Dry Hopping for the first time, wonder about clarity

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Bill · #1 Post by **Bill** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:20 pm

I'm doing an IPA and I have never dry hopped before.
I think I have always had issues with having 'clear' beers and to be honest, I never really cared, but this time, I'm concerned due to the dry hop.
I'm adding 1 oz of Irish Moss (per recipe) and I know that is a clarifier, but what else can I do? I chill using an immersion chiller (20 foot of copper) and it can take between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on the temperature of the day.
I know that a CFC or another set of copper to pre-chill the water in an ice bath will decrease my chill time, but what can I do w/ my current set up?
My basement is a constant 69 degrees year round and I have no way to ?crash? the beer in a freezer/fridge. Is what I?m currently doing the best I can do?

Recipe is:

4# 2 row
4# American wheat
4# American Munich
?# Special B
?# Biscuit
?# Aromatic

1 oz Centennial (60 mins)
? oz Fuggle (50 mins)
? oz Fuggle (30 mins)
1 oz Irish Moss (15 mins)
1 oz Fuggle dry hop in secondary

did a 20 min protien rest @ 122, 40 minute mash @ 149 with a sparge of 178.
I only got a OG 1.051 and recipe stated 1.074. Any ideas why I could have been so far off? My grist looked good.
Was my mash temp too low to extract the sugars?

Blktre · #2 Post by **Blktre** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:08 am

Bill,

Ive heard from other IM chiller users that they prechill their cooling water in a ice bath (another copper coil) before it reaches the wert chiller. Might try that. Your experincing what the rest of us have to deal with as well. Maybe pack your brew kettle in a ice bath while chilling may work too.

I wouldnt worry about dry hops and clarity. I would advise to secondary for a week or so to let your batch clean up itself before adding your dryhops. If you dryhop for more than 3-4 days, that grassy funk taste hangs around forever. This way you can get your batch cleaned up and control the time your dryhopping for the aroma/flavor your looking for w/o getting all that grass stuff going on.

I havent plugged in your recipe into PM yet but you shoulda gotten a higher OG from just looking at it. I will say this tho, there is no reason to do a step mash. Almost all of the malts available today are so well modified that step mashing isnt needed and in some cases can cause problems if you do step mash. Can you describe in detail how you mashed. Did you stir alot? Added lots of water, etc. How are you measuring mash temps? Im assuming you batch sparged from our previous talks. You milled by hand or by drill?

Bill · #3 Post by **Bill** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 12:26 pm

Blktre wrote:Did you stir alot?

I stirred after the 20 min protein rest (which was in the mash schedule, so I thought I would try it)
Then I added 7 quarts of 197degree water (per ProMash mash designer) to achieve the 147 degree mash temp (per recipe). Let it sit for 25 mins, stirred, let sit for another 15 mins.
I sparged with 178 degree water.

Blktre wrote:Added lots of water, etc.

I did have to add more water than expected. I'm not familiar with how much water is absorbed into the grains, and I found that I need to have a little under 7 gals of water to end up with just at 5 gals of final wort.

Blktre wrote:How are you measuring mash temps?

I'm using the same digital thermo you saw when I was over at your place. I would plant that probe into to center of the mash after stirring to even out the temp and close the lid. At first I was worried because the temp was too low, but patience prevailed as by the end of the 20 min protein rest (which I won't use again btw) the temp stabilized to 122.2
Did the same thing for the mash

Blktre wrote:Im assuming you batch sparged from our previous talks.

Yep, but I would have to say that this is probably where I had my problems. I wasn't close to getting my final pre-boil volume of 6? to 7 gals by using what I thought to be correct with the '? volume in first sparge, other ? volume for mash out'.
I was short on water, and not wanting to have to remove the wort kettle from the burner, put my boil kettle (yes, I bought the keggle from John, he took $60 for the whole setup) back on the burner to heat the already existing water back up, I just continued to sparge with what I had left, of which I'm not sure of the temp, but was probably only was 145 - 150 at best.

Blktre wrote:You milled by hand or by drill?

By hand.
I milled all but the wheat through once, and then added the wheat for the 2nd mill. I ran a handful of wheat through by itself and felt that a double grind on the wheat would have just pulverized it, and I didn't think that would be what I wanted.
I thought that the grist looked good. I didn't change a thing since we dialed it in.

There beer tastes fine, so I'm happy with that, but I'm learning that I'm going to be a tweaker with this craft. Uh oh.

Blktre · #4 Post by **Blktre** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 1:40 pm

Your practice seems sound. Just a matter of getting your volumes dialed in. A question i didnt ask what was your preboil volume and gravity? How much volume made it to the fermentor?

Also, you said you ran the wheat thru on 1 pass using a wide setting but the wheat looked like a decent grind. Wheat is a small kernal so maybe passing the wheat thru a second time would of helped. I know you may of been scared of a stuck sparge, but with all the other grain in there, it shouldnt of effected it to much if it was milled more.....again, playing with your mill and rpm's can be tricky with different sized malts. Thats why i run thru twice on a wide setting cuz my mill has no detent. Im leaning towards grind on the wheat.....oh, i also heat more strike water and sparge water that a recipe calls for just in case i may need it if something screwy happened.

Bill · #5 Post by **Bill** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 1:52 pm

I had a final pre-boil volume of a little less than 7 gallons, but that is only because I pushed the last of my HL water in. I didn't check the gravity of the wort pre-boil. I did check the gravity of the mash and I was around 1.020 when I stopped my sparge, of course this wasn't read until the sample got down to 60 degress, which took 25 minutes w/ the wort tube in a cup of water in the freezer. I had already started my wort boil by that time.
Maybe I should drop the $60 and get a refractometer so I don't have to wait for the wort to cool to get an accurate gravity reading.
I was over at Shane's last night and described what happened to him and one thing I said to him that I haven't mentioned here yet is that I let the mashtun run empty, then I added more water without stirring. So I'm sure that is where my issue happened. I let the mash compact down which probably caused channeling of the subsequent sparge water.

Thanks for all the help, and your questions are showing me where the 'usual suspects' are for my crappy gravties. I think I will stick with lower gravities (1.040 to 1.050) until I get them down as the Burning Barrel Stout I did Monday before last was right on target (est. OG 1.046 actual 1.043, est FG 1.012 actual 1.014).

Blktre · #6 Post by **Blktre** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 10:33 am

Bill wrote: Maybe I should drop the $60 and get a refractometer so I don't have to wait for the wort to cool to get an accurate gravity reading.

Makes my life tons easier!

Thanks for all the help, and your questions are showing me where the 'usual suspects' are for my crappy gravties. I think I will stick with lower gravities (1.040 to 1.050) until I get them down as the Burning Barrel Stout I did Monday before last was right on target (est. OG 1.046 actual 1.043, est FG 1.012 actual 1.014).

Your on your way to figuring things out. We all had to learn our equipment and technique. I think your beer geeked enuff to figure it out!