Vienna...ale?

[jakeslouw Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close jakeslouw]

I'm sure it can work, but there is no need to stir it every 5min tho

A stir at 30min into mash should be enough.

How are you handling a mash-out? or are you just gonna add some boiled water at the end just before transferring to the pot?

commercial mash tuns have paddles that stir continuously

I stir every 20 minutes at least.

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

commercial mash tuns have paddles that stir continuously

I stir every 20 minutes at least.

I've seem those paddles yes

...but, I've tried them all ... stir regularly | stir every 20min | stir once at 30min | dont stir at all .... and there really is no improvement in the results on my homebrew scale, so these days i cover up and only stir at the end of mash before mash-out

[jannieverjaar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close jannieverjaar]

Everyone is talking about mash out. But from my research it's an unnecessary step. Care to elaborate on why it's part of your processes?

Ps. Sorry for the redirect Toxyc

Sent from my SM-A750F using Tapatalk

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

Ps. Sorry for the redirect Toxyc

Not at all. Go nuts. I enjoy reading these discussions.

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

Everyone is talking about mash out. But from my research it's an unnecessary step. Care to elaborate on why it's part of your processes?

Ps. Sorry for the redirect Toxyc

Sent from my SM-A750F using Tapatalk

I only do it cause that's what every homebrewer i follow on youtube did back in the day when I was studying all grain brewing
... and yes, I've also heard its actually an unnecessary step, but my understanding about it is that you want to increase your mash temp by ±10ºC just to assist the sweet wort not sticking to the grain as you separate the two, especially with Full-Volume BIAB where you will not be rinsing the grain.

I actually dont rest my mash at a mash-out temp ... I heat from say 65 up to 75 while circulating and once i hit 75 I pull the bag

[Harhm Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Harhm]

No need for a mash out, been there done that, it makes no difference. It does not loosens sugars or increases efficiency and also does not stop the enzyme activity.

Adding hot water as a mash out only dilutes the wort i.m.o. a mash out also does not stop enzymes activity/conversion as the enzymes has denatured any way and is not doing any noticeable conversion of sugars at 60 min anymore.

You are planning to do 2 half steps to get to the same result. Mash in a cooler with a manifold and drain into pot or just do a BIAB in the pot easy as that no need to do partial steps of both.

Grain displaces/add about 1 litre of water per kg in the mash volume and also absorbs about 1 litre per kg. I regularly get 0.9 litre per kg absorption, results will vary a little depending how mush you like to squeeze the bag.

Mark your pot or your spoon with 1 litre marks from 10 to 20 litre so that you know what you are working with.

I would start with 13.5 litre water + 2.5 litre absorption = 16 litre strike water in pot +- 2or3 C higher than your target mash temp. Adding the grains will drop the temp by at least 2C.
Add the 2.5 kg grains that will increase the full volume to = 18.5 litre full mash volume.
Stir and insulate with blanket or sleeping bag wait 30 min, stir and close again for next 30 min. Pull the bag and drain bag into the pot on a grid (oven rack) You now will have 13.5 litres of wort . You should boil off around 22% max with your pot and a vigorous boil and end with 13.5 - 3 L boil off and about 0.5 shrinkage = 10 liter into the fermenter -1 L trub = 9 litre bottled beer

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

Dammit, wrote a reply then lost connection to the interwebs.. So lets try again what I remember I said...


Just be careful that if you have a shallow wort+grain in a big (read largely empty) cooler box and you are opening and closing and stirring back and forth, that it doesnt lose temperature too quickly. You may have more space to stir around in the big coolerbox but the mash will still be the same thickness and not really be much different.

Another option as well: If you are using the pot I think you are, it will probably fit into your oven: you can turn oven on to around or just below your target mash temp and let it stabilise there for some period (ie heat up the walls and insulation uniformly)....heat up strike water in the pot on the oven to strike temperature, then add grains..... heat/cool to target temp if required..... put in oven throughout the mash. In the warm and insulated environment your mash will lose very little temp. [Turn off the oven a few minutes before you put the pot in]


Johan, I asked that same question some time ago, and what I took away from that was its main benefit on a homebrew scale is to decrease viscosity/ increase wort extraction, especially with BIAB. So I still do it to some extent, for only that reason.

