Going All-Grain on a Blue Dot Clone

Here's a very low res video of my makeshift lautering setup, shot with my IPhone. The kettle has a nice false-bottom.

One expert (Papazian) says use 1 quart of water per lb. of grain, another (Palmer) says use  2 quarts per lb. I ended up splitting the difference at 1.5 quarts per lb. Which Palmer recommends as a good compromise further into his book. With just over 15 pounds of grain, my 7 1/2 gallon boil kettle barely held the full mash.

Our new gas stove proved to be an unpredictable tool for keeping an even mash temperature from top to bottom of the kettle. During the first half hour of the mash I applied a very low heat to keep inching the thermometer reading above 152 ºF. But I know the pure liquid at the bottom of the mash, underneath the two-inch high false bottom, was hotter. And I quickly discovered how long the heated stainless steel bottom would keep transferring heat after I turned off the burner. I had added a half gallon of 170 ºF water with heat from the stove, and suddenly the core temperature jumped to 160 ºF.  Quickly I moved the nearly full kettle to the sink, (fortunately we have a galley kitchen), and a half gallon of cold water and sprayed cold water over the bottom and sides of the kettle. This got the the center of the mash to approximately156 ºF with half an hour to go in the sixty minute mash.

My homemade rotating sparge arm worked amazingly well, but I think I'll make some modifications on the re-design. All stainless steel, smaller holes, less solder. Or just buy one that's pre-built.

I followed Jon Buhagiar's DIY brass design from his BoHack blog site. Note he has an incorrect size for the large diameter tube that has to fit over the o-rings and into the transfer tubing. My local hobby shop was out of the piece in brass, so I ended up using stainless steel for the outer piece. Construction of the arm itself involved trial and quite a few errors. The water outlet holes need to be as small as possible, and I found that the gravity flow pressure wasn't enough to properly turn with more than five holes on each side of the rig. My soldering was also a bit out of practice, so I ruined my first try by filling the arm with solder. By the second attempt, I decided to just reheat the whole thing and force most of the excess solder out of the tube with an old coat hanger wire. At the end, because brass has a fine coating of lead, I soaked the arm in a solution of two parts vinegar to one part hydrogen peroxide.

Even though the arm worked flawlessly on my first lauter, I think I'll try one more time and use stainless steel all the way through.

With 8 oz of whole bittering hops and another 4 oz of pellet aroma hops, transferring from the brew kettle to the primary fermenter took a long time and a lot of stirring to keep the drain screen clear.

In another first, I dispensed with cloth bags for boiling the hops. This is good for added bittering and hop aroma, but made the transfer after chilling the wort slow as molasses. Even with a stainless steel kettle tube screen, the whole hop cones and the massive trub from the sparge kept clogging up the exit valve.

The proteins and sugars began to settle out after I pitched the Scottish Ale Yeast starter.  OG came in slightly high, at 1.080. This is going to be one big Double IPA.

I gave the wort sixty seconds of pure oxygen to make it a more comfortable environment for the yeast. Sure enough, by Monday morning fermentation had begun. In the afternoon, the trub was churning and bubbles popped through the airlock in a steady rhythm. The heat blanket and temperature control are set, and the insulated fermenting cabinet is keeping the surrounding temperatures stable. In a few days the batch should be ready for transfer to secondary and dry-hopping.

Here's my interpretation of the HOTD Blue Dot clone recipe from Brew Your Own Magazine:

Blue Dot IPA clone (all- grain)

•  Weyermann Organic Pilsner Malt, 13 Lbs. 2 oz.
•  Organic Rye Flakes, 2 Lbs.
•  American Summit Whole Hops 4 oz. (75 mins) – replacing Warrior
•  American Chinook Whole Hops 4 oz. (40 mins) – replacing Magnum
•  Belgian Admiral Hop Pellets 4 oz. (10 mins) – replacing Columbus
•  American Summit Whole Hops 5 oz. (dry hop) – replacing Warrior
• American Centennial Whole Hops 5 oz. (dry hop) – replacing Amarillo
•  Yeast: Wyeast Scottish Ale, 125 ml XL
•  ¾ teespoon Organic Irish Moss (10 mins)
•  1 Servomyces capsule (10 mins)
•  Organic Corn Sugar (Dextrose), 0.75 cup for bottling

1. Start yeast at least 48 hours before brew day, then chill over night in refrigerator to settle the yeast, then bring to room temperature in a dark place. Dump off excess liquid before pitching.
2. Heat 24 qts. of filtered water to 165 ºF.
3. Add grains and steep for 60 minutes at 154 – 156 ºF.
4. Heat  5  gallons of water to 170 ^oF in a separate pot. Sparge the grains with this water when the mash is complete.
5. Add water to the liquid collected from the grains to make up to 7 gallons and boil for 180 minutes. (You need to perform a full wort boil to get the right bitterness and character from the hops.) Add hops as per ingredient list
6. Add Irish Moss flakes and Servomyces capsule with 10 minutes remaining.
7. Cool kettle to 68 ºF with wort chiller.
8. Transfer liquid to primary fermenter.
9. Aerate cooled wort with pure oxygen for sixty seconds.
10. Pitch yeast starter.
11. Ferment at 68 ºF. till activity slows.
12. Transfer to secondary fermenter, leaving behind most of the trub.
13. Add dry hops and ferment in secondary 7 to 14 days.
14. Transfer to bottling bucket, add carbonating sugar, bottle.

Grain bill and hops:

7 Bridges Earth Day sale 15% off all organic ingredients!

Qty	Item	Total
1	Wyeast Scottish Ale, 125 ml XL	$7.00
14	Weyermann Organic Pilsner Malt, 1 Lb.	$29.96
2	Organic Rye Flakes, per Lb.	$4.42
1	Organic Corn Sugar (Dextrose), 1 Lb.	$4.17
2	Belgian Admiral Hop Pellets 2 oz.	$8.34
1	American Centennial Whole Hops 1 oz. package (2010)	$2.38
1	American Centennial Whole Hops 4 oz. (2010)	$6.38
1	American Summit Whole Hops 1 oz. (2009)	$1.90
2	American Summit Whole Hops 4 oz. (2009)	$10.20
1	American Chinook Whole Hops 4 oz. (2010)	$6.36

Subtotal                                                                                                            $81.13