I currently have a German Blonde kit from NB that is in it’s 2nd week of fermentation. It’s in my chest freezer set at 70 degrees. I would like to brew an American Wheat today. The yeast temps show 60-75 degrees.
Would it affect the end result much if I brew the Am Wheat today and ferment at 70 degrees vs 60 or so? Or should I just wait until next weekend when I bottle the Blonde?
The German blonde is far enough along that you can take it out of the fridge (or leave it in ) and lower the temp to whatever you want and start fermenting the new kit. Word of caution: Wheat beer fermenting will most undoubtedly blow off so be prepared with a blow off tube in place of your airlock.
Thank you sir.
instead of starting a new thread, I’ll just add to this one.
Another newbie question.
I’m having some difficulty in understanding brewhouse efficiency. I’ve read about it and seen the manual calculations. I also looked at the calculators available on various sites, in particular brewers friend, http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/.
The calculator asks for wort volume. Is that pre-boil amount or some other amount? It also asks for gravity measurement. I assume that’s the measurement taken pre-boil or the measurement taken before pitching the yeast.
Here’s a few other questions:
What would be the average for the following considering the BIAB method:
2 gallon kettle used for a 1 gallon recipe:
trub per gallon
boil off rate
grain absorbtion
I initially set trub to be .25 / boil off to be 1 gallon per hour/ grain absorption at .045.
I was reading a post and it got me thinking that I would not boil off 1 gallon in a 60 minute boil when only doing a 1 gallon batch. The trub may be good at .25 and not sure about the absorption.
I’m considering changing the boil off rate to .25 or .50 gallon per hour, which I think will be plenty.
I know there are several factors that go into determining this info but just looking for an average.
I suppose I would have to do a test on the boil off by boiling 1 gallon of water and 3 gallons of water for 60 minutes and determine what the boil off would be. Didn’t want to go through that so I figured someone would know from past experience.
There is a long running argument all over the web about brewhouse efficiency.
Some people call the efficiency of the mash extraction brewhouse efficiency, while others say it’s the efficiency measured at the end of the line.
My two cents: I only care about my mash efficiency and I’ll explain why.
A little background to set up a discussion:
Lets assume we have a very simple recipe with 10 pounds of 2-row. We have a maximum of 380 gravity points we can extract from this if we could somehow extract at 100% efficiency.
In order to calculate my recipes, all I really need to know is my mash efficiency. If I know it’s 70%, then I’ll extract 266 points. (380 * 0.70)
Now all my recipes will end up having a different pre-fermentation wort volume, mostly depending on how many hops are in the boil. A big IPA is going to suck up a lot of wort in the hops, while an American Wheat will have far fewer hops. I have my spreadsheet calculate all of that, so for example, the IPA might have a pre-fermentation volume of 6.50 gallons while the wheat is 5.5 gallons. In both cases we have 5.25 gallons going to the fermentation vessel.
However, the IPA would have a starting gravity of 1.041 (41 points) while the wheat would have a starting gravity of 1.048 (48 points). That is because we lost that extra gallon of wort with its precious gravity points to all the hop absorption. (Obviously if we were going to actually brew this IPA we would add more grain.)
Calculations for the gravity above:
266/6.5 for the IPA
266/5.5 for the Wheat
If we were to measure our efficiency at the fermenter it doesn’t tell me much at all that can help us plan our next recipe.
IPA
(41 * 5.25) / 380 = 56% efficiency
Wheat
(48 * 5.25) / 380 = 66% efficiency
We have a drastically different efficiency for each beer primarily because of the quantity of hops.
So what I want to know to plan recipes is my mash efficiency (which some people call brewhouse efficiency) and then all the places I lose wort downstream of the mash, but not including evaporation, since we don’t lose gravity points to evaporation.
I lose wort in the following places (volume is depending on the recipe)
- Trub and kettle deadspace (this is fairly consistent)
- Boiled hops including hop stands/whirlpools, FWH, and strikeout hops
- Fermentation process (this is also consistent)
- Dry hopping (if you keg hop you can ignore this)
I will have a different amount of grains and a different amount of water up front to account for these losses, recipe dependent. Provided I know my mash efficiency and the places I lose wort I can figure this all out up front. (To a reasonable degree of accuracy. Still have to sometimes make adjustments on the fly of course.)
So in summary, I need to know my mash efficiency and all the places I lose wort post boil in order to calculate recipes. But actually understanding my efficiency at the end of the process (i.e. - points in the fermenter divided by possible points pre-extraction) is of limited value. Pro brewers probably need to know it because they need to be very cost conscious about losing gravity points to their system.
So with someone just starting out, do I really need to worry about efficiency? I want to be able to see where I’m at but it seems like a huge process. With so many people calculating their efficiency, there has to be an easy and quick way to calculate it.
I’ve looked at many calculators, one in particular is Brewers Friend. It asked for wort volume, gravity measurement and grain info.
