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Lloyd needs to learn Beer

edited September 2014 in General

I admit that I am more focused on distilling than being able to make a beer from grain, and that needs to be addressed soon because the SD distributors have been pulling me into beer for a long time but I have resisted their every effort.
I don't usually drink beer and I've never made an all grain beer (did a syrup kit a couple of times many years ago).
Did all corn mash a few times with meager results.

The beer market is many times bigger than the distillation market but as I said I don't really understand it.
I know only enough to be dangerous and precious little else - typical of anyone that can read but has no first-hand experience.

There is tons of info but... but... but... I have all the reasons to procrastinate. I need to learn how to make a quality beer to be able to take the next step up the ladder. There is a homebrew professor in Shanghai that I need to make my BFF and I'll probably need to buy some equipment. This is going to be a learning experience as I go from moron to semi-competence.

I don't enjoy publicly admitting how stupid I am about making all grain beer but until I am confident to do it I can't help develop products for it. All grain is a learning curve for me.

Tan does not drink a drop but somehow I must get her interested else this dies a quick death because going to Shanghai to be with my new BFF will take her being interested too.

(And in my distilling mind I'm thinking forget the hops because I'll distill the "beer" anyway. Stinking thinking?)

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Comments

  • edited September 2014

    YES! All grain brewing SD style will be a beautiful thing. I've already got a flurry of potential products in my head for this...

    To the last question first, yes, hoppy beer distilled isn't want you want, however it is what some people want. I've distilled many commercial beers left over from office parties or just for giggles. Some of the hoppy varieties leave a "tinge" that just doesn't go well.

    Since you can/will distill it, you can start with very simple recipes of just 2 row, basically just making alcohol from grain:

    • Step 1: Heat water
    • Step 2: Steep Grain
    • Step 3: Drain Wort
    • Step 4: Boil Wort
    • Step 5: Cool Wort
    • Step 6: Pitch Yeast

    If you're simply doing this to distill it, you don't need to boil it for long since that steps is mainly used to extract hop oils, usually 15minutes will do.

    Overall time is greatly dependent on the time it takes to heat the water and then cool the wort, so the more power the better.

    The process can be simple, or you can make it infinitely complex with various temp steps, times, sparge styles, etc.

    After years of an evolving brew system, I've landed firmly with a HERMS. With the space, this is great way to go. Here's a cool example: http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/

    For an apartment sized system, a single vessel system utilizing Brew in a Bag (BIAB) is worth a look. A single vessel to heat the water, steep the grain, drain the grain (pull the bag up with a pulley), boil the wort, cool it, and ferment it... it would be awesome. Some local brewers use this method with a no-chill technique where they simple put a good lid on it after boil, let it cool down to pitch temps (12-24 hours) and then pitch the yeast and let it ferment.

    Picture a conical with a full open lid like Blichmann's, but add a port or jacket for a heating element.

    image

    This could be a great start to a whole new lineup:

    Beer Dragon
    Mash Dragon
    etc.

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  • edited September 2014

    Brewing beer for distilling is much easier than brewing beer for drinking. Many of the flaws associated with brewing are irrelevant to distillers. But that said, if you can brew a good beer, you are well on your way to being a great distiller.

    All-grain brewing is easier if you eliminate the need to do a cereal mash (boiling) on the grains that need higher temps and longer times to gelatinize (corn). Using pregelatinized corn, rye, oats, wheat make it easier to learn.

    From my perspective, the most important implements are an accurate thermometer, and an accurate pH meter. Doesn't matter if you have a mash tun, bucket, cooler, big pot, small pot, keg, etc. If you can't control and manage temp and pH effectively, you'll struggle.

    Also think it is significantly easier if you ferment on the grain as a beginner. Why? The potential for infection is significantly lower, and there is potential for getting higher yield. This is a big crutch.

    Folks that try to do an all-grain bourbon with cereal mash as their first all-grain are usually disappointed, and no wonder why.