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

Another option as well: If you are using the pot I think you are, it will probably fit into your oven: you can turn oven on to around or just below your target mash temp and let it stabilise there for some period

Good plan. I didn't want to mash in the pot because the thin walls lose temp too quick and I want to avoid having to heat it up on gas all the time, but this is a great idea. I'll have to check if it fits the oven, but I think it just might. Thanks man!

[Harhm Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Harhm]

Use the volume and the space in the cooler box to get a good mash efficiency.
.

Mash efficiency are mostly influenced by grain crush and the enzyme environment to ensure effective conversion of sugars (temperature and pH) work on that to get better efficiency, getting the wort out of the grains is the easy part.

Good plan putting it in the oven, especially in winter when the mash temp can drop very quickly if you don't keep a close eye on it

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

Alright. So a few things went wrong this weekend, but overall I got DAMN good smelling and tasting wort, so I'm not too bummed. So, what did I do? Well, I brewed with the above grains, but I swapped out the hops for Admiral. I couldn't find a proper flavour profile for Southern Promise and I had an open packet of Admiral around, so I used that. More on that later. Process was simple, but man, did I struggle with the gas stovetop... I have a 2-plate gas burner, which we use in the home for cooking and whatnot, and it simply doesn't have the "oomph" I want. So I started brewing on Saturday afternoon, not too late, since it's a "small batch". Eish.

1. The stovetop took almost an hour to heat up the water to strike temp. I opted to go with a 15l water temp, because it was pretty cold in the house and I didn't want to get the water too cool too quick. It was good call. I pre-heated the oven and heated the water to 70°C. Added the grain bag and grains, and got a mash temp of 66°C after addition. Good temperature, albeit slightly lower than I was aiming. The 2.3kg of grains filled the pot almost completely to the top, so I had little room for error, but I didn't spill a drop getting the pot into the oven. Start timer. Stirred at 30min.

2. An hour later I removed the pot from the oven. Mash temp was 64°C, so I didn't lose a lot of heat. The oven trick works like a charm, but I'll have to tweak it. I lifted the bag and saw the water loss. It was a lot. So I squeezed that bag till I got most of the moisture out of the grains, and made up about another 500ml or so of wort. A little better. But that's OK, right, since I aimed for a neat OG!

3. But I didn't reach that OG. Not by a long shot. More on that later. Anyway, measured out 8g of Admiral, because that's the amount I want to get a nice bitterness on a ~14l batch, right? Right. Stovetop again. Full blast. Lid on to get temps up quicker. I just couldn't get it to a rolling boil. The wort was rolling around, but not a single bubble rose to the surface. I checked the temp and it stuck to around 90°C. I think because of the pot shape (short and fat) it simply evaporates too quick to properly boil. So I just added the hops in the hop bag and let it be.

4. "Boiled" like this for an hour. At this time my evaporation was quick hectic, so I figured I'll just add some more water to the pot after the boil to make up the volume. Right? Wrong. I took a wort sample, cooled it down rapidly and saw my heart-sinking gravity result - 1.032. A LOT less than I expected, so I definitely won't be watering down the wort. To boot, the wort volume in the pot looked worryingly low. Nothing to do though, so I stuffed the pot in the bathtub and filled around it with cold water.

5. About 30 mins later the wort is nice and cool (around 22°C), so I pour into the fermenter. 11l of wort. I aimed for 12l minimum, and wanted 14~15 preferably, but alas. I play with my calculators and I see I have an efficiency of around 50%. That's terrible.

6. I taste the wort. Sweet, yes, and pretty bitter. Suddenly having 30% less volume the Admiral stands out. Not much of the citrus flavour of the Admiral, but pretty good bittering. Could have gone with 6g or so instead, had I known the volume would be this low, but alas. It's what I have now.

So, what did I learn? A few things. First, I need a bigger, proper gas burner. This stovetop isn't working. Second, I need to plan my mash better. I read up that Vienna is SLIGHTLY toasted, meaning the enzymes are a bit less effective. To boot, mashing with a too watery mash affects how the enzymes work, so that might have been why I got such bad efficiency. Lessons learnt.

