Epic Pale Ale

I decided to do another "Can you brew it" recipe, this time the cloned "Epic Pale Ale" from New Zealand. The recipe is quite interesting, using Golden Promise in an American pale ale style beer. After the success of the Landlord clone I did with Golden Promise I'm quite keen to use it again to try and get used to it. I have had Epic quite a few times, and it's a really pleasant beer with a big up front hoppiness.

Here's the recipe:

Epic Pale Ale

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (L):          22.50    Wort Size (L):     22.50
Total Grain (kg):         5.16
Anticipated OG:          1.052    Plato:             12.93
Anticipated SRM:           6.0
Anticipated IBU:          22.2
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 79.8     4.12 kg.  Pale Malt (Golden Promise)    UK             1.037      2
 10.2     0.53 kg.  Carahell Malt                 Germany        1.034     11
  3.3     0.17 kg.  CaraPils                      Germany        1.033      2
  6.7     0.34 kg.  CaraRed                       Germany        1.035     20

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 12.00 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.50   7.6  60 min.
 18.40 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.50   7.5  30 min.
 45.00 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.50   7.2  10 min.
 50.00 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.50   0.0  0 min.
 50.00 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.50   0.0  0 min. (after 10 min whirlpool)
 65.00 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.50   0.0  Dry Hop (at ferment temp)
 65.00 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.50   0.0  Dry Hop (cold)


Yeast
-----
 Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

As you can see, this beer takes a bucketload of hops, all cascade. Fortunately I had half a kilo which needed a home. Today also marked my first go at recirculating the mash. I hooked up my new control panel to an electric kettle with a small stainless steel coil in it through which the mash was recirculated. For now let's just say it went well and I was pretty happy with the system. A full report with pics etc, will follow when I get things dialled in a bit more.

I estimated an efficiency of 75%, but ended up with only 72%, so I'm two points off my intended original gravity. Hopefully this won't hurt the beer too much. Brew in a bag is essentially a 'no-sparge' technique, so it's difficult to break through the 75% mark, and that gets more difficult the higher the OG (or grain to water ratio). I expect to get a more consistent and higher efficiency once I start sparging.

Here's a picture of the organised chaos. The laptop was monitoring temperature readings as I don't have any displays on the control panel yet.

Forgot two things today, I should have done a mashout step, as I was keen to see how my little heat exchanger would handle it, and also I forgot to add koppafloc in the last 10 minutes. BIAB does result in pretty cloudy wort, so kettle finings are important, but I think extended cold conditioning helps with clearing, and I need to do that with this beer anyway for the dry hopping schedule.

Finally, my element blew just at the end of the boil. There has been some chatter on aussiehomebrewer.com about these elements, but mine looked in good condition so I was pretty surprised that it went. The insulation melted where the wire joins the body and the live and neutral touched. I was in the kitchen when it happened and the bang was pretty loud even from there. Scary. I'll have to figure out a replacement before the next brew day.

Keezer, control panel, new HLT

I've been keeping myself busy lately with my new brewery, and I finally finished off my keg freezer. I started this back in February, and up till now I had been using a beer gun to dispense. I finally got hold of some beautiful new perlick 525ss taps and shanks, and got these mounted at the weekend. Already I'm thinking about adding another tap, but that will have to wait a while. This has really changed my brewing, as getting rid of bottles has freed up about 50% of the time I dedicate to brewing, meaning I brew about twice as often as I used to.

My new taps!

 Also late last week I got hold of this keg from eBay. It's an old stainless steel keg, and quite a bit bigger than the standard 50L kegs you see most of the time around here. I'm trying to build in the capacity to get 2 19L kegs filled from one brew. I think this may work well as a Hot Liqour Tank for the new brewery. It will probably start out as a 2 vessel brewery, using my current BIAB pot to do both the mash and the boil.

Finally I should show some updates on my control panel. I've got most of it wired up now, and can control one element and one pump with it. I still don't have PID control of the element built in, for now it just switches off near the desired temp. I haven't wired up a display yet either. I'd like to use 7 segment displays for set temperature and mash temperature, but they are a bit of a pain to get mounted and wired. I may just go with an LCD of some sort. For now I'll just monitor from an old laptop.

Brewery Build Progress 1

I've been slowly gathering bits and pieces for my updated brewery. Most of this is just electronic gadgetry, though I have now started getting some plumbing gear too. A box of stainless goodies arrived on Friday, so I thought it was finally time to get myself the plate chiller I've been planning to get. Here's what I've gathered so far

I'll be using an arduino mega for the brains of the operation. That's still wrapped in plastic though, so I'm using an old uno to prototype the various bits and pieces.

First pass through with the chiller will be this weekend, watch this space.