    First mash? Should always be a single malt barley, pre-crushed. Nothing fancy. You don't need to calculate whether you have appropriate diastatic potential, managing temps are easier.

    Here is a recipe for an all-grain mash that will be hard to screw up.

    Requirements:

    10 gallons water

    Drill and Mixer Attachment

    20 pounds malt (Base barley malt - if you don't know, just use a pale malt).

    Lactic or Citric Acid

    Accurate Thermometer

    Accurate pH meter

    Yeast Nutrient (DAP, Fermawhatever) - Use label dosage

    Instructions:

    Big pot on a burner, 10 gallons water.

    Start heating, put your mixer in the water.

    Lower pH to 6 by pouring in very small amounts of citric or lactic acid and mixing. Always keep your mixer in the pot, we need to keep it as sterile as possible.

    Once you get to 155F, turn off heat.

    Wait until temperature starts to drop.

    Once temp drops to 152F, drop 20 pounds malt barley.

    Mix with drill, 1-2 minutes.

    Take pH reading, adjust to 5.2 with lactic or citric and mixing.

    Cover. Throw a blanket over the pot. Have a beer.

    Come back in an hour, mix for 1-2 minutes.

    Cover. Throw a blanket over the pot. Have a beer.

    Come back in an hour, mix for 1-2 minutes.

    After about 3 hours of mixing and drinking, you are done. Why wait? Because I'm not saying to take a gravity measurement, we'll assume we get what we need with time.

    Remove blanket, put a big fan on the pot. Now we need to lower the temperature. Do not put your fingers in, do not put anything in. Use the fan, open the lid a crack, mix occasionally. We are doing it the hard way because we want to keep it as sterile as possible. And please keep your tongue, mouth, and fingers away.

    Hopefully it is cold enough, be patient.

    Once you get to 80F, pitch your nutrient and yeast. Yes, in the same container. You will use your big ass pot as your fermenter as well. Why? Sanitation. Too easy for a beginner to blow this with an infection. If you want to buy an insurance policy at this point, add a small splash of Glucoamylase.

    Keep the fan on it until you get into the mid 70s.

    Walk away for at least 3 days. Don't peek.

    Done - Strain using a paint strainer bag (check your local hardware store). This will be sloppy and messy. Do not attempt to "clear" anything, no fining agents, no temperature crashing. Just get the big stuff out. Yeast will not be a problem.

    Run it!

    I'll guarantee success here, if you can't get good hooch, I'll pay you back for your grain.

  • edited September 2014

    You don't need conical fermenters, insulated mash tuns, any kind of lauter/sparge rig, airlocks, you need no fancy equipment at all.

    The drill will destroy the hulls and create lots of particulate - this is a problem in beer - this is ideal for us, higher efficiency. It will also ensure the beer is well oxygenated, a problem in beer, not for us.

    Extended soak times will extract additional tannins - this is a problem in beer - this means high efficiency for us

    Using Lactic/Citric to adjust pH is frowned upon in beer - but is ideal for us - higher enzyme efficiency and antibacterial

    Fermenting on grain isn't even possible for most beer styles - but it is ideal for us - higher efficiency and yield, some argue better flavor

    Using Glucoamylase as a crutch is not possible in beer, but is cheap insurance for us - it means saccharification will continue during fermentation. Even if you didn't get good conversion in the pot.

    Extended cooling times are not ideal, but for a beginner it's easier to do it this way than deal with wort chillers, adding ice or additional cold water, etc. This increases risk of infection however.

    Don't even bother trying to measure gravity, or doing iodine starch tests, etc. Who cares what the gravities are, you can't change them.

    If you somehow screw up, you'll get about 5% abv in the wash, if you do well you'll have a bit more than 6%. If you can't cut, cut very conservatively and you should get a full liter of product at 40% (nothin' but the heart of hearts). You are now in possession of probably the best unaged single malt whiskey you'll ever drink.

