#18 - Ronk Torpedo [All Grain]

As I mentioned in brew #17, I got a lot of brewing presents for Christmas and this enabled me to buy the necessary equipment to transition to all grain brewing. My previous brew kettle was too small for full boils so I got a new boiler, mash tun and wort chiller. 

New All Grain Equipment and Ingredients

Another of my favourite beers is the Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA. It has a relatively high alcohol content so can only really be drank sparingly. I only ever buy it as a treat or as the last beer of the night for 'dessert'. I found a clone for this recipe on one of the American brewing forums but I think that recipe is originally from BYO.

Mashing the grain

I first started by heating my strike water in the boiler and got all my grains ready. I poured 3 litres of boiling water from the kettle into the mash-tun to preheat it so that there wasn't too much of a temperature loss. 

Once my strike water was ready I emptied the mash tun and poured in the water. I then started adding the grain slowly while stirring frequently to ensure there weren't any dough balls or clumping of the grain. Once it was all added I gave it a good stir from the bottom to the top and into the corners to ensure an even temperature distribution. 

I then checked the temperature in each of the 4 corners and in the middle and the temperature was approximately 68 Degrees C (~153 degrees F).  I poured boiling water on the inside of the mash-tun lid which had cooled down in the mean time and closed the box. I put a folded heavy blanked over the box to ensure better insulation, this proved to be a useful addition as quite a lot of heat could be felt when putting my hand in between the blanked and the lid. 

Checking Mash Temperature

After a half an hour I checked the temperature of the mash and again after an hour. It didn't lose any more than 1 degree C/F over the mashing period. I was quite happy with this result as I would often read about brewers losing several degrees over the duration of their mash. 

I first got a jug, opened the tap slightly and began vorlaufing the first runnings. BeerSmith indicated that an initial sparge of 1 litre would be necessary using this liquid. Impressively it was quite accurate, as soon as I had accumulated 800ml of water, the wort had cleared sufficiently. I then gently (so not to disturb the grain bed) added this liquid back into the mash as it was quite cloudy and contained lumps of grain. 

I then opened the tap again to drain the first runnings into my old brew pot. I couldn't drain it into my boiler as it was in the process of heating the sparge water. Once the they were drained I closed the tap and emptied the sparge water into the mash-tun as I was doing a batch sparge as opposed to fly sparging. I have the mash a good stir from top to bottom to ensure all the grain got well mixed to wash out any residual sugars. 

First Runnings in the Boiler

The photo opposite shows the boiler containing the first runnings from the mash-tun. I left the sparge water to sit in the mash-tun for another 20minutes before collecting the rest of the wort and adding it to the boiler. 

The final boiling volume was just over 26 litres with about 3 litres being lost to evaporation and 4 lost to break material left in the end of the boiler. After finding the pre-boil gravity I found my mash efficiency to be about 61% which I was relatively happy with given that it was my first attempt at all grain. I will probably add an extra 500g of grain in future to counteract this inefficiency.  

This was my third brew in 3 days and yesterday I made an extract brew. The difference in the smell of the wort from grain compared to malt extract is unbelievable. The smell was fantastic and seemed very fresh. The whole process of mashing and boiling seemed physically cleaner overall as there was no messing around with grain bags for steeping or malt extract spilling all over the place. Usually the kitchen was a sticky mess after an extract brew but not after the all grain brew. All this was contained within the mash tun which was the only messy additional item to clean. Cleaning it in the bath seemed the easiest thing to do as I could use the shower head to wash down the sides etc.....

Ginger Beer, Ronk Island IPA and Ronk Torpedo IPA

The post boil gravity of the wort was 1071 so I would expect an alcohol content of at least 8% if the beer attenuates down to 1010 as it should with the WLP001 liquid yeast. The adjacent image shows the 3 brews from the last 3 days. I added a blow-off tube to the last brew as all grain batches are apparently known for their vigorous fermentations and the fermentation bucket is also quite small.

This recipe can be seen below:

Recipe: Ronk Torpedo IPA TYPE: All Grain
Style: American IPA
---RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS-----------------------------------------------
SRM: 19.0 EBC SRM RANGE: 11.8-29.6 EBC
IBU: 64.2 IBUs Tinseth IBU RANGE: 40.0-70.0 IBUs
OG: 1.068 SG OG RANGE: 1.056-1.075 SG
FG: 1.014 SG FG RANGE: 1.010-1.018 SG
BU:GU: 0.946 Calories: 427.1 kcal/l Est ABV: 7.1 %
EE%: 62.00 % Batch: 19.00 l      Boil: 26.21 l BT: 60 Mins
Total Grain Weight: 6.80 kg Total Hops: 148.00 g oz.
---MASH/STEEP PROCESS------MASH PH:5.40 ------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
6.00 kg               Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (5.9 EBC)          Grain         1        88.2 %        
0.50 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC)    Grain         2        7.4 %         
0.15 kg               Munich Malt (17.7 EBC)                   Grain         3        2.2 %         
0.15 kg               Wheat Malt, Ger (3.9 EBC)                Grain         4        2.2 %         
Name              Description                  Step Temperature  Step Time       
Mash In           Add 20.23 l of water at 72.5 66.7 C            60 min          
---SPARGE PROCESS---
>>>>>>>>>>-RECYCLE FIRST RUNNINGS & VERIFY GRAIN/MLT TEMPS: 22.2 C/60.0 C
Batch sparge with 2 steps (0.93l, 14.35l) of 75.6 C water
---BOIL PROCESS-----------------------------
Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.057 SG Est OG: 1.068 SG
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
35.00 g               Magnum [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min         Hop           5        53.5 IBUs     
0.25 tsp              Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins)              Fining        6        -             
28.00 g               Crystal [3.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min          Hop           7        2.1 IBUs      
28.00 g               Magnum [14.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min          Hop           8        8.5 IBUs      
---FERM PROCESS-----------------------------
Primary Start: 01/01/2012 - 4.00 Days at 19.4 C
Secondary Start: 05/01/2012 - 10.00 Days at 19.4 C
Style Carb Range: 2.20-2.70 Vols
---NOTES------------------------------------
Mash at 67 C,Ferment at 20 C,Dry hop for 10 days to 2 weeks

