Sunday I brewed my first Batch, an all-grain Wee heavy.
I started looking into the subject since the beginning of the year and decided that Wee heavy would be a good Challenge.
Grain Bill:
6.6lb Munich malt type 2
6.6lb Pale Ale
2.2lb Crystal malt
2.2lb Vienna Malt
1lb Biscuit Malt
0.2lb special B Malt
for a 5.3gallon Batch.
Efficiency wasn’t so great, got stuck at 1080 (estimated was 1112) and bumped it to 1102 with 1lb molasses.
pitched the whole thing at 77F with 2 packets of nottinhgam ale dry yeast.
it is now sitting in a 10gal bucket with a near the bottom and an airlock bubbling every 2min or so.
One caveat though: I’m in Brasil, in a place where temperature ranges from 65F(at night) and 95F. I placed my bucket in a cellar where average temp is around 77F.
And i have no control over temperature.
Isee people here saying I should not rack to secondary, taking 4 weeks in primary and such… but at my temperature range, won’t there be autolysis?
Autolysis seems to be an issue with larger brewerys where there are 1000’s of gallons of beer sitting on the yeast. For us with 5-10 gallons, not so much. I would agree to leave it alone for 4-6 weeks.
Looks to me your recipe was based on a 92% efficiency. Very difficult to reach. Even for a “normal” beer in the 1.050 range.
[quote=“bohrier”]Efficiency wasn’t so great, got stuck at 1080 (estimated was 1112) and bumped it to 1102 with 1lb molasses.[/quote]Something’s off here - in a five-gallon batch, a lb of molasses would have added max 7 points to the OG, depending on type. For temp control under those conditions, a swamp cooler might be the way to go.
There are stick on thermometers available. Check your local pet stores/Walmart/Target/KMart. Used to tell the temp of a fish tank. Some may not be in the range you need, so keep an eye on that.
Otherwise, order a couple when you place your next order online.
I didnt cool the wort before reading the refractometer after boiling. My friend just told me his refractometer does not compensate for temperature. Assuming it was at 70C when I measured it (blowed it like hot food so it wouldnt break the thing), I did the math here.
it measured 28Brix at the time. Compensating temperature to 20C, it goes almost 34Brix, which translates to 1.135 SG
Today I measured my fermenting wort: 1.060
Now what? I’m thinking of pitching some WLP099 or WLP028 (bought both) to make it less sweet. It tastes good, but i think it tastes more like a barley wine at this stage.
today I have borrowed the same refractometer I used at the brewday. Tested it with different sugar water concentrations at different temperatures. The damn thing compensates the temperature, unlike my friend told me.
NOW the calculations to correct the alcohol deviation make sense:
initial brix was 28, 1.115 SG
current brix is 15.2, 1060 SG - Corrected for alcohol, 1.023 (was getting 1006 before)
which makes more sense and gives me a bit of hope.
