Barrel'O'Rebel II - Herd'O'Rebels

[Dr Horrible]

I think I might be picking up on a slight lack of love for S-04 here! Ok, so that's WLP007 with a big starter as the primary option and Notty as the last minute, feck-it-theres-a-fruit-fly-in-my-starter option (probably two packs).

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[mr hoppy]

Fair to say efficiency can be lower on big brews so keep some DME handy.

[LordEoin]

When would you dry hop? Before, during or after?

Dry hop in primary. AFAIK Nogne warehouse condition in the bottle for 6 months before shipping. All we're doing different is conditioning in a barrel and carbonating afterwards.

I'm gonna make a quick shout-out again though, because it's killing my mind...
If everyone can rack off the trub for transport and filling it would be great. We don't want 10 liters of yeast rotting in the bottom of the barrel.
In a commercial setting, the solids would settle out in one big lot, but with 10 of us sloshing 20liters around we're going to inevitably have an excess of shite making its way to the barrel no matter how careful we are.
But at the same time, if you're not equipped to do that at the risk or oxidization, be super gentle with it and avoid knocking murk back into the beer.

[BrewDorg]

Brewed this today, all went to plan. Groundwater was too warm to bring to pitching temp, so it's in my chamber waiting on a big pitch of 007 

[mr hoppy]

Thought it might be an idea to get a bit of a list going to keep track of who has brewed as I know there's been some activity.

1. Johnrm - 20l
2. LordEoin - 20l
3. mr hoppy - 19 litres 1098
4. Dr. Horrible - 20l
5. Dcalnan - 20l
6. Tommy - 20l
7. BrewDorg - 20l
8. Bzfeale80 - 20l
9. Cambrinus - 20l
10. Alan - 10L

[johnrm]

@Mr. H, not sure Champagne yeast is a good idea.
I saw mention of that, maybe on whatsapp?
That stuff will pull the whole barrel down to 0.
Unless you're going to pasteurise.

[BrewDorg]

The WLP007 has ripped my wort down to 1.016 in 4 days. Absolute beast of a yeast

[johnrm]

Its amazing what 30C will do to a yeast
What was your OG?

[BrewDorg]

OG was 1.092. I double checked my BS session and it was actually 1.018 after 4 days. All at 19.5C in case ye're worried

[mr hoppy]

@Mr. H, not sure Champagne yeast is a good idea.
I saw mention of that, maybe on whatsapp?
That stuff will pull the whole barrel down to 0.
Unless you're going to pasteurise.

Yeah, I'll give it a miss. The internet consensus isn't exactly favourable.  I can use it on the cider come November.  Funny thing is that Ray Daniels suggest it in Designing Great Beers and say that attenuation wasn't any lower for beers that used champagne yeast to finish attenuation from his sample. My brew will crap out around 1030 OG (9% starting from 1098.) I could throw something else in but it mightn't be any harm to get a bit of C02 going in the barrel either.

In other news, this was by far the biggest brew I've done on my system in terms of weight of grain (9.3kg). The next biggest was a 6.5kg black IPA I did a few times. Quite an adventure. I had to do two decoctions to get it over the line with my non HERMS/RIMS system. Fun times! 

[Cambrinus]

Will brew mine on Sunday. Hope all goes according plan. 3l WLP007 starter is ready to go.

[BrewDorg]

What efficiency are you getting with that 9.3kg Mr. H? That's goo going. I had to do a polygyle/double mash because my all-in-one is too small for 10kg.

Gravity is down to 1.015 and clearing nicely. 1.092 -> 1.015 is 10.2% so a bit stronger than needed..

[mr hoppy]

I got 69% efficiency on 19 litres but it was a major pain. I used a big mash tun I don't usually use and it didn't heat up properly and I had to do a decoction to get it to 63C. Then the bazooka came loose and I had to transfer to another mash tun.

At this point the mash had cooled down and I ended up putting in almost all my sparge water in along with plenty of oat hulls to try and get in going again.

Even then, and after using a pump and putting the tun a couple of feet above the boil pot I had no luck getting it hot enough to run off properly  until I did another decoction.

I was tired and relieved when I had the boil pot filled! But I've had my limits stretched and I might have a go at another big beer before too long.

[mr hoppy]

Like I said I'm not going to use the champagne yeast. But at the same time I'm kind of puzzled by the internet commentary that it'll dry your beer out too much. I thought champagne yeast couldn't consume complex sugars and as the FG in beer is due to complex limit dextrins I don't see how it's going to consume them and dry a beer out. It doesn't make sense.

On the other hand I see here that champagne yeast is a killer yeast that will kill off your beer yeast within 12 hours. That wouldn't be a good thing either!

http://loveofalpha.blogspot.ie/2012/08/wine-yeast-mythbusting.html

[johnrm]

All-in-one is limited for Big beers all right.

My options are

Split Mash on BM 20l (4.5kg+4.5kg)

or

Old school Mash tun, sparge and Boil in BM

I'm tending toward BM as I always had trouble maintaining temp in MT.

I was considering a hybrid brew.