#17 - Ronk Island IPA [Extract]

My favourite type of beer at the moment is the IPA (India Pale Ale). I like it because it is relatively light in terms of malt flavour and heavy in terms of hop bittering and aroma. One brand of commercial IPA which has got my attention again and again is Goose Island IPA. I decided to make a clone of this beer using a modified extract recipe from one of the American brewing websites. It was modified due to availability of hops and grain in my main home brew supplier.  

Ingredients for Kit, Extract and All Grain Brews

Over Christmas I got plenty of brewing equipment and vouchers so I decided to finally make the transition to All Grain brewing.

This brew would probably be my last extract brew before I exclusively transition to all grain. The adjacent photo shows the ingredients for 3 brews (1016, 1017 and 1018) and pretty much represents my progress in learning brewing over the last 8 months.

Yeast Starter, Irish Moss and Hops

I made a yeast starter for this brew using Danstar Nottingham yeast. I made this with a small amount of malt extract and hops. The dust from the pellet hops can actually be seen on the krausen on top of the starter. 

I boiled the brew with my new boiler which is just a fermenter bucket with a 2kW (240V) kettle element and a hop strainer. The 2kW element is sufficient to achieve a good rolling boil but it takes quite a while to reach this point. A great improvement would be the addition of a second element to speed up the boiling process and then turn it off once a rolling boil starts. This addition would save nearly an hour on brew-day! The hop strainer consists of a copper pipe covered in holes which is then connected to a tap in the side of the boiler. This strainer simply does not work if pellet hops are used, I tried to use it and not even a drop came out it was blocked too badly. It works perfectly when only leaf hops are used. 

Steeping Grains

 The recipe calls for 3 different types of grain, 2 of which need to be mashed (Wheat and Munich Malt) and 1 which only needs to be steeped (Crystal). The recipe doesn't say that they need to be mashed so they are really only contributing some flavour. I decided to try and get a bit of conversion going and left all the grain steeping for an hour at approximately 67 degrees C (152 degrees F). 

As can be seen from the photo, the colour is beginning to change due to the contribution from the crystal grains. I found that the other grains were making the beer cloudy more than anything else which was probably mainly starch as there was not enough base grain for a good conversion to take place.  

Once the grains were steeped for an hour I brought the wort back up to boiling and started the timer for the hop additions. The hops were added as per schedule along with the Irish moss. I think I added too much Irish moss as there was a huge amount of break material generated while the wort was cooling. As stated earlier, the hop strainer was instantly blocked from the volume of material which must have taken up between 4 and 5 litres at the bottom of the boiler. I siphoned out the wort into the fermenter and it eventually got blocked once the wort drained to the same level as the break material. I got 18 litres instead of the anticipated 19 litres so I have updated the boiler losses in BeerSmith to take this into account.

The recipe for this brew can be found below:
Recipe: Ronk Island IPA TYPE: Extract    Style: American IPA

---RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS-----------------------------------------------
SRM: 21.6 EBC SRM RANGE: 11.8-29.6 EBC
IBU: 66.0 IBUs Tinseth IBU RANGE: 40.0-70.0 IBUs
OG: 1.060 SG OG RANGE: 1.056-1.075 SG
FG: 1.014 SG FG RANGE: 1.010-1.018 SG
BU:GU: 1.093 Calories: 427.1 kcal/l Est ABV: 6.1 %
EE%: 70.00 % Batch: 19.00 l      Boil: 26.21 l BT: 60 Mins
Total Grain Weight: 4.20 kg Total Hops: 105.00 g oz.
---MASH/STEEP PROCESS------MASH PH:5.40 ------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
0.50 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC)    Grain         1        11.9 %        
0.35 kg               Munich Malt (17.7 EBC)                   Grain         2        8.3 %         
0.35 kg               Wheat Malt, Ger (3.9 EBC)                Grain         3        8.3 %         
---SPARGE PROCESS---
Remove grains, and prepare to boil wort
---BOIL PROCESS-----------------------------
Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.050 SG Est OG: 1.060 SG
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
3.00 kg               Light Dry Extract (15.8 EBC)             Dry Extract   4        71.4 %        
37.00 g               Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min     Hop           5        42.7 IBUs     
38.00 g               Fuggles [4.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min         Hop           6        15.2 IBUs     
1.00 tsp              Irish Moss (Boil 20.0 mins)              Fining        7        -             
22.00 g               Fuggles [4.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min         Hop           8        5.7 IBUs      
8.00 g                Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min         Hop           9        2.5 IBUs      
---FERM PROCESS-----------------------------
Primary Start: 01/01/2012 - 4.00 Days at 19.4 C
Secondary Start: 05/01/2012 - 10.00 Days at 19.4 C
Style Carb Range: 2.20-2.70 Vols