Bazza's photo guide for the work-shy brewer

[Bazza]

Earlier this week I was asked to brew a keg of beer for my mate's wife's 40th in 4 weeks' time.

I've done 7 brews already this year, all using the same process, so I thought for brew number 8 I'd document this process in case it's of use to anyone, but also to demonstrate the following:

• You can very easily knock out a brew in the evening (e.g. after kids have gone to bed) if weekends (like mine) are completely out of the question for brewing
• You can do this relatively cheaply; you don't need to own a Braumeister or Grainfather
• 4 weeks is more than enough turnaround time for a straightfowrard style
• If you're a lazy b*****d like me you can achieve good results with as little effort as possible

Another reason is to demonstrate a few brewing techniques I've adopted in more recent times i.e.

• Switching from AG to BIAB
• Fermentation under pressure in a corny keg
• Transfer under pressure from fermentation keg to serving keg **
• Keg hopping (dry hopping in serving keg)  **

** These are not covered in this initial post. I will add them at the appropriate times.


One thing to bear in mind is that I only do 17L brews these days, because:

• It's one of the constraints of fermenting in a 19L corny keg
• No sparge BIAB in a 30L kettle only allows for a 19-20L batch anyway, less if you're doing a high ABV brew with more grain
• I completely detest bottling
• Makes for a shorter brewing evening in terms of time to heat and cool volumes of water and wort.
• Have I mentioned before that I'm a lazy b*****d?

Also, I typically only mash for an hour and boil for an hour.

Anyway, on to the brew. It's a simple SNPA hybrid. Nothing too complicated for a birthday do. Please forgive the quality of a number of the photos - some things are bloody hard to do one-handed when you're trying to take shots with the other hand.


Thursday morning before work. Fill kettle with desired volume of water (as dictated by Beersmith), with a crushed Camden tablet. As you might be able to make out, my trusty stirring paddle doubles up as a pretty effective fill level indicator:


5:30 - Home from work; turn on the kettle to get water up to mashing temp:


Meanwhile - weigh out the grains...


...Into the grinder...


...one feverish hand pumping session later (oo-er missus):



**N.B. I normally do all the above the night before but Wed night I was down the pub watching Liverpool getting their arses handed to them by Sevilla


Mashing temp reached (again, as dictated by Beersmith) for a medium body BAIB mash (67 degrees C, so allowing for grain cooling):


In goes the grain to the kettle (pre-lined with mashing bag)...


...good stir to break up the lumps...


...and 6:30PM - Kettle is covered by some insulation and its original box for an hour. Professional or what?


While the mash is on, prepare the fermentation keg...


...with a soaking of W5 solution to clean, and Starsan to sanitise:


Plenty of time to watch the kids fighting, trying to make them go to bed, and eventually despairing of your seeming total lack of authority in the house then it's time to get back to the brew.

7:45-ish - start bringing kettle up to the boil (keeping the grains in there for 7-8 mins at the start):


...meanwhile, weigh out the bittering hops (12g Chinook)...


...pull the grain bag out of the kettle and let it drain. I don't recommend doing this one-handed:


8:00-ish - Hot Break! Rolling boil reached:


8:05 - Drop in the hop spider with the bittering hops:

n.b. Hop spider is not necessary. You can boil your hops in a nylon bag or, even better, have a decent hop filter attached to your kettle tap

8:50 - 15 minute hop addition (12g Northdown) along with 1/4 protafloc tablet:


...meanwhile, weigh out final (1 minute) hop addition. (10g Citra and 15g Cascade) 10+15 = 26:


9:00 - dump in copper cooler for last 5 minutes of boil to sterilise it. As you can see, it's a little awkward getting it and the hop spider into such a confined space. Cue the trusty paddle again to help add some stability :


9:04 - last of the hops are added for a 1 minute boil, after which the kettle is turned off and the water turned on to commence cooling (n.b. I included a picture of me turning on the water in case anyone was unsure how a tap worked):


9:20-ish - Wort now cooled to pitching temp. Copper coil and hop spider are removed:


Wort is emptied into previously-sanitised corny:


US-05 yeast applied. Do your work, my son:

n.b. I typically don't rehydrate US-05 yeast for a smaller batch like this

Lid placed on corny and 20PSI of CO2 applied to seal lid:


Spunding valve placed on the gas in post. 20 PSI upside-down is still 20 PSI:


Safely into the (home-made) fermentation chamber:


And temperature set to 19 degrees C:


Gravity of 1052 - bang on with Beersmith's calculation:


9:45-ish - All done. Just a shitload of cleaning up left to do:

Bollox!


