- So this is going to be either
an epic video or an epic fail video.
I've wanted to do this for a long time now.
I'm actually going to be using a brew bag
with a Blichmann BoilCoil,
and I hope I don't burn the bag.
How's it going, my name's Brian, welcome to another video.
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So let me tell you what I've got here,
as far as this system goes.
So I've got a Blichmann G2 BoilerMaker
and it is a 20 gallon.
I've got all the standard equipment on that,
got the boil coil mounted,
I've got the standard Blichmann valve on there.
I do have a whirlpool over here, and that is one
of the things that I've kind of wanting to
experiment with is, can I recirculate as well?
I know a lot of people will think that with brewing a bag
you don't really have to recirculate, but I want to.
So, I'm going to do that.
And you know, I've read some stuff online
on forums and whatnot.
Heat your water up, put your bag in,
put your grain in, let it do its thing.
Don't turn the coils on but,
that's no fun, you know, come on. Right?
So we're gonna, we're going to attempt that today.
I've also got a Blichmann Riptide pump down here
just got some Camlock fittings and whatnot.
And then the power of the system
is the Blichmann BrewCommander.
And so I've got that actually hooked into,
it's about the seven gallon mark
in the original BrewMometer hole
where that would go, and I've got the probe hooked up there.
So that's what's going to be controlling our temperature.
And so that's pretty much it.
Now, as far as what I'm brewing today
I'm going to be brewing just a basic brown lager,
got a brother-in-law's birthday party coming up
that I wanted to maybe do a beer for
so I'm going to try to kind of push this one.
It's going to be a pressure lager.
I ferment under pressure, link in the
description below for these shirts, by the way.
As well as everything else that I'm using here
will be linked down below.
The bag, the kettle, the controller, all that stuff, so.
I actually used the Blichmann Grain Mill.
So I know a lot of you
have been asking me about the efficiency on that,
so I'm going to be sharing with you
what I experienced in this particular situation.
Let me go over what the recipe is really quick.
So the batch I'm doing is 11 gallons
or 41.6 liters.
In that mash, I've actually got 20 pounds
of Pilsner malt or nine kilograms.
And then I've got six ounces or 170 grams of Carafa three.
As far as the strike temperature goes
we're going to be, the strike water
temperature is going to be 153.7 or 67.6 Celsius.
And our mass temperature is going to be 148 degrees
or 64.4 Celsius.
I'm using reverse osmosis water.
And so I've got all the water in here, 14 gallons,
and I've already put my brewing salts in.
It was very minimal
cause I'm using a reverse osmosis water and I use kind
of the American light lager profile in Brewfather.
And so I've got all that in there.
I did have to put quite a bit
of lactic acid in there to bring the pH down because
of the fact that there's not a lot of acid in the malts.
And then there's a lot of buffering that goes
on from the amount of water that's in there.
So I had to put like 10 milliliters of lactic acid in there.
So what I'm gonna to do now
I'm just gonna go ahead and shut this off,
shut the pump off, turn the element off,
and I'm going to go ahead and mash in.
Oh one other thing, a quick disclosure on this,
the brew in a bag company did send me the bag
and some of the other things we're going to be using.
We'll go ahead and put the bag in.
And this bag is made specifically for this size of kettle.
Go and get some of the grain in here.
I did actually use the Blichmann Grain Mill
as I said earlier, one of the things that I did do
in the crush, as far as the, the fineness of the crush,
I went a little finer than normal.
I went a little bit less of a gap than what
the optimal crush setting is on the Blichmann Mill.
And I kind of figured that with doing a brew in a bag
I'm not too worried about a stuck mash or, you know
too much flour getting in the beer,
final beer or anything like that.
I mean, always going to be a little bit cloudy
because of the fact that you're not really doing a
big boil off or anything like that with brew in a bag.
But I think this bag is fine enough
that it'll keep most of those
fine particles out of there, so.
Put the rest of our grain in.
And typically,
I would go ahead and let this rest
for about probably 10 minutes or so
before I turned on the recirculation
but I don't want the temperature to drop that much.
Cause we're actually at 148.6 right now.
So I'm actually gonna set the temperature to 148,
our mash temperature here on the Blichmann controller
and we're at like 148.3 right now.
So that's pretty good.
I don't want to have the element kick
on too much because usually when you're doing a
a mash with electric brewing like this
you're going to have the mash, the temperature controller,
and the element just barely clicks on every so often.