If I am brewing a 1 gallon batch, would the wort volume be 1 gallon, which is what I would transfer to the fermentor or would it be the actual brewing volume? As for the gravity measurement, do I take a reading before pitching the yeast and then account for the temp or do i take a measurement pre-boil?
Just trying to figure it out so i know i am on the right track.
The more I read about efficiency the more confused I seem to get. Guess it is part of the learning process.
IMO – If you want the freedom to create your own recipes, then you want to understand your mash efficiency.
Even other people’s recipes probably won’t come out at the right numbers without being tweaked for your system and process.
But for your first few batches, you can wing it. Who cares if you’re off a few gravity points here and a few IBUs there? There are plenty of folks who have been brewing for a long time that never advance beyond the wing it stage.
But based on your questions you are already making good headway into untangling all this stuff. Have you read any beginner level books yet?
If I was you, here is what I would want to know.
-
What mash efficiency can you expect for BIAB? (I think people are saying about 70% right?)
-
What volume do you plan to boil the wort down to? (Not your volume to the fermenter, but your volume before leaving hops, trub, etc. behind.)
From here you can plan recipes in a spreadsheet, or with numerous online calculators like the ones you have been playing with.
For what it’s worth, I have been brewing for about a year and have just started dialing in my efficiency. I have been winging it a bit and still had decent results. There are a lot of other things to worry about first. Your efficiency will settle when you get your process down. You’ll also need to consider mash pH and other things that you probably haven’t even looked at yet.
My advice would be to get your BIAB process down and then start to narrow down on efficiency for when you build your own recipes.
+1 to mash pH. Often overlooked in the brewing process.
[quote=“JohnnyB”]IMO – If you want the freedom to create your own recipes, then you want to understand your mash efficiency.
Even other people’s recipes probably won’t come out at the right numbers without being tweaked for your system and process.
But for your first few batches, you can wing it. Who cares if you’re off a few gravity points here and a few IBUs there? There are plenty of folks who have been brewing for a long time that never advance beyond the wing it stage.
But based on your questions you are already making good headway into untangling all this stuff. Have you read any beginner level books yet?
If I was you, here is what I would want to know.
-
What mash efficiency can you expect for BIAB? (I think people are saying about 70% right?)
-
What volume do you plan to boil the wort down to? (Not your volume to the fermenter, but your volume before leaving hops, trub, etc. behind.)
From here you can plan recipes in a spreadsheet, or with numerous online calculators like the ones you have been playing with.[/quote]
Efficiency wise, I am aiming for 70% but for the first couple batches I would be happy with 65%.
As for volume, not sure yet but I played around with a calculator from priceless brew in a bag. It’s a bit better than the other one I used to determine total water, strike temp, etc. So I’ll go ahead and follow that info for my first BIAB try.
Using this calculator, I used the following:
Boil off rate: .35
Trub loss from kettle: .25
Trub loss from fermentor: .10
Grain Absorption: .045
Hop Absorption: .0365
The calculator asks for kettle width and it provides how high in inches the water/wort should be in the pot at each stage.
I’m sure once I get into the process and get a few brews under my belt, efficiency will make more sense.
Thanks for the explanations. It was very helpful. I do appreciate your help.
[quote=“Templar”]For what it’s worth, I have been brewing for about a year and have just started dialing in my efficiency. I have been winging it a bit and still had decent results. There are a lot of other things to worry about first. Your efficiency will settle when you get your process down. You’ll also need to consider mash pH and other things that you probably haven’t even looked at yet.
My advice would be to get your BIAB process down and then start to narrow down on efficiency for when you build your own recipes.[/quote]
I’ve “winged” things before so this will be nothing new. Just want to get the process down but also want to be close to the efficiency I want but I guess that’s really not important in the beginning.
I know at some point i will need to get a ph meter but figured I can put that off until year end.
Thank you for the info you provided on this thread as well as others I started. I appreciate your help.
Here’s another question. I posted in this thread where the LBHS put together a 1 gallon batch for a SNPA clone. After posting here, it was determined the amount of grain exceeds 1 gallon and is more like 1.4 gallons.
With that said, I can brew this but I only have 1 one gallon carboy available. Since this batch will exceed that, could I just fill the carboy up to 1 gallon and discharge the rest without any affects on the final product?
The only other option I have is to try and get an icing bucket from the grocery store or go to either new orleans or baton rouge and get a 3 gallon carboy. Both shops are about an hour away.
Really dont want to make the trip so I’m leaning towards getting the icing bucket and clean/sanitize it good then use that as a fermentation bucket.
Any thoughts on this?
You probably just wanna get a bucket and ferment in that. Don’t just get any old bucket though, get a good food grade white bucket. Those buckets from Lowe’s or Home Depot are no good for fermenting.
The buckets from the bakery dept at the grocery stores are food grade. WIll go by there tomorrow and see if I can get one.
