Pilsener malt to make???

[Sam.]

While I am still waiting for sack of peated malt to turn up I couldn't help myself and the stars and moon aligned and I had an opportunity to try and do a mash :handgestures-thumbupleft:

After advice and equipment borrowed from a mate I decided to have a crack at using 18kg of pilsener malt (that I already had) to make a "not sure what" in the end.

My mate lended me his mill which would be great for a 25L beer brewer :laughing-rolling:

Mill setup.JPG

As you can see you stick the drill into the mill and off you go at a medium pace. Took fucking forever :handgestures-thumbdown: Good thing I was running the still at the same time :dance:

Anyway I cracked it about this much

Cracked.JPG

Any thoughts as to was it too much or too little? Please let me know what you reckon :handgestures-thumbupleft:

So then I proceeded to get some water in the boiler, I went for 65L as that is again what my mate recommended off his brewing calculator, heated the water to 52c then added the grain and let it rest for 40min, it dropped bugger all in that time.

here is a pic of his boiler, some of you may cring when you see what it is that has a big hole cut in the top x_x

Mash tun.JPG

Then I took it up to 62c and left it for about 80 min. Drained the good gear off and it looked like this

residual grain.JPG

I was not expecting that much residual grain :o

So then I took the good shit and put it in the fermenter, it was only on about 40L so I did a mangled sparge I guess you would call it with hot water out the tap and poured on and drained off again. Added all to the fermenter. Put some in the tube with the hydro and it was reading only 1.040 :crying-blue: that was hot as Jennifer Hawkins at that stage, by the morning is was about as warm as your friends slightly hot sister and it was still only reading 1.045 :angry-banghead:

But I know there's still some good gear left so I have filled the keg back up with the grain to 30L and heated it to 65c and let it rest for 3 hours. Have then drained that off into another fermenter and did another mongrel arse sparge and added 9kg of sugar. OG was 1.015 :music-deathmetal:

I took some samples in my meth lab conical flasks to make yeast starters with some yeast and even though I fucked up and added it hot it still went fine :wtf:

Waited until the morning when the washed had cooled and pitched the yeast, when I got home they were going awesome :happy-partydance:

I put this in the mashing section and not the recipe development because this was more about me trying out this all grain business.

Any advice is most welcome as I plan to be doing a lot more of this in the future :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Just hoping the bubbler will be able to make something decent out of a very basic thing :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[wedwards]

Just ferment it out with some whiskey/distilling/bakers yeast and run it. You should get some nice single malt scotch out of it....if you didn't screw up the mash too badly ;)

[wedwards]

By the way, I tend to do a much finer "crack" on the grains, but do what works for you.

[Kravin]

You want your crush to look like this:


This allows the enzymes to get into the starches and convert them to sugars better.
keeping the husk as intact as possible allows them to act as filters to get a good clean wort (because you're essentially making beer until it hit's the still) and allows you to sparge a lot better.
The finer the crush, the better the extraction, but the more issues you'll have running the wort out and sparging. finding that balance is the key.

you would also get better extraction doing 2 9L mashes rather than 1 19L one in such a small vessel.

Hope that helps

Kravin

[Sam.]

@ Kravin, yes I reckon your right on the size cos that was real bitch to stir etc.

My grain ended up like this

Cracking done.JPG

Maybe not done enough?

But dont worry, working on a 100L vessel to do my gear in :dance:

[Kravin]

Yeah, as an all grain beer brewer where extraction (mash efficiency) is pretty important, I would say that's no where near crushed enough for any decent extraction.

Just roughly threw your figures into beersmith.
with your system set to 60% extraction efficiency (mainly because 19Kg is a shitload of grain and efficiency will suffer).
19Kg of Pilsner malt, with a final batch size (into fermenter) of 40L, should have yielded you an OG of ~1.070 - 1.080
fermented out (with beer yeast), you would be looking around 7-8%ABV.
Using a higher attenuating and alcohol tolerant yeast would bump that ABV up higher.

