Pliny Clone Help

A blow off tube is a good investment.

 

Make sure you pitch an adequate amount of yeast: use Mr Malty or one of the other available calculators. Thoroughly aerate the wort before pitching. Control your fermentation temperature as best you can. Good rules to follow with any beer, but really important for higher gravity beers.

Dry hopping? It aint no thing.

 

I brewed an extract version of the Pliny clone recipe that is floating around this forum. It came from Zymurgy magazine and was created by Vinny Cilurzo the creator of the original Pliny the Elder. Your kit may come with instructions that will have some procedures that are not clear or may be questionable or unnecessary (kit instructions are notoriously bad with clarity and detail), so compare them with the Zymurgy instructions. If you have questions when you review either set of instructions, ask for clarity in another post to this thread. It's not really a difficult recipe to brew, but Mlucky is right in the previous post, you need to make sure that you pitch an adequate amount of yeast.

The dry hopping is no big deal, but regardless of how often you see people in these threads say that a secondary fermentor is not necessary, this may be one of the situations where it will be helpful because you'll be dealing with a lot of hop volume, so getting your beer of the trub in the primary will cut down on the amount of hop matter in the beer. If you don't have a secondary fermentor, then you can get by, but account for the loss of liquid that will be staying in that mess of trub.

 

Reduced batch volume (~6%) has been my experience with the PtE recipe in large part b/c of massive d-hop additions...so instead of priming for 5G...you might consider priming for 4.7G (not that it'll make all that much difference).

 

A blow off tube can be made with the proper diameter clear hose from Lowes or "the orange Lowes." Last I checked it was like 30 cents a foot. I think I used 5/8 OD and stuck it on the part of the normal 3 piece air lock that the bell usually sits on. Then just stick the other end of the tube in a bucket or medium sized bowl of sanitizer. Blow off tube done.

 

A hop bag will cut down considerably the amount of sludge, but some hop material will still get through it. If you go that route, you can dry hop in your primary and not even consider a secondary.

I use a blow-off tube that has a 1-inch OD (I think that's what it is), and it is just slightly less than the approximate diameter of my carboy's mouth opening. I wrap some plastic wrap around the tube before jamming it into the mouth of the carboy for a snug fit. My tube is 3 feel long, and the other end is placed in a pot of water that sits adjacent to the carboy. Your tube's length will just depend on your arrangements of space to place both containers.

Wanda's suggestion above to use 5/8 inch tubing is okay, but you still take a chance of the krausening overcoming the smaller diameter of the airlock's bottom tube and clogging it, thus defeating the purpose of a blow-off tube.

 

I would use a bit more sugar than the recipe calls for. Extract tends not attenuate as you want it to. Also the AHA just republished the recipe in Zymurgy magazine a month or two ago.

 

Side note, I am doing the all grain version of the Pliny clone and was planning to pitch wyeast 1056 to a 6g batch. OG is expected to be 1.072. Think two smack packs should be adequate?

 

People are are also using about 15 ml of hop extract (Hopshots from Northern Brewer) @ 60 to avoid the loss in volume. It's supposed to be a smoother bitterness as well. I plan to buy a can and make some DIY shots...

 

Adequate...yes.
Waste of money...you betcha!

Make a starter using one vial ==> save some mullah.

 

I brewed this yesterday. NB extract kit. All the critical steps I wanted to get right I messed up. Better preparation next time. Getting my wort chilled enough was my biggest struggle. Tap water is too warm so I had to improvise and chuck some ice in. Who knows what will happen with that. Rehydrated my yeast pack and though I did that right, the water was a bit warm so I thought that might harm things (it was 79 or so). Not getting my wort chilled quickly enough to pitch temp and having yeast sit out - I thought that was a dead beer before I got it in the fermentor. I thew it in there anyway. I was in Chattanooga all day today and came home to a very active fermentation and a very bubbly air lock, so who knows.

 

It might, which is why you want to sanitize your hop bag.

 

I've not brewed this kit before, so just the usual things like monitoring your fermentation temps (not knowing any more than what I know now, I'm just trying to keep my beer at 70 or less). I've only ever dry hopped once and with this beer you do it twice. I guess I'll be doing the sanitized paint bag thing with some marbles or whatever to keep things down. I don't know if I want to keg or bottle this time. With all of those hops, you don't want hops plugging up your dip tube. I've got a few weeks to decide. :-) The beer may not even be any good since I goofed a couple of critical things. :-) I got so flustered with my mistakes that I didn't even take a OG gravity sample.

 

BTW, I don't know how this kit will go, but I don't need a blow-off tube. My batch size is 5 gallons in a 6.5 Better Bottle fermentor. I'm using a regular 3-piece airlock. Krausen is 1.5" high or so. Lots of activity to watch. :-)

 

I think my krausen got up to about 3 inches, but it didn't come close to my blow-off tube. I used one just in case it was needed. I also did a 5-gal batch in a 6.5 gal carboy.