Back to brewing after a 20-year hiatus to raise some heathens

patpawlowski

patpawlowski

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Hi all,

At my peak back in the late '90s, I was brewing a 5-gallon batch a week. It made for long Saturdays as I would generally brew an all-grain batch, rack last week's brew to the secondary, and bottle the batch from 2 weeks prior that was in the secondary.

I've been back at it now with my son for about a year, and things have changed. 😀

-pat
 
Interesting....and welcome to the forum and your hobby.

I began brewing in the 2000's. My interest was good beer as cheaply made as possible. Eventually my goals moved to setting up my home brewing operation to reflect a craft brewery. The hobby introduced me to building a brewery by making many of my own pieces of equipment. Counter flow chillers, fermentors, and even temperature controls were made. I hade a ball. Eventually I had my own dedicated brewery set up.

I began replacing my home made equipment with professional grade equipment. I was brewing 15 gallon batches when I took a breather. Now, back at it again I have a brew partner that will be given my operation when I am done brewing. I again am engaged in the process and am attempting to increase my skill level.

Pat, what has changed for you?
 
The chemistry and biology has pretty much stayed the same as one would expect. Techniques and equipment have changed quite a bit. New things and old things that used to be cost-prohibitive are now easily within reach.

Temperature control: I purchased two Johnson's Controls A419 controllers for about $100 each if I remember correctly. I had to wire them up myself and I was on top of the world. Now you can grab an Inkbird controller for $30 (which is about $12 in 1990s dollars). I also just purchased a small deep freeze that will hold 4 corny kegs and can be set for fridge or freezer temps. i.e., no controller required.

Brew-In-Bag: This did not exist as far as I knew, and just about everything about it sounds like a bad idea to the 1990s brewer in me. A long, slow sparge was the hallmark of efficiency. Or so I thought.

All-in-One Electric Brewers: I think some versions of these might have just been showing up but they were costly and were more of a large pot with an element under it and a spout. No pumps, malt pipes, or electronics.

Yeast: Dry yeast used to be for beginners, and there was at least 1/10th of the variety available as there is today.

I'm not seeing anyone on YouTube trying to dial in that perfect strike water temp before dumping the water into their big orange cooler with a false bottom.

The internet was in its infancy back then and my exposure was limited to the local Home Brew Association and Home Brew Store. So, there might have been more going on than I was privy to, but that was how I remember it.

Currently, I have purchased a bottom-end, inexpensive, all-in-one system. It's 110v, 1800w, 9 gallons, with a built-in pump. It has a controller, can be programmed, and can save nine recipes. I fought the system and insisted on fly-sparging the first several batches. It was a pain in the arse, and efficiency was. It was not what I expected. I think the unspargable space around the malt pipe might have something to do with that.

I have since been doing a batch sparge, running the temp up to mash-out, and then raising the malt pipe slowly out of the kettle. Nowhere near as slow as a 1-hour fly sparge, but taking 5 to 10 minutes to slowly pull it out, and I let it hang and drain for 15+ minutes while I wait for the batch to start boiling. Once it's boiling, I pull off the malt and then put the lid on the boiler. The few batches I have done this way have had fine efficiencies. I have not calculated the efficiency yet, but I have hit my target original gravity.

We made 6 or 7 batches last year and took the summer off mostly. Once the gardening season was over we started on this year's brews. We finished up last year's by attempting a parti-gyle of a Belgian Quad and a Belgian Double but failed. The quad turned out but I don't think it ever actually finished. After it sat in the secondary for a couple of months I finally kegged it without checking the gravity and it is pretty heavy and sweet. I should just check the gravity of it to see where it is but currently, I can't test FG because we broke our graduated cylinder and the new one we ordered is too short to work on the dry end. I have a new one on the way.

Plans for this year
  • 3 back-to-back batches using the same yeast cake
    • English Pale Ale
    • ESB
    • English Porter
  • Experiment on clear beer using multiple batches of Kolsch
    • Batch 1 - attempt the strongest boil possible
    • Batch 2 - use RO water augmented with minerals
    • Batch 3 - either a combination of 1 & 2 or experiment with heavy finnings
  • Play with some SMaSH recipes with an eye towards a "House Brew"
  • I have a 10-gallon corny keg that I want to set up for pressure fermentation.
  • I might attempt the parti-gyle once again.
-pat
 
Touching o a few points you raised... I used fly sparge then batch sparge but since I started BIAB and then using an all-in-one (which is still BIAB except with a Basket rather than a Bag) I've bee doing full volume mashes. No more sparging.

Another point is that a mash-out step is not really necessary. On a homebrew scale you are going to reach that temperature pretty quickly as you ramp up to boiling temperatures.

If you pitch a new batch of wort onto a fresh yeast cake you will only need about 1/4 to 1/2 of that slurry.

Using an electric system on 120v you are not going to get a strong boil... you are not even going to get a moderate boil.

If you want to learn about true parti-gyling get the book "Guile Brews" by Peter Symons. Looking at you plans for the coming year you could make Fuller's ESB, London Pride and Chiswick Bitter using the partigyle method. That's exactly how Fullers did it. Same mash but the gyles are blended to get the correct gravity then boiled separately and each hopped slightly differently. Here is a link to a different forum where someone posted pictures of the Fullers log book showing the recipe... if you can make head or tails from it. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...imperials-neipa-from-the-horses-mouth.642756/

One of the changes since you brewed last is that the use of a secondary step is now considered unnecessary and possibly harmful to your beer. Many people who advocated for the secondary step, like John Palmer author of the book "How To Brew", changed their mind and now recommend that you not use a secondary. As ingredients have improved and knowledge has increased it has been found that the perceived benefits from this step are no longer true. The harm comes from oxidation caused during the transfer. Unless you have the ability to do a closed transfer and eliminate all O2 during the process its not worth it. Plus there is no real "fermentation" going on in a secondary fermenter unless you are adding extra yeast for some reason like adding Brettanomyces.