Set the roller gap on your mill to about 1mm-1.2mm
if you don't have any feeler gauges, use a credit card or something similar. you want to be able to slide the card between the rollers and feel a little 'grab' but not actually turn the rollers.

Mash your grain at 62C for 30min and then 66C-67C for 30min by adding some boiling water, this should give you better starch to sugar conversion.
Drain that and sparge with water at about 70C (this should be hot enough to get some extra sugars out without denaturing the enzymes)

if you go over your expected volume with the sparge, but your gravity is still good, then boil your wort (you will denature the enzymes, but you already have a better than expected extraction anyway) down to your expected volume. The added bonus of this is that it'll concentrate the wort to a higher gravity, essentially giving you more sugar than your expected volume.

Ferment that puppy out!

from there on, that's your department. I don't even own a still......... YET! :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Kravin

Edit: 19Kg of Pilsner malt with a final volume of 40L and gravity of 1.043 puts your efficiency at about 36%

[Kravin]

Also, as a side note....

52C is used as a protein rest when mashing and wouldn't be required in this scenario as all we're after is sugar conversion.
Just go straight to 62C

Kravin

[Brendan]

Kravin, great info mate :handgestures-thumbupleft: We need some all grain brewers around here, I'm about to get into it myself...

If using Brew In A Bag method, can you get away with going a bit finer for better efficiency? Or do you still require the filtering properties of the husks to some degree? My thinking is with a good BIAB bag, the mesh is so fine it should take everything with it...?

Cheers mate :-D

[Kravin]

If using Brew In A Bag method, can you get away with going a bit finer for better efficiency? Or do you still require the filtering properties of the husks to some degree? My thinking is with a good BIAB bag, the mesh is so fine it should take everything with it...?

Definitely you can go finer, maybe as low as .6mm, but you don't want flour. Milling the grain too fine will also extract tannins into the beer giving you a grainy flavour and astringency (think of sucking on a tea bag) in the final product. You will also end up with more trub at the end of the boil which you'll need to allow for in your volumes.

[googe]

Good.stuff Sam :handgestures-thumbupleft: , looking forward to seeing what you get out if it, well done and good luck.

[Brendan]

If using Brew In A Bag method, can you get away with going a bit finer for better efficiency? Or do you still require the filtering properties of the husks to some degree? My thinking is with a good BIAB bag, the mesh is so fine it should take everything with it...?

Definitely you can go finer, maybe as low as .6mm, but you don't want flour. Milling the grain too fine will also extract tannins into the beer giving you a grainy flavour and astringency (think of sucking on a tea bag) in the final product. You will also end up with more trub at the end of the boil which you'll need to allow for in your volumes.

Cheers mate, that's good to know...I wonder if those off flavours carry through in the distilling world...either way, I'm sure a good beer makes a better whisky than a crap beer! :D

I'm getting a false bottom and pickup tube put into my mash tun (keg), but for now I have a good BIAB bag from a bloke in the states that makes them, so I'm going to give that a few runs first to get a grasp of it. Always love to read about mashing temps and procedures, so thanks for that.

And going great guns Sam, love your work Sir :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Kravin]

I wonder if those off flavours carry through in the distilling world...either way, I'm sure a good beer makes a better whisky than a crap beer! :D

That was one of the things that spun me out when I first started lurking here...
"you put TOMATO PASTE in your FERMENTERS??? WHAT ARE YOU ALL FREAKIN' CRAZY!??"
But then all you're after is a clean wash with a good ABV.

Whisk(e)y through a pot still on the other hand...
if you can get a nice beer at the end of ferment rather than a slapped together one, surely those nice flavours will come over to the spirit and only be a good thing yeah?
I dunno, still a virgin on this whole distilling thing.
:greetings-waveyellow:

[Brendan]

Yeah for sure mate...if you ran Tomato Paste Wash slowly through a pot still, well you'd have shit tasting tomato schnapps :laughing-rolling:

Yeah it's hard to fathom, but the tomato paste is just a nutrient for the yeast. And we use it when making a neutral because you are only extracting the pure ethanol at 92-95%, which has no flavour.

