Brew Day Notes

• Heating mash water from 13 ℃ mains temperature to 66 ℃ strike temperature takes same amount of time as it takes to make and eat 2 slices of toast. Impressive. Add chemicals once it’s there.

• 10:53 Start dough-in
• 11:03 Dough-in finished, start 20 minute timer for rest before mash proper. Only the slightest touch was needed to get all grains covered in water. May as well pull out the aeration kit since that’s behind the MLT and will be difficult to get to later.
• 11:22 mash timer started, give it a stir and start gentle recirculating through centre pipe + around malt pipe. Mash feels much looser than last brew, really easy to stir and no lumps. Little bit of foam though – due to chemical additions? Acidulated malt? No idea. Core temp 67.4 ℃ – looks like setting the thermostat at 68 in anticipation of insulation wasn’t necessary – decreasing to 66.
• Stir after 10 minutes, still light with no tight spots. I’m playing around with different pump speeds and trying to maintain a little fan of sparge water from the centre pipe without letting the level drop too low outside the malt pipe. All good fun. Got the lid on between stirs in order to make cleaning up easier – wort splashes are sticky and travel further than you’d think!

• 35 minutes to go. Not much happening, just stirring once every 5 – 10 minutes, trying to keep the level outside the malt pipe within 2 inches of the inside, mostly succeeding. Only sucked in air briefly once when it got too low, good job I’ve the dip tube higher than the elements. Each time a stir is coming up because the level gets too low I notice that the clarity outside the malt pipe is great, much better than at any other point. I’m thinking of performing a mash-out before sparging to see if I can get the clarity back and raise temperature a little ahead of the boil. Who knows, if the viscosity increases I may even have a smoother sparge but, then again, I could end up compacting the grain bed to a point where it will be more difficult to get sparge water through.
• 3 minutes to go, one last stir before increasing temperature to 77 ℃ and mash-out. Started to suck air a moment ago, now there’s foam on the wort. Hope it’s due to the air and not something more sinister.
• 12:53: mash timer up, setting temperature to 77 ℃. Might take a while to get there as I’m in Mash heater mode and the elements are limited to (I think) 50% to stop scorching.
• Bit more air being sucked now and then, flow adjusted so it’s barely going through the malt pipe in order to keep the dip tube fed. Outside level obviously low, but also clear. The bit of wort that is going onto the grain bed has particles which I know wont make it out again, but it’s also going to compact the grain ahead of sparging. Hmmm …
• 13:03: Pump temperature 72.1 ℃, mash at 70.4 ℃. There’s now just a dribble going through the grain bed in order to stop the dip tube sucking air. At least the outside wort is clear!
• Sparge water standing by at 77.5 ℃, raising the malt pipe prior to sparging.
• Bit of vorlauf to wet the grain bed while I get a wort sample from on top since I can’t get the baster down the side.
• Sparge started 13:12, only brief burst from pump then wait while inch on top of grain bed recedes.
• Much more confident about this sparge than the last one. Water on top of grain bed is clear, drains just fine. Discover it is possible to get a fan with pump around 50% and HLT tap open, nearly get face burnt off.
• 13:18: sparge water out. I won’t tilt the HLT to get the last drops since it was calibrated with dead space. Damn, that went fast again, six minutes!! And to think I’m always worried about a stuck sparge. Leaving it to drip for a while, might as well start recirculating the wort (without using the centre pipe) and get the heaters back on while I measure the pre-sparge / post-mash sample: 1.047 @ 45.6 ℃ which converts to 1.056.
• According to internal scale I’m a touch below 28 litres, maybe 27.75, malt pipe removed. Post-sparge sample was taken, waiting for it to chill before attempting a reading. Scared as hell my glass baster would shatter as I touched 77 ℃ wort. All good. Heater back in auto mode, climbing to 90 ℃ with pump whirlpooling at 30% while I fit the steam hat and condenser.
• Limit of 90 ℃ in Auto mode reached after 12 minutes from 77 ℃, some slight thin white foam but no boil yet. Switching to manual, giving it 100%.
• 13:56: 100 ℃ indicated, some signs of boiling but you wouldn’t call it ‘rolling’ just yet. Pump to 25%, condenser switched on, timer started.
• 14:00: Now it’s a rolling boil! Scaling power back down to 85%, see if it maintains. IIRC the Brewfather default equipment profile contained a comment about boil-off having been measured at 70%, so we’ll see if we can get down to that and still maintain a boil.
• 14:10: Still boiling as it was 10 minutes ago, reducing power to 75%.
• 14:20: Still boiling perfectly well – not quite as ferociously but boiling, indicated 100 ℃. Reducing to 70%.
• 14:30: 60 minute boil additions are in, still boiling well but the output from the condenser is cooler which means there’s less steam being produced, so less boil-off. Looks like I’m at about 26.5 litres on the internal scale, for what that’s worth. Fermenter target volume is 25 litres and IIRC my hardware profile has 2.4 litres trub / chiller loss, so this should be interesting. Then again, the internal scale didn’t align with my measured values too closely when I updated the standard hardware profile, so I’m not going to worry too much about it now.
• Pre-boil gravity 1.038 @ 23.5 ℃, converts to 1.039. Brewfather thought I was going to get 1.033 so I’m 6 points ahead – nice!
• 15:12: Added my 15 minute boil addition, 1/3rd tablet Protafloc.
• Started circulating through chiller in order to sanitise, initially with l/h valves to 50% chiller, 50% short re-circ, then 100% chiller once the bubbles had gone. Heaters back to 100%.
• Temperature (pump) briefly dipped to 96.5 ℃ but climbing slowly. Pump at 15% since we just want to sanitise the chiller and not chill the wort just yet.
• Heaters back down to 75% as a rolling boil is achieved moments later.
• With the recirc / transfer pipe temporarily out of use while I sanitise the chiller I take the opportunity to fit my aeration setup to the upper l/h valve.

• 15:28: heaters off, time for the 0 minute boil additions. Steam hat off too, and wow, it looks like we’re down to 23 litres if the internal markings can be believed. I do hope not, was aiming for 25!
• Whirlpool started 15:32, tank temperature 96.6 ℃. I don’t know how long to leave 0 minute boil additions, but the name suggests that there’s no boiling to be done once they’re in. But I’m still expecting some isomerisation of hop oils since we’re above 77 ℃. Not sure what to do. Let’s give it 5 minutes and then start chilling.
• 15:39: starting chill. We’re at 89.4 and there’s still quite some steam coming off.
• 15:53: return temperature is down to 23.2, tank 34.9. Time to start filling the Fermzilla with aerated wort.

• Holy crap! I’ve just 19 litres but 1.048 OG when I should be looking at 1.037. That means I will end up with 5% ABV!
• Adding 3 litres of Ashbeck brings it to 1.042 (4.5% ABV) so I decide to go the whole hog and tip in the remaining 2 litres, making for a total of 5 litres fermenter top-up and 1.038 OG.
• 16:35: Pitched both packs WLP001, deployed Tilt, retire to safe distance.
• Clean-up finished 18:14. Big shout out to the Hozelock / TC34 adapter that came with the steam condenser and allows you to hook a standard hosepipe connector up to any 34mm Tri-clamp port. When I’m not using it to drive the condenser’s cold water jet during boil it comes in very handy for flushing out the chiller, pump, and all plumbing with clean water.