Keptinis - Lithuanian Baked Beer
Jan 13, 2020 12:52:47 GMT 10, Post #63480
rogerh, Hambone, and 3 more like this
Post by earle on Jan 13, 2020 12:52:47 GMT 10
After reading about Keptinis on Lars Blog I've been keen to try brewing one - www.garshol.priv.no/blog/394.html?fbclid=IwAR0Z1K_ZV5C0i0ZfWn4HUBDQQA6hYAEQ9wO765VzEI9Nj6nchNstEtbtpFQ
I tried a few weeks ago but had a false start when I missed my mash temp by about 10 degrees, after a bit of help from here about strike temps etc I brewed this yesterday.
I heated 30 or so litres of water in my urn to 74.8C. I then added 12L to my 25L willow esky to preheat it. After tipping that out I added another 12L of water, and then mashed in the grain. The paint masher that I use for BIAB was perfect for the job even though the mash was very thick. The grain was 6kg of Coopers pale malt. I was 1 degree over my mash temp but not too worried (especially compared to how far out I was the first time). I didn't want to add any cool water to adjust the temp as the thickness of the mash is important for the next steps. I've got some foam insulation board left over from my keezer build so sat a pre-cut piece of that on top of the mash to help hold the temp. 90 minutes later it had not yet dropped a whole degree.
After leaving the mash for 90 minutes I scooped the thick mash into 3 large foil BBQ trays. I already had my gas pizza oven preheating and set to max (~250C) so I put two trays in that. I had hoped to fit all of the mash into 2 trays but it ended up as 3 so the third went into my kitchen over at 220C. I needed to use a board under the trays when I moved them so they did not buckle. Maybe next time I could find oven trays to sit them on.
I switched the trays in the pizza oven around after about an hour to get more even browning. After about 90 minutes I reduced the temp and left for another 30 minutes. After 2 hours in total I turned off the ovens and left the trays to cool a little. You can see the browning and caramelisation in the following photos.
I then broke up the baked mash with a large metal spoon. You can see some of the caramelised sugars in the photo below. The baking process smelled great.
I had entered this grainbill into BS3 as if It was a normal brew, so I had the full strike volume in the urn (topped back up) and heated to what the normal strike temp would have been. I removed 10L of this water (set aside) and then tipped and scraped the baked mash into my BIAB bag in the urn. Gave it all a good mash with my paint masher.
I then started hoisting the bag and turned the urn on to bring up to the boil. The colour of the wort was looking good at this stage considering it's 100% pale malt. I did squeeze the bejesus out of the bag before giving a sparge a go.I had intended to dunk sparge the bag and then add that back but it was so murky I topped the urn up to the pre-boil volume calculated by BS3 using some of the water that I had set aside.
While keptinis was traditionally a raw ale I prefer some protection from infection so from here the rest of the brew was fairly standard. A 60 minute boil with a 60 minute addition of Warrior to about 34 IBU. Brewbrite as normal.
After chilling I pitched onto some Simonaitis Lithuanian yeast. Currently in a fermenting fridge set to 32C.
I tried a few weeks ago but had a false start when I missed my mash temp by about 10 degrees, after a bit of help from here about strike temps etc I brewed this yesterday.
I heated 30 or so litres of water in my urn to 74.8C. I then added 12L to my 25L willow esky to preheat it. After tipping that out I added another 12L of water, and then mashed in the grain. The paint masher that I use for BIAB was perfect for the job even though the mash was very thick. The grain was 6kg of Coopers pale malt. I was 1 degree over my mash temp but not too worried (especially compared to how far out I was the first time). I didn't want to add any cool water to adjust the temp as the thickness of the mash is important for the next steps. I've got some foam insulation board left over from my keezer build so sat a pre-cut piece of that on top of the mash to help hold the temp. 90 minutes later it had not yet dropped a whole degree.
After leaving the mash for 90 minutes I scooped the thick mash into 3 large foil BBQ trays. I already had my gas pizza oven preheating and set to max (~250C) so I put two trays in that. I had hoped to fit all of the mash into 2 trays but it ended up as 3 so the third went into my kitchen over at 220C. I needed to use a board under the trays when I moved them so they did not buckle. Maybe next time I could find oven trays to sit them on.
I switched the trays in the pizza oven around after about an hour to get more even browning. After about 90 minutes I reduced the temp and left for another 30 minutes. After 2 hours in total I turned off the ovens and left the trays to cool a little. You can see the browning and caramelisation in the following photos.
I then broke up the baked mash with a large metal spoon. You can see some of the caramelised sugars in the photo below. The baking process smelled great.
I had entered this grainbill into BS3 as if It was a normal brew, so I had the full strike volume in the urn (topped back up) and heated to what the normal strike temp would have been. I removed 10L of this water (set aside) and then tipped and scraped the baked mash into my BIAB bag in the urn. Gave it all a good mash with my paint masher.
I then started hoisting the bag and turned the urn on to bring up to the boil. The colour of the wort was looking good at this stage considering it's 100% pale malt. I did squeeze the bejesus out of the bag before giving a sparge a go.I had intended to dunk sparge the bag and then add that back but it was so murky I topped the urn up to the pre-boil volume calculated by BS3 using some of the water that I had set aside.
While keptinis was traditionally a raw ale I prefer some protection from infection so from here the rest of the brew was fairly standard. A 60 minute boil with a 60 minute addition of Warrior to about 34 IBU. Brewbrite as normal.
After chilling I pitched onto some Simonaitis Lithuanian yeast. Currently in a fermenting fridge set to 32C.
But that's not nice so Merry Christmas to you to (With reservations 
) LOL!
