MY BREW DAY

by Graham Sanders

This article is a simple photographic and time scale of a mash brewers brew day. It provides a general description of the equipment and processes involved, as well as links to other articles containing a more in depth discussion. It is written to explain to other brewers what's involved in a total mash, some of the equipment used and procedures that are involved in making an all grain beer.

You can click on any of the photographs to view a larger,more detailed image

In this example, the equipment is for a HERMS (Heat Exchange Return Mash System). It's about as complicated you can get in regards to the items you need. Now you don't need to have all this equipment to go all grain, but this example does show how far you can take the hobby.

The beer I will make is a German Pilsner. It will be double decocted with rice adjunct used. The final volume of the system is 38 litres. The mash efficiency of this system is 95-100%.

A FEW DAYS BEFORE BREW DAY

My brew room is a lean-to on the side of the house. When these photos were taken it had temporary sides and roof. These have now been replaced by a permanent structure to make it a fully enclosed room. Brewing outside has its advantages, the least of which is there is a lot of water splashed around and you can constantly hose the area down.

My water is extremely soft. Hardness of 25 and Ca++ levels of 2.0 ppm. The only treatment that the local water authority does is to add chlorine to the water. This means all I have to do is let the water stand for a day or two before use to allow the chlorine to evaporate.

Setup time - 30 minutes

Also note the completed circulatory mash system. Liquid is drawn off the bottom of the mash tun, through the pump, up into the HERMS tun, out the top of it and returned to the top of the mash tun.

BREW DAY

6.30 am

Wake up and its time to brew. First a cup of tea then to the roller mill. Crush the grain and rice separately. Take that out to the brew room with my bag of rice husks.

Put a 5cm layer of rice husks at bottom of mash tun and add grain.

Set up the workbench with rice, burner and pot to do the decoction mash.

7.00am

Do final check on the system. Ensure pump is connected properly and taps are off.

Add water to mash tun at ratio of 2.5 litres per kilogram (17.5 litres). I also added half a teaspoon of chalk (CaCO3) and a quarter of a teaspoon of Epson salts (MgSO4) to bring up the Calcium level of the mash to about 50 ppm and the Magnesium level to about 7 ppm. Check the pH of the water in the HERMS tun and adjust to 5.7 with citric acid.

Light burner to heat up water in HERMS tank.

To the kitchen to make another cup of tea.

Back to the brew room.

Time to start the decoction mash. For futher details see my decoction article.

Return last decoction to the mash tun. Stir in well. Check the temperature of the HERMS tun water.

Now the desired mash temperature was 66 C. For my HERMS, this means the tun water temperature needs to be about 75 C to maintain that mash temperature. If the HERMS tun is not hot enough, I just wait until it gets to that temp before going on.

Allow grain bed to settle for 10 minutes.

Put water in bowl to cool the pump, and turn on the pump to start the flow. Open the tap just enough to get a flow without compacting the grain bed.

Check temperature of mash

If too low add heat to HERMS tun by increasing the flame on the burner, if slightly too hot add some water. I was at 68C so added a small amount of water to drop it to 66C.

Start timer now to run it for 45 minutes.

Check temperature is ok. Adjust flame under HERMS tun accordingly. Also note the advantage of a HERMS system. The liquid quickly runs clear, indicating that conversion has occurred in as little as 15 minutes.

The floaties in the photo are not grain, but some rice husks.

Time to set up the boiler ready for the sparge and transfer.

The boiler is placed under the transfer pipe ready to receive the wort.

The HERMS tun water will still be at 75 C. This is the perfect temperature for sparging. I also adjust the sparge water pH to 5.7 to minimise the leaching of tannins. Its time to sparge

The HERMS tap is turned off and the other tap will be turn on to transfer the liquid up to the boiler.

The tap on the HERMS tun is turned on and the hot water is transferred slowly to the top of the mash liquid. Because it is hotter it will form a distinct layer above the slightly cooler mash liquid. The water front slowly moves through the grain bed. This picture clearly shows the different water layers as the wort level drops below the grain bed, with the clearer water above.

After 5 minutes its nothing but clear liquid above the grain bed. This is how I get such good extraction rates with this system. There is no mixing at all of the sparge water and grain, so there is a constant moving front through the grain bed. This ensures you get every bit of extract. Another reason for its effectiveness is the pump also sucks out the last drop. Gravity sparging never gets the last drop out.

The burner on the boiler is lit as soon as the bottom is covered.

Sparge should be finished. The mash equipment is cleaned and put away.

Here is the brew room now after I have cleaned it up. Cleaning up as you go will save a heap of time. You can just see the mash equipment tucked away in the corner. I have already brought out the remaining gear I need.

Coke bottles for starters at the back, my fermenter kegs, counter flow cooler on the bench as well as a bowl of hops and my wind shield for the burner.

The wort in the boiler will be reaching the boil. I only boil for an hour due to the fact that I done more boiling during the decoction. So after adding the hops its time for lunch.

The boil is all but finished and I'm ready to add the flavour hops and two packet of dried yeast for yeast nutrition. My fermenters are in place, and I have transferred my starters to the coke bottles ready for stepping up.

The counter flow cooler is setup, as well as my hopback behind it.

The boil is finished, I have also added zinc salts and whirlpooled the wort ready for cooling.

I start the transfer first by half filling two Grolsch bottles with hot wort to use as starters for my next beer.

These are sealed and put away in the fridge.

The hopback is connected to the counterflow cooler and it's away. I first fill the starters with cool wort and get them going.

Transfer is finished, and kegs are put in the fridge. The boiler is cleaned and put away as well as the rest of the gear.

YES I'm finished. Time for a beer.

NOTE:

Now the starters are kept at room temperature, and because of the zinc additions, they are fully firing and ready for pitching in a few hours. No harm will come to the wort in the fridge in that short time.

Pitch the 6 litre starter. This is a huge starter, yet it's the same beer as what you made so its perfect. Fermentation will be away in a couple of hours.

So that's a typical brew day for me. Yes its long, but extremely rewarding. Every beer I drink tells me so.

Shout
Graham Sanders