Yesterday my new Speidel Braumeister 20L arrived, and I spent most of the evening admiring myself in the shiny stainless steel of the machine. Tomorrow I’m brewing for the first time. To get to know the BM, a simple recipe based on Drew’s Oat Mald Mild:
Recipe: Oat Malt Mild
Brewer: Homo Eccentricus
Style: Mild
Recipe Specifications
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Boil Size: 16.54 l
Post Boil Volume: 14.04 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 12.00 l
Bottling Volume: 10.50 l
Estimated OG: 1.038 SG
Estimated Color: 13.3 EBC
Estimated IBU: 9.1 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 78.7 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Ingredients:
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Amt Name Type # %/IBU
1.50 kg Pale Malt, Golden Promise (Thomas Fawcet Grain 1 69.7 %
0.50 kg Oats, Malted (Thomas Fawcett) (3.9 EBC) Grain 2 23.2 %
0.15 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (118.2 EBC) Grain 3 7.0 %
2.50 g Northern Brewer [8.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 4.7 IBUs
3.00 g Northern Brewer [8.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 5 4.4 IBUs
1.0 pkg Thames Valley Ale (Wyeast Labs #1275) [1 Yeast 6 -
Mash Schedule: BIAB, Full Body
Total Grain Weight: 2.15 kg
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Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Saccharification Add 18.06 l of water at 73.8 C 68.9 C 60 min
Mash Out Heat to 75.6 C over 7 min 75.6 C 10 min
At the same time I will try out some low oxygen techniques, just for fun’s sake. What else should I do when the Braumeister does everything automatically? I will combine recommendations from the 2 following articles: “Upstream Beer Stabilisation during Wort Boiling by Addition of Gallotannins and/or PVPP” and “On Brewing Bavarian Helles”.
Note: the main problem with the Braumeister is that during mashing the wort is pumped upwards in the pipe and overflows. So not sure that this will not undo the complete low oxygen effort.
So these are the steps I’m taking (note: I’m not using PVPP - too bloody expensive):
Milling: add 1.5% water by weight; crush immediately before doughing in
Check pumps of BM for air leaks
Add demi-water with 50 ppm calcium chloride (some sulfate will come from Campden tablets)
Preboil water in BM 5-10 minutes
Chill rapidly with SS immersion chiller to strike temperature
Add 100 mg/l SMB (one Campden tablet = 440 mg); rest 5m
Adjust pH to 5.3 - with Campden tablets should effectively be around 5.2
Dough in as gently as possible, no splashing; if grain is floating there is air trapped in grain
No-sparge
60m boil with total evaporation < 10% - target for 98-99C
Check pH 15m before end - pH should be 5.1-5.2; adjust if necessary
Add 10g/hL gallotannins (Brewtan B) in boil, 5 minutes contact time
Chill asap - no aeration
Pitch a very healthy amount of yeast - 20-30M cells/ml for 12 Plato beer
Oxygen added after pitching
Suggestions, scorchers, slanders, sneers, it’s all welcome.
Two thoughts about the overflow during mashing. 1. Could you put a hose over the end of the overflow tube and into the mash at the other end? 2. Use more metabisulfite?
Other than creating more acidity and more salt, you could double or triple the metabisulfite because it’ll break down in the boil. I would try to do some kind of calculation to see how much sulfuric acid and sodium or potassium you would be creating or adding to see if that would be problem.
Martin mentions somewhere that the German group recommends much more mbs than is required to scavenge the oxygen, so I’m not sure whether it’s really necessary.
I assume flushing the BM with CO2 from time to time will have little to no effect?
The Gods of the Olympus have decided to punish me for my hubris and complete lack of respect by killing every single yeast cell in the three weeks old Thames Valley slurry that I used on Saturday. Not the slightest sign of activity this morning, so will dump the batch tonight. No idea how this is possible, only explanation is a Force Majeure.
I only got the slurry around Saturday noon, and then immediately started the “shaken not stirred” starter method. At around 11 pm there was no real activity noticeable, but I was kind of not paying attention and pitched it anyway. On Sunday I used a drill and oxygenation thingie to stir the wort. To no avail.
I seriously miscalculated the amount of water that can be used to mash with the short (10L) malt pipe. I thought I could do an 18L no-sparge, but that was way too much. I had to remove 4L of water and sparge with it afterwards.
You can enter a recipe on a screen, but I got bored after about 3 seconds, so gave up and did everything manually.
Other than that (and the yeast, obviously) everything went very well. The pump pushes the wort over the edge of the malt pipe, but I see no splashing, so I assume that O2 uptake is not that high…
I brew 3 gal batches in my 20l BM. I ended up modifying the malt pipe by drilling a bunch of 1/2" holes around it about 3" down. Works great for LODO no sparge small batches. A block of wood under the rear leg gets most of the wort out towards the end of racking for me.
ahhh, the social pressure…