German Brewing

Hey guys. First - thanks for the paper. It is quite interesting.

A question RE the boil. You state in the Helles paper that a softer boil is needed, I believe you quote less than 10% evaporation. My system tends to boil hard - about 1.5 gallons per hour evaporation - clearly harder than the recommendation.

Where are you falling relative to length of boil? The collective home brewing wisdom is that you need to boil 75-90 minutes with any pils centric grist. With a krausened fermentation, and a long lager period, are you boiling "gently" for 60 minutes? I realize this impacts FWH, and bittering utilization dramatically... Also - are you bringing the boil to a hard roil initially and backing off? or sneaking up on it?

I typically brew to 11-12 gallons, and it takes a full 30-40 minute to achieve hot break, full roil follows in a few minutes. My FWH are in during the full lauter (~45 minutes) so I want to adjust appropriately, maybe shortening the FWH contact time.

Generally, as you soften your boil you need to extend your boil time, but 60-75 min is adequate. You definitely want to sneak up on it, which you will notice reduces the amount of foaming and break you observe upfront. You'll inevitably hit full boil and have to dial it back, until you learn your system at those temps. Don't worry about it, just get back down as fast as you can. I would't worry about 45 min of FWH, it's actually quite amazing lodo.

If you have a thermapen, or something similar, dial your boil in at 208-210F and observed how much you boil off in 60 min and 75 min, then adjust you efficiency and volumes to that boil-off rate.

Also, if you do a decoction, it helps dissipate SMM, so there's not as great a need for a longer boil. I've been boiling all my decocted beers for only 70 minutes for a couple of years now and have had no DMS issues.

Thanks. I regularly calibrate temps with my thermopen.

The system sucks for decoction - mostly because of the height and keggle configuration. I can step mash with very fine control however. I have had butter bomb BoPils, which I think is more yeast and fermentation derived in this case... or missteps in cooling. I haven't seen it with WLP838 through 3 pitches.

I may need to replace the BK burner regulator or a valve for finer control. It is essentially full on or off. I might consider switching to NG as the pressure here is way lower.

We don't recommend you decoction mash, unless you've got a mash pump, bottom filling kettles, and nitrogen gas inlets on your vessels. Alternatively, you could keep the entire system closed and pressurized and use steam to purge everything.

Following the process from the document is a lot easier and safer!

You have to let the malt analysis dictate what mash you employ. Sometimes it is a decoction (under stringent oxidation controls), but most times it will not be. Be versed in all the methods so you can execute them, of course, but let the specific batch of malt tell you what mash is required. A standard German mash scheme for evaluating barley strains, crop/harvest, malting, etc. is 40 min @ 62C, 10 min to ramp to 72C, 30 min @ 72C, 4 min to ramp to 76C, then finally rest 10 min @ 76C.

Got it. BestMalz Heidelberg is well modified despite its light color, but I know a few folks in Austin that decoct it. With this malt, I typically grain in at 130F/54C and immediately ramp to 144F/62C for a 45-60 minute rest, then ramp to 160F/71C for 45 minutes and mash out. Extract efficiency is usually near 90% with circulation. Not sure if that will fall a bit with a slower circulation - I am guessing it won't. The 130F grain-in is to help hydrolyze the (coarse) milled grain and prevent clumping, not necessarily intended as a protein rest. The ramp is short - about 7 minutes, and lets me sneak up to 144F, and softly set the grainbed.

The grist is the baseline recipe I posted on my Brewing up a Helles post on Reddit.

For reference: http://www.bestmalz.de/en/malts/best-heidelberg/

Looks great. Are you measuring DO in your normal brewing method, or are you trying lodo?

I am. I have been trying to troubleshoot some astringency, which is suspect is from a slight oversparge, and possibly oxidation cold side. Once I got the meter - decided I might as well use it hot side as well.

Which one are you testing?