Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

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GAM
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Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by GAM » Sat Feb 04, 2017 10:17 am

Picked up my stuff and have a recipe. May brew today or tomorrow.

Interesting hops.

S

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by amartin » Sat Feb 04, 2017 11:01 am

I'm competing with my brother this year, we picked it up Wednesday. We're not likely to brew until next weekend, but we'll just make one batch. Yeah, I'm more stoked on this years hops than last year. I'm sti not sure on the yeasts yet though.

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Celiacbrew » Sun Feb 05, 2017 2:18 pm

My bags of 2-row were mostly flour and my grain father just can't handle it. Only seems to be my 2-row that is affected. Anyone else run into issues with their crush?
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by GAM » Sun Feb 05, 2017 2:57 pm

I thought mine was very course.

Will not affect me much.

S

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Celiacbrew » Sun Feb 05, 2017 3:21 pm

Okay. I'm going to guess that they milled all at once and then filled the bags from the big container. The ones that went first were too coarse and the ones at the end would have all the flour and shredded husks. Thanks Sandy.

It's going to take at least over night to drain my mash so I will try again next weekend with what little I have left on hand. Does anyone have a BIAB bag I could borrow next weekend?

Edit: no need to borrow a bag. I just realized that without the two row I don't have enough fermentables left to make a batch. Dang. Good luck everyone. Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Ruby » Sun Feb 05, 2017 6:34 pm

My 2 row looks pretty coarse looking at the bags. Quite a few of the smaller sized grains are whole. I'd have much preferred the option of crushing them myself.

Pretty excited though. I think i have 2 recipes ready for brewing Monday night and Tuesday.
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by oceanic_brew » Sun Feb 05, 2017 8:07 pm

Considering your situation some rice hulls might help. Obviously too late now.

I know there's no rice hulls in the kit but you can't provide someone with unworkable ingredients and then limit a workaround. I wouldn't call rice hulls much of an ingredient either rather than an organic piece of equipment.

My mash was fine, crush seemed fine, and efficiency was about 72%, which is what I usually get.

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Celiacbrew » Sun Feb 05, 2017 8:46 pm

Great minds think a like. I thought about the hulls because I have oat malt (huge hulls) but because of the amount of flour I don't think the hulls would have helped. There was about two cm of flour on the bottom of my grainfather. The burner's run dry protection kept tripping because of the flour burning. Even tried putting the mash in a bucket and then pouring the flour on top but it was like concrete and the wort would penetrate and if I stirred the flour dropped to the bottom again.
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by GAM » Mon Feb 06, 2017 9:18 am

No hull in the Box (Bag/Kit) You cant use them. I would have used all kinds of things,but it was not provided.

S

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by know1 » Mon Feb 06, 2017 11:17 am

5L Test batch under way to get a feel for some of the hops and yeast
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by RubberToe » Mon Feb 06, 2017 11:54 am

It could be argued that rice hulls aren't an ingredient. Just a lautering tool.
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by GAM » Mon Feb 06, 2017 12:16 pm

I am not using salts or fermcap. They are not in the kit.

S

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by KB1138 » Mon Feb 06, 2017 12:18 pm

Was water in the kit?
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by amartin » Mon Feb 06, 2017 12:24 pm

Salts are an ingredient, since they are part of the finished product. I'm not really familiar with fermcap. It's Henry's call, but I'd argue that rice hulls are just a lautering tool as well. They don't end up in the finished beer, they just get chucked out at the end.

Kevin - no, they don't provide water, but they allow us to use any source we want. So, RO or distilled, spring water, tap water, whatever. We're just not allowed to treat it with salts or acids.

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Tim Gregory » Mon Feb 06, 2017 12:56 pm

Agreed. Confirm with Henry, but if they gave you floury grains and you can't brew with them I have no issue with adding some rice hulls to help. It won't change the flavour.

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Jayme » Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:10 pm

We had a shit load of flour with our 2-row as well, but luckily no issues running off.

I must say, the rule on water treatment make no sense to me whatsoever. Using RO or distilled is allowed, but no salt additions means that water would effectively be unsuited to brewing.... Really hope they re-think this next year (though it didn't change from last year)...
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by mckay75 » Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:44 pm

I asked Henry what the reasoning behind the no brewing salts or minerals was, and his reply was:

Hi Mark. The short answer is: "Because we don't adjust our water."

The idea is that we're making Nova Scotia beers. Yes perhaps they're going to be like English styles, or German styles, or American styles, but we brew Nova Scotia beers, with Nova Scotia water for better or for worse.

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Jayme » Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:07 pm

Thanks Mark... I think... lol.