If you've seen any of the other videos
or use an electric brewing system, you know what I'm talking
about it doesn't, doesn't do, doesn't stay on for very long.
So I'm actually gonna call that good.
I'm gonna to pull the
slack out of here as much as I think we need to.
So my hose is actually back over here
and I'm gonna pull all the slack out of there.
And then I'm gonna close this down pretty much.
I'm going to be recirculating through the Whirlpool port
and I've got a hose on the Whirlpool port.
I've got it tilted up so that as it
recirculates it's kind of recirculating from the top
and then hopefully kind of recirculating through the grain.
I don't know how well that's going to work
but we'll find out.
So I'm going to go ahead and kick on the pump
and we'll
kick on the element, on auto
and we'll start to circulate here.
We'll see. Now it's going to circulate outside the bag
and hopefully that'll help maintain the temperature
where the temperature probe is, it's about right
in the middle of where the mash is.
So I'm hoping that that will actually work pretty well.
Now the temperature controller,
it's just barely pulsing, just a little bit.
So it doesn't stay on for very long.
And that's kind of why I'm thinking that I'm kind
of thinking this will be successful because of that.
Now I'm not going to do any kind
of a raise for mash out or anything like that.
Cause I don't want to have, I don't want to have the
element on for a long time,
so I'm going to leave it about there.
I got a pretty good little
pretty good little flow around there
and I'm thinking it'll probably, I don't know how much
of a Whirlpool it will do, but we're
we've got the outlet of the Whirlpool back here.
We've got the outlet from the kettle here.
So it's definitely having to go across the kettle, so.
We'll just leave this on
and we'll put a timer on
for 60 minutes
and we'll hit play,
there we go. All right.
So we're at 148 is what we're set at
and we're at 147.1 right now.
So the element is pulsing just a little bit.
So we'll come back here in a few minutes
and we'll take a pH reading and see where we are
with it and we'll let you know how that's going.
All right.
Be back in a few.
All right. So it's been, it's been a little bit more
than 10 minutes just because I was
calibrating my, up here, pH meter.
Think you can see that on there, we are at 5.3.
So that is, oh it actually dropped down to 5.2.
So, might be a little bit
heavy on my lactic acid.
Now it's 5.3.
So. That is exactly what I was targeting.
So it's somewhere between 5.2 and 5.3
which is absolutely perfect.
And I'm going to stir it about every 15 minutes or so.
I just stirred it before I took the pH sample just
to make sure everything was nice and stirred up.
So I'll come back here and just a little bit
and I will stir it again
and we'll show you what it looks like whenever we stir it.
All right, we are halfway through the mash
and everything has been going good so far.
I told you I'd come back,
we'd give it a stir.
So I'm gonna go ahead and give it a stir here
so you can kind of see.
Color is a nice like amber kind of brown,
which is what I was really going for.
Smells really good.
Hopefully you can see that on the camera there.
But, 150 is right in between these two marks right here.
And we are, it looks like right at 148.
So provided this thermometers good,
we are sitting right where we want to be at.
So, we've got our stir done.
Go ahead, and I will come back
whenever I hook up my winch to this eyelet
that I've got here
in the ceiling, and we pull the bag out
and see whether or not the bag is still intact.
So this should be interesting.
All right, now the only thing I got to worry about
is the temperature probe up front here
and we'll see what happens here.
And holy smokes,
we have a bag that is completely intact.
I'll have to come back after I get all the grain
out of it and everything and see
if there's any scorch marks.
But I, at this point I don't see anything
on it that looks scorched.
Oh, one other thing too.
I meant to tell you this earlier
but this is a little foreshadowing, this video.
Because Blichmann, from what I understand
I don't have any of the details on it yet.
Other than I know it's coming.
There is a basket of sorts that Blichmann is working on.
Now I don't know,
I don't have any details on what it's gonna look like,
I don't have any details on how it's gonna work,
whether it's a slotted bottom basket,
or if it's just something to hold the bag
up off of the coil or what,
I don't know. But,
I will say that
this video, I didn't plan it
for that particular thing happening, but as it happened
when I told them what I was going to do
they're like "Oh, hey, we have a basket coming out for that"
So, I'm like.
"Oh! Well that's nice."
Good to know.
So.
Think about got all that here too.
It's pretty,
there's a little bit still coming out, so.
And we are 13 and a half gallons.
I think my Brewfather
calculator said
13.59 gallons I think was the pre-boil volume.
