Birallee Beer & Brewing: Stone & Wood Pacific Ale Clone

This is our third attempt at trying to replicate this iconic beer, and we're hoping this attempt will be the closest and best one yet. Check out our previous post with the full recipe details that were apparently shared by an ex-Stone and Wood brewer.

Based on the grain bill, we needed approx 20L of strike/mash water in our 35L BrewZilla

Brewfather estimated we only needed around 9L of sparge water, but we always do a few extra litres anyway, usually around 12L as you can see below. Better to have too much than not enough, and it also makes measuring out brewing salt additions a bit easier rather than dealing with super small amounts

Our (milled) grain bag, ready to go

Prior to starting we measured out our brewing salts for our strike water - using calcium sulphate and calcium chloride

We then did the same thing for our sparge water as well

We also adjusted our sparge water pH to get it into the 5.2 - 5.6 range

We then added our malted grain to the mash and stirred everything well using our drill attachment mash stirrer

Grains thoroughly mixed in so we left the grain bed to settle for 10 minutes

While waiting we checked our sparge water pH again, and found it had risen so we added a little more phosphoric acid to bring it back down - it literally only took one drop of acid to take it from approx 5.5 to 5.24. Very easy to over-shoot with plain tap water due to it's low buffering capacity

After waiting 10 minutes, we took a sample for a pH measurement of the mash, then began recirculating

Initial pH reading of 5.54 - a bit too high for our liking, though still in the acceptable range. Before doing anything further though, we took another sample from the now recirculating wort

And interestingly, pH has dropped quite a bit just from recirculating, so we think we'll adjust our process now to begin recirculating for a minute or two before taking our first pH sample.

We're getting a bit fussier with our pH levels, and want it a little closer to 5.2, so we added approx 0.75mL of phosphoric acid to the mash

Mash temperature hovering around the 66-67°C mark as per the recipe. You get a much more accurate mash bed temperature by using a probe thermometer submerged in the mash as opposed to the temperature display on the BrewZilla unit itself (which has it's temperature sensor on the bottom near the heating elements)

Another pH reading and somehow the pH has increased slightly - now reading 5.41

Another 1mL of phosphoric acid into the mash

Mash temp 67°C has now been hit

Recirculation looking good - considering there's 40% wheat in the grist which normally thickens things up and slows down the recirculation, the flow rate was pretty decent. No need for rice hulls on this occasion, though we did have them on hand if required.

We use a Digiboil to heat up our sparge water to 76°C in preparation for sparging whilst the mash is underway

Yet another pH reading and we're at 5.35 now, after adding approx 1.75mL of acid to the mash. We decided to leave it here, but we'll be a little more aggressive next time - with all the grain in the mash there's obviously a decent amount of buffering capacity so we're unlikely to overshoot acidifying. Starting off with 2mL of might be the way to go in the future.

After the 60 minute mash period, we raised the temperature from 67°C to 75°C for a 10 minute mash out period

Wort is starting to clear up slightly during the mash out

A rare photo that we often forget to take of sparging. We're still traumatized from the one time the grain basket fell from this height, into the nearly boiling wort and splashed it everywhere - which was our fault from stirring the grain bed too vigorously which essentially knocked it off the metal ring it stands on

Sparge water flow was a bit slow but certainly not stuck. Though we did end up stirring it a bit to coax the water through the grain bed

We eventually hit our pre-boil volume of 26.5L

The Pacific Ale is famous for featuring only Galaxy hops - and these ones pack quite a bit of alpha caid at 17.5%

Pre-boil gravity reading at 1.041 which is exactly what the recipe predicted, however we're pretty sure this is a low reading and we need to recalibrate this digital refractometer.

Pre-boil pH reading of 5.39 - interestingly is exactly the same as what we had prior to our acid additions. We expected this to drop a bit lower throughout the mash?

Waiting for the boil to begin so weighing out our first, small hop addition - 5g of Galaxy hops.

Nearly at a boil, plenty of hot break forming on the surface

Rolling boil underway

First hop addition - 5g of Galaxy, going in with 20 minutes left in the boil

Weighing out our next hop addition - 13g of Galaxy hops

And then adding 5g of yeast nutrient on top

10 minute addition of hops and yeast nutrient being added

Weighing out the 5 minute hop addition

5 minute hop addition - going in

Weighing out our final 0 minute or whirlpool hop addition

At the conclusion of the 30 minute boil, we began chilling with our immersion chiller, and once the temperature dropped to 90°C we put a clamp on the cold water hose to the chiller so stop the flow of water for our whirlpool/hopstand.

0 minute hop addition being added

Whirlpool started at around 88°C and dropped to 84°C over the 10 minute whirlpool

Colour is definitely looking right for this beer

Post boil gravity reading at 1.043 - exactly as expected for the recipe however as we'll soon find out, was a few points lower than actual

We chill for approx 20 minutes using the immersion chiller, and then continue to chill in the fermentation fridge after transferring if required. 20 minutes is enough time to get to pitching temperature in the middle of winter when the tap water is cold, but doesn't quite get us there when the weather and ground water is a little warmer.

We didn't add any whirlfloc to this one, since it's meant to be hazy and you can see at the end of the whirlpool that it hasn't cleared up at all

Next we transferred to our Apollo Titan fermenter and moved it into our fermentation fridge

Post-boil pH and we've got a reading of 5.56. We're a little puzzled by this as everything we've read suggests the pH should drop during the boil, not increase. We double checked this by taking another sample from the fermenter after the fermenter had been in the fridge for some time, but got exactly the same reading.