Simply can't comprehent how they clearly state styles on bottles of their beer that are not Nova Scotian in origin, with ingredients that almost (if not entirely) come from outside the provience - EXCEPT of course for water.... Anddddd the line is drawn at water treatment....??

Henry - if you read this, please reconsider! Why skip a step towards turning good beer into great beer for that sake of a philosophy you already break with every other aspect of the beer??
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by oceanic_brew » Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:53 pm

My gf who has worked various top technical levels of quality and compliance at Halifax water would have a good laugh at the "Nova Scotian" water thing. That girl could turn dog piss into "Nova Scotia" water.... she probably has.

I actually didn't mind the rule about no water salts because it restricts us to brewing with what comes out of the tap (which hardly resembles what comes into the plant) I had to build my recipe around my actual city water profile. However the lack major water supplie's average for magnesium and calcium are far below recommended levels although amounts of magnesium for proper yeast health are supposedly supplied from the malt.

Regardless, my ph on brew #1 5.5, PH on brew #2 5.47

There are styles that I brew without anything but bringing the levels up to minimums only because of the limitations of my knowledge of Water rchemistry. A delicious IPA, English ales, and my Oatmeal stout I would not brew without salt additions. I would not enter them into a comp that disallows salts, since I didn't like the brews until the water was fine tuned.

It is good of them to allow any water profile, if one was smart about it you could drive around NS until you diluted with enough different water supplies to get what you wanted! Also someone with terrible water could dilute with RO water from Sobeys (how Nova Scotian!)

more to the point though. If you can't produce an amazing stout or English ale with the water from here then I guess it doesn't belong here? . I hope that our pioneering style here in Dartmouth isn't some boring take on a Pilsner.

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Celiacbrew » Thu Feb 09, 2017 4:11 pm

The salts threw me for a loop at first too, but I came around to the idea since they want something that tastes good on their system. The brew that clogged my machine was a dark brew to overcome the alkalinity in our water. I had planned on an extra long boil to deal with the slower protein degradation at the higher pH. I upped to bittering addition to compensate for the lack of SO4. I even had a bucket to do a batch sparge in case the grain bed became stuck (in hindsight maybe I should have come up with a better idea for that one). It was fun not just coming up with a recipe but using all of my brewing knowledge to adapt my system to the issues that could come up. I picture it being a lot like someone doing a collaboration brew with a brewery. You have to use the malts and hops they have on hand. You have to use their liquor tank and their mashing schedule. Same for the yeast. Besides my little issues with the flour this was a really fun experience.
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Jayme » Thu Feb 09, 2017 4:33 pm

Celiacbrew wrote:The salts threw me for a loop at first too, but I came around to the idea since they want something that tastes good on their system.
Except... I used Halifax water, not Shelburne water... So that excuse also does not work. They did also clearly state this year (I don't think this was said last year, but I may be wrong) that it's OK to use RO or distilled water.

Anyway, I'm open to a legit reason to not allow water treatment, but I've yet to hear it in this context. So far I'm only convinced it's either laziness or ignorance.
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by Celiacbrew » Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:45 pm

Just playing devil's advocate because I doubt it is ignorance or laziness behind their decision. Would Shelburn water be all that different from Dartmouth and Halifax? They are all going to be reasonably soft water sources that come from lakes and not wells. They probbaly don't care about small changes in the make up of the water but don't want 350ppm of total hardness since they won't be able to reproduce something similar without adding gypsum.
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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by amartin » Thu Feb 09, 2017 8:03 pm

I'm sure it's not ignorance either, but the cost and trouble of adding salts is barely a cost or trouble at all, especially considering the costs of some of the fancier hops in the bag. I would like to see something there, either allowing us to adjust the water how we want, or maybe just adding one kind of salt to the bag, or maybe even adding a salt and saying that we have to add it at a certain rate. Just something to change the water from year to year, because it means that we're running into the same limitations every year.

That said though, if they're using softer water there they don't seem to have any trouble brewing IPAs and dark beers, so maybe we're all making a bigger deal out of it than we need to be. I wish I knew what Shelburne water was like, but they don't have anything on their website.

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by oceanic_brew » Thu Feb 09, 2017 8:52 pm

The water in shelburne could be drastically different than HRM

Regardless of the limitations I think this is the most interesting comp going. For the money spent the ingredients were awesome. The two batches I did would have cost me well over $70 maybe $80 in total.

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Re: Boxing Rock Challenge 2017

Post by amartin » Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:20 pm

Oh yeah, this is nitpicking. This is the most fun competition going, and we're getting a lot for the entry fee.

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