction in at once.
40 min into the saccrification rest I look at the mash again and see that the decoction didn't help breaking some of the uncrushed grains open and I take a hydrometer sample. The first wort measures at about 16P, wich is, based on previous mashes, to low to get me to a target gravity of 12P for 5.5 gal. Since I don't have DME around anymore I decide to add some of the malt that I have left over from a previous batch. In go ~1lb of Munic and ~2lb of Pale Malt.
After 3 hrs of mashing I started sparing and it got stuck pretty fast. Luckily I batch sparge and have to stir the mash once in a while anyway.
After an hour of batch sparging (usually takes only 20-30 min) I have 25L pre boil wort at 10P. This can give me a 11.5P wort after 70 min boiling, but my efficiency was a mere 55%. I'm usually in the high 70s for 12P worts.
Needless to say that I will soon get my own mill (as planned) and all these worries should be gone. The grains for the last batch were ground at a different HBS with a Phill Mill 2 and I had an efficiency of >80%. So I might get one of those. I also liked how the crush looked.
The crush that I had for this batch looked as if it was done with a food processor
now back to brewing
Kai
