Munich Dunkle

[Jon]

Well, I have some harvested W-34/70 from my last Mr. Beer-batch (GBCP + steeping grains) that I bottled a week ago, so I figured it was a good time to use it up.

Water: I'm using about 5.75 gallons of RO water + 2.25 gallons of my tap water, treated with a sliver of a campden tab to neutralize the chloramine in my water. I mashed with the tap water + 1.75 gallons RO, and will sparge with 4~ish gallons of RO, slightly acidified with 88% lactic acid to minimize tannin extraction (note to self: get a pH meter).

Grain bill:
8.5 lbs Munich 10L
1 lb C-40
4 oz Victory
5 oz Pale Chocolate

60' mash @ 152*
10-20' mash-out @ 169* (or maybe longer, if the mashout step hits when Game of Thrones is on!)

60' boil
1/2~ish oz Columbus or other high AA hop @ 60' or FWH--I haven't decided yet.
1 oz Hallertauer @ flameout

I'm going to try really hard to get it cooled to pitching temps, but honestly...if I can get it sub 70* with my pre-chiller and the CFC, I'll be pretty happy.

I plan to use a quick lager process...let it ferment at 50-55* for 4-5 days, then start bumping the ambient temp up by 5* or so a day, until ambient is at 65*...then I'll let it ride there until a day or two before kegging, when I'll take it out of the wine fridge and set it on top so it can settle a bit before I siphon it to the keg.

I'm contemplating fining it with gelatin in the keg, just to speed things up even more...our household consumption is outpacing my production.

I might have to step up to brewing every week!

[Jon]

My "cold" tap water was 84* when I started chilling, but I ran it through a pre-chiller in an ice-water bath and was able to get the wort coming out down to about 73* or so. The last of the ice melted juuuust as the last of the wort went into the fermentor, so apparently I had that timing right.

Not ideal, but I can work with wort in the mid 70s...decided to just pitch the yeast after it was in the wine fridge for about an hour so I can go to bed.

OG was 12 brix, so about 1.048--should be just about perfect.

I might get some fruity esters from the high pitching temp, but this isn't beer I'm planning to enter into a contest--it's beer that Thorn and I are going to drink , so I'm not too worried about it being perfect.

It's looking like I'm going to have to get used to using the pre-chiller in a bucket of ice water, AND still have warmer than I'd like wort. I can work with that...I may also go back to doing some batches no chill/slow chill.

Oh, and I apparently don't have any Halertauer (whaaat!?), but I do have some French Strieselspalt, so I used those for the Flameout addition. Neither Thorn nor I are cat-pee tasters, so it should work out quite nicely.

[Gymrat]

If you pulled your counter flow chiller out when the wort hit 90 to 100 degrees, and dropped your immersion chiller in there hooked up to a pond pump in a cooler full of ice water, you would have hit 65 degrees faster than you got to 73.

[Beer-lord]

If you pulled your counter flow chiller out when the wort hit 90 to 100 degrees, and dropped your immersion chiller in there hooked up to a pond pump in a cooler full of ice water, you would have hit 65 degrees faster than you got to 73.

I brewed yesterday and my ground water was 79 (it'll be low to mid 80s soon). It took 18 minutes to get 6 1/2 gallons down to 100 with ground water and then 7 minutes to get from 100 to 64 with a pond pump and ice.
I specifically timed it to see for myself. $3 of ice helped alot. My only other option would be to chill to 100 then put it in my keezer and wait a few hours until it hit 65 which is a good backup.

[Jon]

Yeah, recirculating ice water after I get it down to 100* might be the way to go, especially for hoppy beers.

It looks like I'm also going to need to start bagging my hops--even with just 1.5 oz of hops, there was a massive slowdown on the wort coming out of the pump from the grainfather.

Although, that did apparently give me the right flow rate for the amount of ice I had and was cooling with--so maybe it wasn't such a bad thing!

We'll see what I end up going with--even just having more ice in the pre-chiller would probably help a lot...maybe I'll start harvesting ice from the ice maker a day or two ahead of time and putting it in a bag in the kegerator's freezer.