My advice from reading your posts; A larger system will serve you much better than the 9 gallon kettle that you have. I have an Anvil Foundry 10.5 and that is probably the minimum I would recommend. Even at 10.5 gallons there are beer styles and strengths that I cannot do without some form of mash gymnastics. Next; get a system that runs on 240v. The Anvil 10.5 and 6.5 can use both 120v and 240v and I used the lower voltage when I first got it and hated the anemic boil. More of a simmer actually. I now use it on 240v and it makes a world of difference.


Finally a tip from re-reading you second post about unspargable space around the malt pipe; That sounds like the issue with the Anvil Foundry units. The solution is simple... lift the malt pipe 2 or 3 times during the mash to mix that dead space water into the mash. You can add 8% or more to your efficiency by doing so.

Welcome back to the hobby.
 
Thanks for the response Kevin.


I have pretty much followed the same path on sparging as you. I did full-volume mashes on my last two batches. BeerSmith, I got 80% mash efficiency, but I do not believe it. I'm not convinced that I got the various volumes correct and expect that my actual efficiency was lower. I just created a hardware profile for my equipment measuring the various volumes it asked for. Hopefully that will help with my accuracy.


I mash out to make the sugars less viscous so they are easy to get out of the grains but I have read that this actually makes an insignificant difference. Old habits . . .


What would the issue be pitching on the full yeast cake from the previous batch? I'm hesitant to muck with it for sanitation reasons.


I feel like I get a pretty good boil with the lid on. I run it on the full 1800 watts until I get to a boil and then roll it back 1000 watts which gives a nice rolling boil with the lid on. Anything higher than that and it will boil over. Without the lid on though, it is pretty paltry.

As a point of potential interest though, when I was brewing 20 years ago I was living in an apartment and brewing outside wasn't really an option so I created an all-electric brewing system. I purchased 3, 1500-watt hot water heater elements and used them to create a plastic hot liquor tank and boiler. A single element in the HLT and the other two in the boiler. Ultimately a pretty nice system once you were able to find 3 outlets on separate circuits so you could run it. I still use the HLT today. Well, I did, but not now that I'm doing full-volume mashes.


I have always used the secondary more for clearing the beer more than anything. My old process was to use a ½ inch stainless steel racking cane with no tip for transfers. This would bring some trub along with it but a minimal amount and also only left about a pint of liquid behind. So, racking from the boiler to the primary to the secondary to the bottling bucket would result in a clear beer with very little loss of volume. I haven't been using the racking cane lately, opting for the valve on the fermenter. It's much easier, but I'm not a fan of the 2.5 liters of liquid that remains in the fermenter with this method.


I completely agree with the larger, more powerful system, but I'm not sure I would want to make that financial commitment at this point. I think fermentation temperature control should come before that. Currently working on that.
 
Using the full yeast cake risks over pitching. If you under pitch you stress the yeast as too few of them are trying to do too much work. When you pitch the correct amount of yeast they do their job comfortably and are producing (unintentionally but beneficial to us) compounds that result in flavors we find appealing. For over pitching I will defer to Chris White of White Labs who says: If the beer is overpitched, yeast do not grow though a complete growth cycle. This results in few new yeast cells, which makes for unhealthy yeast and low viability by the end of fermentation.

Whether or not you use a secondary vessel is up to you. If you have a process that minimizes or eliminates oxygen ingress it will be fine. In general however the more racking steps you use after fermentation is complete the more risk there is for oxidation. Many brewers who bottle these days do so direct from the primary fermenter.

As for equipment I'm not trying to sell you anything but the Anvil Foundry 10.5 can be had for under $500.00 and can be switched between 120v and 240v with the flip of a toggle.
 
Thanks Kevin. This is all good information and points I will keep in mind as I continue to dial in my new(ish) system and processes. I have had my eye on some of the Anvil equipment for a bit so that might be in the future but probably not unless my current system fails at some point or I have a serious uptick in how much I brew.

What is your take on hop spiders? I have never used one and prefer to just pitch the hops directly into the boil and let them settle out. Now that I have a system with a pump, though, they sometimes clog the pump, so I have been considering a hop spider. They appear to affect extraction negatively and are one more thing to clean so I'm somewhat reluctant.

-pat
 
I have never been able to achieve the nice cone shape of hops in the kettle by whirlpooling so I use the hop spider nearly every brew. Unless I am using a lot of hops then I use a muslin bag. I do add extra when using the spider to account for lower utilization. As for cleaning I just dump them out, rinse with a hose and put it in the dishwasher.
 
I have seen the mythical hop cone and even created many myself, but that was back in the day of the 3000-watt boils. As you pointed out, 1800 watts doesn't seem to create the same level of break. That shouldn't really affect the hops, but the empirical evidence seems to say otherwise. The composite "stuff" left at the bottom of the pot after the boil is much lighter, fluffier, and less likely to settle than it used to be for me.

For now, I'm just trying different things with each batch. I used to boil, whirlpool, and then, using my ½ inch stainless racking can with no tip, be able to empty the boiler, leaving only about ½ inch of wort with minimal trub being transferred. Now the trub refuses to behave and just spreads out evenly at the bottom of the pot.
 
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