I checked the keg this morning and the spunding valve indicates pressure has dropped from 20PSI to around 12 PSI, which is to be expected. Once this begins to rise again, we know that fermentation has started and has begun to produce CO2.
The purpose of the spunding valve then is to keep the pressure at around 15PSI for the remainder of fermentation, to ensure a decent level of carbonation in the finished beer.

I'll update this post at the next stage, i.e. transferring to the serving keg and dry-hopping. If all goes to plan this should be in 2 weeks' time.


Cheers,

-Barry

[PCBrewer]

Great post.
Fermenting in a corny keg isn't something i have every tried, but i must give it a go.

[Quiet_Man]

Great post Bazza!

[Roo]

Happy face at the end made me chuckle. Love the homemade fermentation chamber.

[Ryan]

Havta get these kegs on the go, that or borrow a bottling system

[Leann ull]

Love watching other people's brewdays and bored of my own, like you I'm scaling back to corny sized production runs, well done especially that patent pending method for keeping your mash warm, hey if it works for tramps!

[sub82]

Looks good! Fermentation chamber looks well! What do you use for heat?

[Bazza]

Looks good! Fermentation chamber looks well! What do you use for heat?

Just been using a 60 watt tube heater, 12 quid off Amazon. Have a similar one in the keggerator. Going strong for over 3 years with no issues. Will dig out the link for you.

Update: PSI was back up to 20 when I got home from work today  so fermentation is well under way. Opened the spunding valve to keep it at 15 psi so nothing to do for 2 weeks 

- Barry

[Bazza]

Hmmm. .. Seems to have gone up in price since I was last looking but this is what I was talking about:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00408OB1W/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1463817408&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=60+watt+heaters&dpPl=1&dpID=31GrYhjvWWL&ref=plSrch

-Barry

[Jonnycheech]

Nice post!

You say you transfer post fermentation from the keg under pressure. There must be a lot of trub initially during transfer, do you just wait until the transfer runs clean before moving to the new vessel?

[Bazza]

There must be a lot of trub initially during transfer, do you just wait until the transfer runs clean before moving to the new vessel?

Yeah. First pint is fairly trubby. That gets drawn out into a jug using a picnic tap. Once it's running clear I connect up the 2 kegs.

The jug of trubby stuff does settle down pretty quickly and leaves a perfectly drinkable albeit flat beer sitting on top. Waste not,  want not 

- Barry

[Tom]

Would you consider shortening the dip tube to miss the trub? You can get spare ones if you still want to use it as a keg again.

Do you find the yeast behaves differently or throws any new esters when under pressure? Whitelabs have one or two pressure lager strains, I noticed.

[banjobrew]

Great post Bazza! Do you purge the keg of O2 before setting to 20psi to ensure an O2 free fermentation or do you leave it to give the yeast something to work with?

[Leann ull]

Those tube heaters are also on eBay, I'd always recommend a computer fan if using an stc to heat or chill it spears the temp rapidly and you use half the energy

[Bazza]

Would you consider shortening the dip tube to miss the trub? You can get spare ones if you still want to use it as a keg again.

Do you find the yeast behaves differently or throws any new esters when under pressure? Whitelabs have one or two pressure lager strains, I noticed.

First time I tried it out I decided not to cut the dip tube in case there wouldn't be a second time. Since then I've seen no real need to cut it as, once settled, it's always poured really clear from the serving keg. Also, I don't have the necessary tools to ensure a clean, infection free cut.

As for yeast, I've only used packet yeasts like US05, Mangrove and Nottingham, and have seen no difference in their behaviour.

Do you purge the keg of O2 before setting to 20psi to ensure an O2 free fermentation or do you leave it to give the yeast something to work with?

No I don't purge the fermenting keg. I want to give it as much O2 as possible to keep fermentation kicking along at a decent rate. I do, however, completely purge the serving keg both prior to, and following the transfer from the fermenter.

Cheers,

-Barry