Sunday 29 May 2011

Wheat Beer kegged

The disasters keep in coming with this beer. I racked it into a pressure barrel when fermentation steadied at 1.012 (for an ABV of 4%). Unfortunately the pressure barrel valve is knackered and doesn't seem to be holding pressure. I did purge with CO2 prior to racking which has hopefully helped keep it. It's certainly tasting pretty good at the moment, but I'm on operation drink it speedily.

Wednesday 11 May 2011

Beer #12 -Wheat Beer

Last week's bank holiday Monday saw me trialling the new stockpot with a full size batch of Bavarian Weizen from Radical Brewing. It was basically moving from one disaster to another, but I did manage to get some wort in the fermenter, so it's not all bad. I'd bought a length of voile from Dunelm Mill. I may have to get this made into a bag, as it's somewhat tricky to work with otherwise.
  • 26L Water @ 70C
  • 2.322Kg Wheat malt
  • 1.7kg Lager malt
  • 0.45kg Munich malt
So, things that went wrong:
  • Wasn't able to insulate the stockpot/mashtun
  • Mashtun lost about 10 degrees C over the hour
  • Managed to get wort all over the hob
  • Wort on the hob carbonised and welded itself to the hob during the boil
  • Wort was 103?
  • Managed to get some more wort by 'sparging' in another pan
  • Overfilled the pot with water and grain and couldn't get the lid on
  • Did a simple infusion mash where the recipe calls for a stepped infusion
Because of my lack of a chiller I had to leave the stockpot overnight to cool with a couple of towels soaked in sanitiser over the lid. Fortunately the lid is quite tight fitting.

I got 20L of 1042 wort into the fermenter and pitched a pack of WB-05. After 1 week it's down to 1014.