Kareltje wrote: ↑Mon Aug 12, 2024 2:02 pm
Osse87 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 10, 2024 1:46 am
Hey guys, loving this recipe, been doing it a few times. A question: what would the effect be of letting the bran/rye simmer for just 5-10 minutes instead of 30? I'm getting impatient with the bran/rye sometimes and proceed faster than the 30 mins but I don't want to continue doing it if the 30 mins are needed to lock the nutritions up for the yeast or something. Thanks!
Good question! I always let the bran simmer for only a few minutes and let it cool. Never get the very fast fermenting, though. But I am satisfied with the result after about four weeks.
I will make a comparison: next time I will make one ferment with 30 minutes boiled bran and one with a few minutes.
All the rest the same, of course. See what happens.
But maybe someone has done this comparison already and is willing to share?
As promised I did a comparison. Simple science: if you want to know something, do a test.
I made three ferments based on Teddy's basic recipe.
Standard I use:
1) 3 kg sugar, about 66 ml lemonjuice and 1.5 litre of water, boiled to inversion.
2) 1 litre of bran, 1/2 spoonful nutrition, 1 pinch of MgSO4, a pluck egg shells and 3 litres of water.
Bring both to a boil and let it cool about one hour. In the meantime I rinse a vessel of 30 litres, put in 5 litres of water with a showerhead, including much air.
Then I pour the still hot mixtures in the verssel and add up with cold water till 20 litres. Makes a nice 30 to 35 dgr C. Then I add a pulverized tablet of multi vitamin and I sprinkle dried bakers yeast on top of the fluid.
After about 5 days I invert another 1.5 kg of sugar with about 35 ml lemon juice and 3/4 litre of water. This I add, after about an hour and I rinse the pan with 1/2 litre cold water.
I leave it until it is clear and quite. That, by the way, is not very fast: it took about one month to sink under a denstity of 1,000!
I distill with 14 litres of beer in my 15-L boiler, put another 5 L beer in my first 10-L thumper and the remainder (about 3 to 4 litres) in my second 10-L thumper.
Throw away the first 100 mL, put the next 300 mL in my heads collector, distill till about 90 dg C and collect the tails in my tail-vessel.
I made three ferments:
A: according to NZChris's suggestion: about 1/4 th of a litre of bran added to 3 litres of boiling water. In stead of 1 L bran brought to the boil in water.
B: My standard recipe.
C: Brought 1 L bran (with the salt and egg shells) to the boil and kept it there for about 30 minutes.
The other parts of the procedure I kept of course as standard as possible.
First: The ferment A was inspired by NZChris's remark about his treatment of bran as a feed. This ferment got a froth on top, which stayed there until the end and the fermentation was very slow: it took about twice the time to finish to a rather misty beer. I guess I did misinterprete the recipe, but I will not do this again.
So I go on comparing B and C: bringing to a boil and boiling for 30 minutes.
Ferment C fermented a bit faster than B. I would say about 4 weeks compared to 5 weeks. Both had a smooth surface during fermenting and resulted in a clear beer, that was easy to take from the deposit.
Both resulted in about 2 L of about 67 to 70 %ABV. Taste was rather clear and smooth, but I think I will run both one time again. There was a small difference in taste, but I think that is more due to the stripping run than to the ferment or the preparation.
At the moment I run second comparison, as in science one experiment is no experiment.
Now I noticed that at the start of the boiling of the bran soup, there was a thick froth almost rising out of the pan (B). Keeping it boiling for 30 minutes resulted in a more clear soup (C). Shortly after starting the fermentation, the ferment B (brought to a boil) had a froth on top, while ferment C (30 min boiled) was rather flat. After 5 days both were flat and I feeded the final 1.5 kg sugar. By now, 5 days after feeding, the ferments both seem to stall, but C is leading.
I think that sums it about up. Speaking for myself: I will stick to my standard, although I might skip the feeding as it seems to slow down the ferment.