Brewing the Cheeky Peak Juice Bomb Hazy IPA marks a number of firsts in my brewing journey. This is the first brew where I'll be making adjustments to water (using brewing salts such as calcium sulphate, magnesium sulphate and calcium chloride). It's also the first brew where I'll be adding whirlpool hops - also known as a hop stand. I'm also deciding to not use the top screen to allow me to easily stir the grain during the mash to try and improve efficiency, and it's also my first time using Lallemand New England East Coast yeast. Here's how it all went.
Water Adjustments
Setting up for brew day - I've got my mash water in the Brewzilla heating up in the garage - and my sparge water in a separate pot on the stove, also heating up to the target sparge temperature of 75C. First thing to do is open my packets of brewing salts and measure the recommended amounts for the mash and sparge water and add them in. The set of eBay scientific scales that measure 0.01g seemed to do the trick, although I must admit I haven't tested them with an exact known weight to confirm their accuracy.
For my first attempt at adjusting water, I'm keeping it simple and only using 3 ingredients - calcium sulphate, magnesium sulphate and calcium chloride. Super easy to do after entering all the values from my water report in the Brewfather app!
I also added half a camden tablet to the mash water and half a tablet to the sparge water to remove chlorine/chloramines from the water.
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| First step - water adjustments |
Mashing In
Total grain bill is just over 5.5kg including 1.6kg of wheat and oats. Definitely one of the best parts of any brew day is the smell when adding the grains and this was no exception. Amazing. Seemed to take an eternity to add all the grain - having a second person to stir while slowly pouring the grain in makes it so much easier though. Once all the grain is added, give it a good stir to make sure there's no dough balls then let it rest for 10 minutes or so to settle before starting the pump to recirculate.
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| Stirring the mash |
The design of the Brewzilla means that there is a significant discrepancy between the temperature that is displayed on the unit and the actual temperature of the mash. I use a digital thermometer in the top of the mash to measure the temperature and then adjust the Brewzilla accordingly. For this brew, my Brewzilla temp was set at 73C in order to hit my mash temperature of 66C - well - within half a degree at least.
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| Brewzilla set to 73C |
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| Mash is close to target temp of 66C when measured at the top with Brewzilla set to 73C |
After the 10 minute rest, fire up the pump and get that mash recirculating. Adjust the flow speed in order to try and maintain a steady water level in relation to the overflow pipe. I stopped the pump a couple of times through the mash to give the grain a good stir. I also decided to try not using the top screen for this brew in order to make this process quicker/easier - removing the top screen to stir the mash would otherwise be tricky - didn't fancy sticking my hands in 65C water to fish it out!
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| Recirculating the mash |
Sparging
After the 60 minute mash had completed, the malt pipe was lifted and sparge water was added. With all the wheat and oats in the grain I was a little nervous about a stuck sparge, but thankfully the water drained and flowed through without any problems at all. Took about 10 minutes in total, and the estimated sparge water volume from Brewfather was pretty much spot on. Got my 30L pre-boil volume so now we're ready to ramp up to a boil.
The Boil
I always set the temperature to HH as soon as I lift out the malt pipe for sparging in order to get a head start on ramping up to boil temperature. For whatever reason it seemed to take longer than usual to reach a boil - perhaps the cooler ambient temperature outside.
Another thing I like to do while waiting to reach boiling temperature is run the recirculation arm through the hop spider. This helps to filter out any grain that escaped the malt pipe during the mash.
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| Pro tip - run the recirculation arm through the hop spider to filter out any grain while waiting to reach boiling temperature |
We eventually reached a nice rolling boil and some constant stirring for the first few minutes to avoid the dreaded boilover and dreaded cleanup associated with it. This recipe only calls for a 60 minute hop addition which was added to the hop spider.
With 10 minutes left in the boil the provided yeast nutrient was added, and then with 5 minutes left the whirlpool arm attachment was added as well as the immersion chiller to give them a few minutes in the boil to sterilise them.