Finally though, I have to add, I pitched the yeast at around 22°C onto the wort (the upper end of that Lager yeast), and it slowly dropped to 16°C during the night. It's in the coldest room in the house, and it sticks to around 16°C during the day now. This morning I had healthy, steady, slow bubbles in the airlock and that room smells AMAZING. Smells like fresh cookies and biscuits and rusks with nuts. I simply can't wait for this one, even if it'll be a low-ABV beer. I'm estimating around 2.5% ABV at the end, which isn't too bad, but it is lower than I wanted.

Let's see how it turns out!

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

Lesson learnt as they say

Nonetheless, you could always boil with the lid partially covering the pot ... it help a lot to keep a boil going and as long as there's a gap for steam to get out, you should be fine.

Secondly, always try to keep some DME at hand for situations like these ... it's easy to correct the SG by adding a little DME to the pot afterwards

Something I have save for this:

Compensate lost OG with Light DME

1 pound (± 450 g) of DME contribute 45 point pounds per gallon ( ± 4L)
(Gravity points are the last two digits of a gravity reading)

Example:
5 gallons (± 19L) of wort at 1.040 and you wanted it at 1.055.
55-40 = 15 points short/gallon
15 points X 5 Gallons (± 19L) = 75 points need to be added.
75/45 = 1.67 lbs (± 760g) of DME to hit the proper gravity

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

Lesson learnt as they say

Nonetheless, you could always boil with the lid partially covering the pot ... it help a lot to keep a boil going and as long as there's a gap for steam to get out, you should be fine.

Secondly, always try to keep some DME at hand for situations like these ... it's easy to correct the SG by adding a little DME to the pot afterwards

Something I have save for this:

Yeah I considered the DME thing, but since I want this to really shine with the Vienna I decided against it. I'll rather just use more grains next time. Like double the amount. The mash was way within the comfortable limits with no lumps or clumps, so it's really just learning to read it properly. The grain was DAMN cheap and I'm harvesting this yeast, so it should be REALLY easy and cheap to re-do this recipe properly. I think the grains was like R60 in total, and if I harvest the yeast like I plan I should be able to relatively easily do 2~3 more batches with that same yeast, so it's a win-win for me.

EDIT: To end off, I think my original post sounds a little unhappy. That's definitely not the case. I'm SUPER excited about this brew. I'll be lagering a mini keg in the fridge for around 6 weeks with this beer in it, so let's see how it goes...

[Harhm Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Harhm]

Well done on your all grain brew. Yes the OG is a bit low but its not a disaster at the very least you will have a firmly bittered Lite Vienna lager.

We all started with low efficiency and developed a accurate equipment profile over a few brews. With good notes of all the volumes in the process its very easy to get to a reliable equipment profile in no time.

Just a side note -The diastatic power of Vienna and Pale malt are very much he same and at close to 50% of the total grain the Vienna malt is not the reason for your low efficiency, the same goes for mash thickness. Have a serious look at your mash pH and grain crush to improve your efficiency

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

Yea I think you are probably going to have a very nice light sessionable beer there. See it as a crossover from what you were trying with your first AG!

Remember, its your first use of new equipment and processes, so you didnt know what efficiency values to use in your calcs. Down the line, this setup may be ideal for using a 30 min boil like many are doing these days. [With wide/ low pot you are probably boiling off the volatiles quicker as well anyway]

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

Well done on your all grain brew. Yes the OG is a bit low but its not a disaster at the very least you will have a firmly bittered Lite Vienna lager.

We all started with low efficiency and developed a accurate equipment profile over a few brews. With good notes of all the volumes in the process its very easy to get to a reliable equipment profile in no time.

Just a side note -The diastatic power of Vienna and Pale malt are very much he same and at close to 50% of the total grain is not the reason for your low efficiency. The same goes for mash thickness, have a serious look at your mash pH

Yeah I used normal tap water, as with my previous brew. The previous one came out on target. This one didn't. I checked on water profiles in my area and it seems PTA's tap water is around 8.5 on the pH scale. That seems a lot more alkaline than what is required for a good mash. Well, another thing learned today. Guess I'll have to get some pH strips to test my water and mash going forward. At least till I can tune in those numbers.