It's Brew Day in the Royal City

Here are some updates from today's brewing effort. Pictures to follow soon.

Bavarian Dunkelweizen

We used a total of 3.373 lbs of grain for this partial mash with 5L of water at 75C
The actual mash temperature was 68C and we let it soak for 30min. We sparged with 1.7L of boiling water.
The total wort boil was about 3.25 gallons with an OG of 1.050. So we're looking at an ABV of 5.5%
One thing to note, we discovered you should give your mash a really good stir before taking an OG measurement. There can be some wild swings in readings.

Wheat Ale Extract

Adding grains for the mash

Adding the mash to the boil

ESB

The amount of grain was just about exact to the recipie we published earlier. For this brew we mashed with 1.5L of water for 30 min (again starting at 75C but it dropped to 68C when the grain was added). It was sparged with 1.7L of boiling water.

The total wort boil was the same as the Dunkel and came out with an OG of 1.050, so again looking at an ABV of 5.5%

Warming up the kettle for the mash

The mash just prior to adding it to the boil

Style:ESB	Tasty Brew (Desired)	Tasty Brew (Predicted)	Hopville (Desired)	Hopville (Predicted)	Actuals
O.G	1.039-1.045	1.052	1.049-1.057	1.055	1.050
F.G.	1.009-1.014	1.013	1.012-1.015	1.014	1.012
IBU	20-45	53	>30	21.1	TBD
SRM	6-14	18	>6	18	TBD
ABV	3.7-4.8	5.0	>4.6	5.5	TBD

We've been using a lot of resources to help us learn and understand the brewing process a lot better. We found two online Beer Recipe calculators that help you compare how your recipe stands up to the style of beer you're brewing. It also gives you the ability to manipulate the ingredients, quantities and process so you can see how it will affect the outcome. We'll keep updating this through out the brewing process.

For me the most interesting thing to note is the IBU row. Tasty Brew and Hopville use different percentages for the Alpha Acid percentage in the hop varieties we used. So it'll be interesting to see how ours actually turns out.