40 L Batch out of a 30 L Grainfather

[stevosan]

Hi
I have a several recipes down now that I am happy with and I want to increase production / reduce time spent brewing, especially for session beers (5.2% is session for me..). Going to try this in the next few weeks, will keep you posted how it goes.

Although I do have my eye on buying a larger all in one electric systems, for now I am going to try a hybrid 50% all grain + 50% extract brew out of my trusty 30L Grainfather and see if I can produce 2 x 20L batches in one brew. Will be interesting to compare v my current all grain brews also.

I must say the American Wheat they sell in LIDL has been my go-to cheap session craft beer for several years now and I have made a hopped up version several times that did me very well over the sunny lockdown.
Recipe based on this:
https://www.themadfermentationist.com/2012/11/hoppy-wheat-with-march-pump-hoprocket.html

Added 10% to his grain bill as there are a lot of hops and I have been trying to actually fill the corny  fully so aiming for around 22 Litres pre-fermentation hopefully resulting in a full 19 L into the keg.

54.8% - 2.70 kg Wheat Malt
38.1% - 1.90kg  Pale Malt
7.1% -  0.35kg   Cara Red

then for the extract part, going to use:
      
Wheat Malt Dry Extract    1.70 kg
Pale Malt Dry Extract    1.17 kg
And just double the cara red above in the all grain part.

Plan is to do the all grain as normal + the extra cara ruby, then during the boil top it up to around 30L and add in all the DME for the full boil.
Then add in extra water straight into the fermenter to have 2 x 21 L fermenter volume.
Targeting around 1.050 OG.

Hops will be double this - below is what I do for single batch (not making any adjustments to the bittering unless someone thinks I should?):
Amarillo for Bittering - 40g at 9.6% for 60 mins               
2.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ 0 min.            
1.00 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ 0 min.            
2.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Hop-Back - (dont have hop back, so add at 82C, leave a few minutes then start the chiller and rack to the fermenter)               
1.00 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Hop-Back - (add at 82C)
      
4.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Dry Hop               
1.00 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Dry Hop            


Will add a whirfloc tablet and ferment each with Safale 05.

[Impaler]

I enjoy Lidl's American Pale Wheat ale a lot, let us know how your 40L batch go. Its very interesting idea.

[LordEoin]

The Saison is fair good too. And the pale ale and the IPA.

[mr hoppy]

The Saison is fair good too. And the pale ale and the IPA.

I lurv the American Brown, yummy old skool Centennial

Sent from my SM-A530F using Tapatalk

[Impaler]

Oh so thats Cetennial hops? I was wondering. That American Brown is really hits the spot for me and also reasonably priced!

[stevosan]

BREW DAY UPDATE

Overall the brew day went fine. A bit longer than a normal 20L All grain batch on my grainfather but that was probably down to not having my process dialed in that well.
I am going to update the original recipe and reduce the grain and extract quantities by 5%.

1. Mash: Mashed in the normal all grain portion , with the additional double speciality grains (Cara Red) as normal.
I seemed to get better efficiency than planned (70%) so ended up with 29 Litres of 1.048 Wort.

2. Boil + Extract part
I decided to stick with the original plan for now, so once I got the boil going , I added in the extract
Wheat Malt Dry Extract    1.85 kg
Pale Malt Dry Extract    1.29 kg

Been a while since I did an extract boil - learnings: extract can boil over quite explosively. you need to stay on top of that boil especially since the grainfather is at max capacity.

Bought a new refractometer recently and still trying to work out the scale while brewing in real time, anyhow now measured 1.083 for 30 Litres. Probably going to target 50 Litres into 2 fermenters that would be 1.055.

3. I hadn't planned far enough in advance to have another 20 Litres of spare filtered, treated, boiled and cooled water hanging around. I did have about 15 Litres of boiling water. So once into the chilling phase, I filled up the two fermenters about evenly, then poured the rest of the water into the grainfather and ran that runnings through the chiller.

4. Final steps

Fermentor 1: Brix 14 / 1.057 at 23 Litres. So topped up with 2 litres of a Tesco 5 Litre water bottle to end up with 1.052
Fermentor 2: Brix 15 / 1.061 at 21 litres, so topped up with 3 litres and ended up with 24 litres at 1.053

5. Yeast Selection:

the great thing about a double batch is you can further experiment with the yeasts and dry hops.
So have one with Safale 05
and my first try with Kviek Voss. this thing has gone mental overnight and has deformed the lid of the fermenter already, all the santizer expelled from the bubbler already by morning but fortunately not too much beer expelled.

6. final thoughts

1. I have a bit of an issue with scouring on the bottom of the grainfather.
the extract has left me with quite a bit of work to do to clean up that.
overall I'd say it was a 6hour brew day v. normal 4 hour ish, but i think with practice this could be improved to 5 hours.

7. will update on the final tasting in a few weeks!