  • @grim said: You don't need conical fermenters, insulated mash tuns, any kind of lauter/sparge rig, airlocks, you need no fancy equipment at all.

    The drill will destroy the hulls and create lots of particulate - this is a problem in beer - this is ideal for us, higher efficiency. It will also ensure the beer is well oxygenated, a problem in beer, not for us.

    Extended soak times will extract additional tannins - this is a problem in beer - this means high efficiency for us

    Using Lactic/Citric to adjust pH is frowned upon in beer - but is ideal for us - higher enzyme efficiency and antibacterial

    Fermenting on grain isn't even possible for most beer styles - but it is ideal for us - higher efficiency and yield, some argue better flavor

    Using Glucoamylase as a crutch is not possible in beer, but is cheap insurance for us - it means saccharification will continue during fermentation. Even if you didn't get good conversion in the pot.

    Extended cooling times are not ideal, but for a beginner it's easier to do it this way than deal with wort chillers, adding ice or additional cold water, etc. This increases risk of infection however.

    Don't even bother trying to measure gravity, or doing iodine starch tests, etc. Who cares what the gravities are, you can't change them.

    If you somehow screw up, you'll get about 5% abv in the wash, if you do well you'll have a bit more than 6%. If you can't cut, cut very conservatively and you should get a full liter of product at 40% (nothin' but the heart of hearts). You are now in possession of probably the best unaged single malt whiskey you'll ever drink.

    Grim if you could figure a way to say that 4 different ways please ? :)

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Leave it to grim to completely over complicate the "simple recipe"

  • @Lloyd: See, they are already starting to create names for the new stuff. :))

    StillDragon Europe - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Europe & the surrounding area

  • We really do want to put together a sort of standardized mashing suite for a distillers beer that can be scaled from say a 7 bbl quantity to a 20 bbl volume.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • One barrel equals 31.5 gallons US... so 200 GALLONS TO 700 gallons or there abouts Larry?

  • Yes, we are talking about smallish pro set ups.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Nice.... I offer to help... My friend and I built a 2-bbl tippy-dump system about 10 years ago... brewmobile

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  • Thanks guys, I'd like to give @grim's recipe a whirl so put feelers out today to find the barley malt. I don't have a big ole pot but do have a boiler and SS conical fermenter. So adding near-boiling water to the sanitized fermenter and following the rest of the instructions should get me there?

  • You need to mash at about 65C to get fermentability mate download Brewmate and just plug the numbers in. It does all the work for you, tells you how much water at what temp to put in to get the amount of alcohol out that you want

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • Hey Lloyd - remember - if Punkin can learn to make AG beer so can you. :))

    Have a read of John Palmers "how to brew" - it'll teach you heaps & get you going.

    http://homebrewmanual.com/brew-in-a-bag/ shows you step by step how to do BIAB. another page on that site http://homebrewmanual.com/make-your-own-beer/ also gives you some great simple to understand info & introduction.

    As one of the others said - you don't need a lot of kit you'll have most already, I like to have lots of 20l buckets on hand - they are useful for all sorts of things on brew day. You can also drill a squillion holes in one to use as a mash tun (search bucket in bucket) or a to strain your mash instead of making a dedicated mash tun (but that is easy enough to do with some SS braid & some basic fittings.

    I could rabbit on for ages about how to make gear, beer, beer judging etc, so feel free to ask me anything beer related.

    beers croz

  • edited September 2014

    So adding near-boiling water to the sanitized fermenter and following the rest of the instructions should get me there?

    Sure, good idea to sanitize everything, but be patient until the water in the fermenter cools to 152F/66C before you add the grain, and don't jump the gun. Mixing in the conical fermenter might be a little bit more challenging, since I suspect you might get a plug of grain at the bottom.

    That simple recipe will make a good unpeated/smoked single malt, but it will make a piss poor beer.