Whirlpool/Hop Stand
This was my first attempt at adding whirlpool hops - also known as a hop stand. For those who aren't familiar this involves dropping the temperature of the wort after the boil to 80C and then adding hops for flavour/aroma and letting them steep at this temperature for 20 minutes. The idea being that the lower temperature minimises the bitterness extracted from the hops, but still releases a lot of the flavour and aroma from the hops.
At the end of the boil I shut off the heating elements on the Brewzilla and then began running water through the immersion chiller. I had my trusty thermometer measuring the temperature of the wort, and within a minute or two the temperature had already dropped from 100 to just over 80 degrees. At this point I shutoff the water flowing through the chiller, however the temperature kept dropping. It went as low as 73C - not a complete disaster but certainly lower than my target of 80. I adjusted the temperature of the Brewzilla and switched the large heating element back on. Added the whirlpool hops anyway and switched on the pump with the whirlpool arm attached.
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| Brewzilla with whirlpool arm and immersion chiller |
Took about 5-10 minutes before the target temperature of 80C was reached again - so I'll remember next time to switch off the water through the immersion chiller as soon as the temperature drops below 90.
Chilling and Transfer
Once the whirlpool/hop stand was completed, I turned on the water through the immersion chiller again to get the wort temperature down to pitching/transfer temperature. It was a cold morning so I think the colder temperature of the tap water helped to cool it down faster than on previous brews which was nice. I wait until the temperature on the Brewzilla reads 28C before transferring to the fermenter.
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| Holding the transfer hose high above the fermenter to promote splashing and oxygenation of the wort prior to pitching yeast |
As depicted in the picture above, when transferring from the Brewzilla to the fermenter (Fermzilla), I like to hold the hose high above the opening of the fermenter to allow the wort to fall in and cause splashing to help promote oxygen intake of the wort.
And now for the original gravity (OG) reading - the recipe was expecting an OG of 1.053 - actually managed to get 1.049 so still a few points what was expected, but I try not to worry too much about not hitting all my numbers. Even with this OG it will still be a 5% beer with plenty of body and flavour.
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| OG reading of 1.049 - a few points below target |
Pitching Yeast
This is my first batch using Lallemand's New England East Coast Ale yeast strain. I've never had an issue with simply sprinkling dry yeast over the top of the wort and leaving it to do it's thing so that's exactly what I did with this batch
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| Lallemand New England East Coast Ale dry yeast sprinkled over the wort |
Yeast pitched and the fermenter is in the dedicated brew fridge with inkbird controller attached - and now the waiting game begins!
After 48 hours I still hadn't seen any signs of fermentation starting - except for a few very small bubbles on the surface of the wort. The Lallemand website states that this yeast is known as a slow starter and delays of 24-36 hours are normal/expected. I think another part of my problem was the temperature had dropped from my pitching temperature of 21 degrees, down to about 15.4 - right at the lower range of the recommended temperature for the yeast which could also increase the lag time. I had the fermenter in my dedicated brew fridge (switched off), but the cold winter nights were obviously having an impact. So I moved the fermenter inside to warm it up a bit for a few hours - and was happy to see some solid signs of fermentation the next morning - what a relief!
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| Some healthy signs of fermentation ~72 hours after pitching yeast |
4 days after pitching yeast there was a healthy krausen and plenty of activity - and the temperature has been steadily rising from 16 up to 18 degrees.
Dry Hopping
Dry hopping in the Fermzilla is still an art I'm yet to perfect. One of the draw backs of fermenting under pressure, is that the pressure needs to be released from the fermenter before it can be opened (at least with the all-rounder model that I have). The problem with this is that when the pressure is released, it can cause the krausen to rapidly expand - which is what happened to me, during both dry hops with this beer.
The first dry hop at high krausen wasn't so bad, and I managed to vent all the pressure from the fermenter without any krausen spilling out the lid.
The second dry hop, after fermentation had finished, was different, and I ended up with a 'krausen overflow' after the pressure release (even after releasing the pressure slowly).
I'll be trying different methods on future brews to try and find a more reliable method of dry hopping and releasing the pressure without causing issues such as this in the future.
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