[MacStill]

Yeah for sure mate...if you ran Tomato Paste Wash slowly through a pot still, well you'd have shit tasting tomato schnapps :laughing-rolling:

Lil bit worcestershire, splash of tobasco.... perfect hangover cure.... better than barocas :teasing-neener:

[crow]

Yeah for sure mate...if you ran Tomato Paste Wash slowly through a pot still, well you'd have shit tasting tomato schnapps :laughing-rolling:

Yeah it's hard to fathom, but the tomato paste is just a nutrient for the yeast. And we use it when making a neutral because you are only extracting the pure ethanol at 92-95%, which has no flavour.

Actually if you ran it though fast it would be much worse ;-)

[Sam.]

Kravin, thanks for the info mate.

I thought it would be piss poor efficiency!

Next time I will crush it finer and use a bit less until I get the hang if it.

The protein rest is there to stop my still from puking its guys out when I run it.

I also have a few jugs full of grain in the fermenters so hopefully there is a tiny bit more conversion happening, this is also the reason for not boiling.

[Cane Toad]

Good shit Sam,I'm gearing up to try AG as well :handgestures-thumbupleft: just waiting for a parcel to turn up so I can free up some fermenters :D :D still got a UJ and a TPW that have been ready for Christ knows how long :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead:
Anyhow,keep us informed,I was looking at fermenting on the grain,which should give you better conversion yet again,correct???

[Sam.]

Yep it should keep going if its in the grain just slower, just remember the grain is going to take up a lot of room in the fermenter.

[Cane Toad]

True,but doing a 200l UJ wash,the grains take up a fair bit of room.How much room do the gurus reckon will be taken up using a 20 fermenter??

[Kravin]

Kravin, thanks for the info mate.

I thought it would be piss poor efficiency!

Next time I will crush it finer and use a bit less until I get the hang if it.

No worries.
a finer crush will see you right I reckon :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Not sure on your mash thickness, but it should be quite wet. kind of like a wet porridge.
Like this:

The protein rest is there to stop my still from puking its guys out when I run it.

Ahhh, that makes sense now.
how well does that work? I have never fermented out unboiled wort (another WTF? moment when I read it the first time).
A way around this would be to bring the wort to the boil for about 15min to get a 'hot break". this coagulates the proteins.
then, the coagulated proteins drop to the bottom of the kettle.

from there you could dump it into a HDPE water container at about 90C, squeeze out any air and seal it (no chill cube method).
this would benefit you in 2 ways.
1. you would also get 'cold break' with more proteins dropping out of the wort to the bottom of the cube.
2. the wort and the cube will be pasturised meaning you can store it for months before needing to ferment it out. So you can brew as many worts as you like and have a stockpile. then as a fermenter comes free, just dump in the cube and ferment it out.

I also have a few jugs full of grain in the fermenters so hopefully there is a tiny bit more conversion happening, this is also the reason for not boiling.

This spins me out! :wtf:

Like I said, im an AG beer brewer, so the focus is to get the best wort you can for the style of beer your making. so fermenting an unboild beer with grain in the bottom, is like asking for an infection and off flavours. SOooo completely opposite to what im used to.
I'm assuming the yeast you guys use is aggressive enough to combat any wild bacteria in the beginning, take over and then produce enough alcohol by the end that nothing else can get a foot hold?
IMHO, With a decent crush and good extraction, having the grain in the fermenter for extra conversion would be negligible. Unless it contributes a grainy flavour to the spirit?, that would definitely make sense.

I'm still learning the distilling side and the ingredients and fermenting side you guys use, so im really happy to have you guys help\(edumacate me with this stuff as much as I can help you with my mashing experience. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Cheers,

Kravin