I've made myself a beautifully complicated brewing system. Well, actually, it's not very complicated at all. I recently began an attempt at a Tripel, trying to replicate La Fin Du Monde, one of my favorite brews. My beers have been getting better, as I've been gaining more experiencing in the noble art of brewing. What's new you ask?
- I fabricated a whirlpool chiller. This is just the copper coil you see going down the middle. Beer is pumped through the bottom of my bucket and into this copper tubing, which exits, to make a whirlpool. Why am I doing this, you ask? Well, my dear reader/s, it helps to create convection for my immersion chiller, thus cooling the wort more quickly. Quickly cooling the wort makes for better because 1) it reduces the amount of time that it is at an ideal bacteria loving temperature and 2) it either increases or decreases the cold break... I can't remember which one, but it's supposed to be better. One of the big bonuses from this setup is that the whirlpool creates a cone of particulate in the center of the bucket... oh fluid mechanics, the mistress that I have been missing. This is great because wort has a large collection of hops and residual grain husks. There is a decent size pile of stuff left, once the bucket is drained, showing the utility of the whirlpool. It's a beautiful thing. Lastly, the whirlpool is nice because it breaks apart the hops to get maximum hop to wort surface area.
- Water chemistry. I adjusted my water chemistry this time. Why would I do that? Well, in the malt, it is important to create an ideal set of conditions for enzymes to breakdown the starches of the barley. Otherwise, there would be no sugar, thus no fermentation, thus no alcohol. Temperature and pH are the big hitters than can affect this process. A acidic pH is ideal during the mash and I've been aiming for 5.5. The pH is lowered, in part, through the grains. Darker grains result in more acidity. The alkaline water of Ireland is the reason stout was invented. The dark grains bring down the pH to proper levels. Pilsen, however, has very low alkilinity and is produces one of the lightest beers in existence. This is because dark grains would cause a really acidic mash. What can we do when we want to brew a beer style that doesn't fit our water? We can either add acid or bases diretly, but the better way is to add salts. Calcium additions, bind with hydroxide, to lower the pH. Therefore CaSO and CaCl are added, depending on if we want to increase the malt taste or the hop taste. The ratio of So/Cl is very important for the beer the beer taste. Furthtermore, temperature has an important role in the mash. Different enzymes work optimally at different temperatures and so certain temperature rests are important to convert the start into specific sugars (some long chain and some simple, depending on what we do here). Simple sugars ferment well and long chains do not, because the yeast have to put forth more effort to convert them to alcohol. Low temperature mashes are the best for converting simple sugars. Very low mash temperatures can even be used to produce more acidity, which can be a helpful tool for creating Pilsners in Pilsen. Low temperatures can also be used to break apart the husk on barley, if it hasn't been modified (gemenation commenncement).
Here, you didn't think you'd learn anything from my blog ;) It's actually all simpler than it sounds. These details are only important when fine tuning a beer and are less important in the present day because maltsters (modify barley through kilning and roasting) do a great job of simplifying this process. However, as an engineer I like to keep the process complicated. Also, it's hard to mess up a mash. It's much easier to mess up the ferementation. There are some tricks to the fermentation proces too, that I might get into if anyone is interested... or even if they're not.
Too compliacated for my mind. :)
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