Read on to see all the details about our latest brew day on our 35L BrewZilla 3.1.1 where we brought our Redemption West Coast IPA recipe to life.
Starting out as we always do (the night before actually) by collecting our strike and sparge water in our BrewZilla and Digiboil vessels.
We use a basic in line water filter to remove chlorine and other contaminants
Recommended strike water volume (as per Brewfather) was just under 25L
We use a combination of calcium chloride, magnesium sulphate and calcium sulphate to reach our desired target water profile. Our previous West Coast IPA's have had way too much sulphate, giving an overly bitter finish and stripped out all the desirable hop aromas, so we're going for a much lower sulphate level in this recipe. (More info on this)
We also added 4mL of 85% phosphoric acid to our strike water to help lower the pH into the expected range of 5.2 - 5.6
We carried on milling the full 6kg of malt - was kind of fun. The hopper could probably hold the full 6kg (you can see a tiny bit still left in the stainless pot) - we decided not to try and fill the hopper right to the brim.
Close up of the crushed grain in the white bucket afterwards.
After mashing in we left the grain bed to settle for 10 minutes and in the mean time we adjusted the pH of our sparge water. We ended up adding too much acid which saw the pH drop to around 4.8 - so after adding another 1L of filtered water the pH rised back up to 5.25. We like to keep our sparge water pretty close to 5.2 if we can.
Recirculation underway using the Sergeant Sparge Head attachment
Initial mash temp was sitting a little higher than we wanted at 67°C. A bit of stirring of the grain bed was in order to try and get the temperature down a little to the target 65°C
After a few minutes the temperature was back to 65°C. We also noticed at this point we had forgotten to put the neoprene jacket onto our BrewZilla (rookie mistake) so we went ahead and installed it now.
We decided to take a second pH reading which came back at 5.4 - a 0.1 increase from our first reading at the beginning of the mash.
We added around 1.75mL of 85% phosphoric acid to the mash at this point to bring the pH back down
After waiting a few minutes we drew another sample, cooled it and took a pH measurement of 5.33. We'd ideally like closer to 5.2 but we decided not to make any further adjustments as this will be fine
After a relatively uneventful 60 minute mash and 10 minute mash out @ 75°C, we lifted the grain basket in preparation for sparging.
Flow back through the grain bed was good during the mash, and stayed the same during the sparge which took no time at all.
The moment of truth - our first gravity measurement. We were nervous about this, because if our grain crush wasn't right we could see a big drop in efficiency, and we didn't have any dextrose left on hand to boost the sugar content of the wort if we needed it. Thankfully, we were just above our target pre boil gravity of 1.054.
While continuing the wait for the boil we began measuring out our hop additions, beginning with our first addition of 14g of Warrior.
As a matter of interest we took another pH measurement at this point, which remained consistent with the last measurement we took (5.33/5.34)
Boil is underway and plenty of hot break and foam forming on top. This was simply stirred back in with our mash paddle to prevent a boil over.
First hop addition of Warrior being added to the boil.
Still plenty of foam sitting on top for the first few minutes of the boil.
We continued to measure out our hop additions as per the recipe. Citra, Ekuanot, Centennial and Simcoe. We went for these varieties as these are the hops that are used in one of our all time favourite beers - the Bentspoke Crankshaft IPA.
We measured out more of the same for the remaining boil and whirlpool hop additions, as well as 6g of yeast nutrient and half a whirlfloc tablet to help promote some clarity in the wort and finished beer.
10 minute hop addition being added.
Whirlfloc and yeast nutrient being added with 10 minutes left in the boil as well.
Yet another pH measurement and we're still sitting at pretty much the same point with a pH of 5.32.
5 minute hop addition being added.
At the end of the 30 minute boil, we began chilling using the immersion chiller to drop the temperature to around 80-85°C.
Once at our desired temperature we began recirculating using the whirlpool arm attachment and added our sizeable whirlpool hop addition.
Post boil gravity reading and we're at 1.057. This should actually be a couple of points higher based on our pre boil gravity reading, but we're in the ball park of what we expected, and will confirm with a floating hydrometer reading later.
At the conclusion of the 15 minute whirlpool we continued to chill the wort. Given the relatively warm ambient temperature, we couldn't get the temperature much lower than 30°C so we transferred to the fermenter at this point. You can see some cold break starting to happen in the hop spider below.
Transferring to our Apollo Titan stainless fermenter.
Trusty floating hydrometer reading shows around 1.059-1.060 - a point or two above expected which we were very happy with.
We moved the fermenter into our fermentation fridge at this point and left it to cool to around 20°C overnight, and then pitched 2 packets of US-05 yeast the following morning. Less than 24 hours later fermentation was underway.
Stay tuned for further updates and tasting notes coming soon!
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