All right, let me get this all done up and then
I'll be back here in a second.
Can't get these gloves off, now they are too slippery.
Okay. I was wrong.
The actual boil volume was supposed to be
12 and a half gallons.
And I wound up with 13 and a half gallons.
I don't know what that is in liters.
I'll put it on the screen here.
And the pre-boil gravity was supposed to be 1.045.
I actually wound up with 1.048 as the, 1.048, 1.049.
I'm gonna say 1.048 to kind of err on the side of caution.
And according to Brewfather
when I put all the numbers in
we are looking at a mash efficiency of 80.64.
So I don't know what the brewhouse efficiency will be yet
but I got an 80.64% mash efficiency out of this.
So I am completely happy.
I'm going to shoot my overshoot, my mark a little bit.
As far as the hops go, I'm going to be doing two ounces
or 56 grams of crystal in the boil.
And that's going to be the only addition, shooting
for about 20 IBU, something
that's a nice, easy drinker.
So I've got it set to boil now,
the coil's at a hundred percent
I'm just waiting on it to come up to boil,
then I'll add my hops, but so far so good.
I didn't empty the bag yet.
We'll do a little closer examination of that.
And for those of you that have been kind of wondering
about that, we've answered the question.
I had the element on the entire time it was recirculating,
I was recirculating at probably about 60% on the pump,
through the Whirlpool port. Had no issue scorching the bag.
So, woo-hoo!
I was really dreading pulling it up
out of there and having grain going everywhere
and having to deal with that mess.
This might just be a little eye opening experience
or information for some of you out there.
So, I'll be back here in just a little bit.
All right, so I got the bag rinsed off and everything.
I want to take a look at it
with you guys to see what we see here.
I got it emptied out, rinsed off.
I don't see, let flip it up so we can see this.
There's the bottom of the bag.
Anything that would have been resting
against the boil coil would be somewhere
in this neighborhood right here.
This almost looks like maybe, I don't know,
It's hard to say for sure.
There's like a little bit of a wrinkle right there.
Let me see if there's any other ones like that,
that could be just the way the bag is made.
I don't see any other ones really.
I'll be honest with you.
Waiting on us to come up to boil
so I can add my hops, but I'm stoked so far.
All right, so we've reached boil and I'm going to go ahead
and add my two ounces or
56 grams of crystal hops
into the boil
and get those stirred in really nice.
I'm gonna be pressure fermenting
in the Blichmann G4, conical fermentor.
I know a lot of you've been waiting
for my first ferment in that device.
So I'm going to be doing that as well.
Look for that to be coming up pretty soon
I'm going to be using Lallemand Diamond Lager yeast
which in the past I've used
for lagers and it's really, really good.
I will let this boil and I'll come back when I'm done
and let you know what the results are after the boil
and my final thoughts and everything on this method.
Cause I tell you what, I really have liked it so far
but I'll come back with my final thoughts at the end here.
Once we get everything in the fermentor and all that stuff.
So, see you soon.
Ended up with just under 12 gallons in the kettle
and probably about 11 and a half in the fermentor.
I left a little bit behind when the batch was over,
I dropped in the jaded Skilla
or Skilla shiller, whatever Skilla Chiller, got it
down to about 75 degrees, shut off the cooling, pulled the
the chiller out and it continued to drop down to about 72.
Transferred it over to the Blichmann G4 fermentor,
and pitched my Lallemand Diamond yeast.
Two packs, no re hydration, no starter, no nothing.
I preset my spunding valve,
the Blichmann TriClamps spunding valve that comes
with the G4 or that's available for the G4,
set it to about 13, 14 PSI.
So I will let that just build its own pressure.
I get asked that quite often, you know,
do I put pressure in it from the start?
Do I let it build its own pressure?
Generally I let it build its own pressure.
I kind of think, and I don't have any
scientific research to back this up,
but I think that it's less stressful
on the yeast to just start,
and start the fermentation and then build its own pressure
and then deal with the pressure as it goes.
So, let me know what you think of the experiment.
Is this something that you might want to try doing?
One of the recommendations I would say is
probably would not ramp up to mash out.
I'm afraid that ramping up would probably leave the element
on too long and it might actually scorch the bag.
I don't know for sure, but I just kind of surmise that
but I didn't have any issues
with efficiency or anything like that.
So I'm happy with how that turned out.
But, this has been Brian for Short Circuited Brewers.
We'll see you in the next video.