  • I have serious misgivings about exploring big beer because it is a distraction to my near 100% attention of servicing the SD distilling gig. If I get side-tracked the distilling side could suffer. "Could" is polite because this is such a reach I could easily screw up big time.
    As Larry said, the focus for him is 10 bbl batches - not 5 gallons.
    Its like I need to leap frog past the basics and be adept in the Pro beer brewery dynamics where 1000 gallons+ per batch of beer needs to be made from raw malt to beer in fermenters. With all the equipment necessary to pull that off.

    I am not fluent in such things.
    I know there are ready buyers for turnkey big breweries but I don't have the expertise.
    I could screw this up so bad I could be distracted from SD distilling for months.

    SD was built up slowly, one part at a time and everything made sense to me. Plunging into big beer makes my knees shake.

  • Grim, any time that you can talk about the procedural differences between brewing up a drinking beer vs a distillers beer please do.

    Including cooking techniques used in the open mash cookers often seen in use by the big boy whiskey makers compared to the closed vessel cookers often seen in a brewery.

    Thanks dude.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • I cannot ever see the reason for an open mash cooker by design... where are these you talk about?

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  • edited September 2014

    There really is little difference between the existing pot belly boilers and the larger cereal cookers shown above.

    Steam Jacket - Check

    Chimney (If you want to use it as an exhaust) - Check - Just use the TC flange at the top and feed it into your wet scrubber, exhaust etc.

    Manway - Check - maybe slightly larger would be better

    Two CIP Ports at the top - Check

    Agitator - Check - but it might need to be upsized to deal with stiffer liquids.

    Most budget shops will simply use any ol' steam jacket process tank with an agitator.

  • getting grain out... either with the liquid into a fermenter or lautering from the same vessel... those seem to be the biggies...

  • Yeah your approach is going to be very different if you are lautering, a vessel like that would make no sense at all.

    But with a 2" TC port and a positive displacement pump, no problem moving the mash to a fermenter.

    At that scale, why bother lautering?

  • ok, then we will need to lauter or have a liquid solid separator after the still, correct? at some point you still need to separate for solid waste disposal...

  • edited September 2014

    So my thoughts on this are colored by the recent FDA related discussions on stillage used for animal feed.

    Assuming that the FDA will continue to go down this path, I think post-distillation separation is going to be the more appropriate approach. Mainly because the wash will be nearly sterile after 4+ hours boiling in the still boiler, you've destroyed any potential microbiological component. If you lauter pre-fermentation, your wet grains may contain microbiological contaminants in addition to a higher level of residual sugar. Ripe for spoilage, molds, fermentation by wild yeasts, etc.

    Assuming you can separate in a sanitary fashion, you could load your wet grains into sanitized totes or hdpe barrels for storage and pickup. You should be able to get a much longer shelf-life, since you've minimized any mechanisms for spoilage.

  • so separations still has to happen at some point is what I was trying to say, and it has to be part of the equipment for a distiller brewing their own beer 7+ bbls at a time....

  • If only we could bring down the cost of a Braumeister

  • If only SD did some sort of modular thing like that. I would have one.

  • Been done.

    http://www.grainfather.com/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO68EQS39zw

    Suppossed to retail for a grand plus 500 for the still lid.

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • Would look great with a baby dragon on top of it.

  • make something in between:

    image

    This 10 Gallon System https://brewmagic.com/

    and this:

    image

    This 10BBL system premierstainless.com/breweries.html

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  • edited September 2014

    The report on that is interesting Punkin. More basic than a BM but way faster and sub 1K. The real worry is that it is made by the kiwis who made that dodgy all in one brewery. Hope they make a 50 litre version.

  • Mash Cooker Manufacturers @ ADI

    points to a mash tun made in china for Glacier: MT-10-BBL-STEAM-MTR-COMMERCIAL- Mash Tun 10 BBL Commercial Steam & Motor

    which pretty much looks like the one SD sells: Steam Jacketed Mash Tun

    I plan on buying one along with a larger boiler and column when we get selling and have revenue to support it...

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