Big brewing weekend
Okay, so this is not going to be a very good post for me explaining all of the ins and outs of our brew day. Instead, this is going to be more of a summary of the vitals and a quick note on the mash tun going on the fritz (for the second weekend in a row!).
So here we go.
We did two batches this weekend, a 10 gallon Kolsch and a 6 gallon Imperial Stout that was a knock off of a Great Divide Yeti clone. First off, the tale of the tape:
Kolsch - 10 gallons
16.75lb Pilsner
2.75lb Wheat Malt
1.75lb Vienna
.25lb flaked barley
Target OG was 1.045
Actual OG was 1.050
Yeast: 1000ml starter Kolsch Yeast (#2565)
Pre-boil gravity was 1.036
The Kolsh went really well, we hit our targets dead on and actually managed better than the efficiency I had made the recipe out for (normal was 59% and with the OG I think it was 68%). Since we did the two recipes in a single brew day, it was a lot of running around and a lot of on the fly scheduling of what to do when. We struck the Yeti clone with about 15min remaining on the mash of the kolsch.
Great Divide Yeti Clone - 6 gallons
16.25lb US Pale Malt
2lb Crystal 120L
1.75lb Black Patent
1.75lb Chocolate
1.60lb Roasted Barley
1.50lb Flaked Rye
Target OG was 1.088
Actual OG was 1.071
Yeast: 1/2 gallon starter of ESB and American Ale mix (there was a little Kolsh in the mix too)
Pre-boil gravity was ~1.050
Now things went a little crazy during the Yeti. The way that we worked this out was while the Kolsch was in the mash tun being sparged, we had the Yeti split up into two different coolers struck in water at 158f. The plan was to, when the kolsch was done sparging, dump the two coolers into the mashtun for mashout and sparge.
Everything went according to plan until we got the yeti grain into the mash tun. Once there, the mashtun developed a clog and would not drain any of the wort. So we did things the old fashioned way. We used a strainer and a jug to run through all the grains. We washed the grains once and were on our way (really it was a CRAZY mess that made brewing look like a monkey fucking a football, but I digress).
As you can see from the pictures below, we have a few boil overs, but we had two new brewers over so it's worth it showing them the full Monty.
How are things now?
Well as you can see from my crappy first video on CNYBrew.com, both the Yeti (on the right) and the kolsh are plugging away.
Special thanks to Taylor and Cooter for coming and allowing us to have a belated "teach a friend to brewday".
More to come this week including a post on the hops shortage.
Cheers!
**one quick note, we treated the stout with 2tbs of gypsum and 1/2tbs of baking soda. Now the bad news is that we were not able to observe any of the potential efficiency benefits because our cluster-fuck of a brewing pretty much threw efficiency out the window. The good news is that we were homebrewing, not preforming brain surgery so it's all going to be OK.
3 comments:
Brewing again eh?
Can't see the video right now due to it being blocked, but, when I get home I'll check it out.
Prost!
So I was basqueing in the delights of the hard cider and I relized something. When I racked off the hard cider into the keg I ended up putting about a quart into a growler because it was kind of trauby and I didnt want it in the keg, I let it settle and have been drinking it. It is much better than the stuff in the keg and not for a carbonated - flat reason but a taste. an after taste on the cider that was reminisent of sharp cheese. Like the smell of the cider when it was brewing. I let my cider age in the secondary because of that smell and to clarify; but when I racked it into my keg I also primed it. I think the extra fermentables when I primed gave off tastes as they were eaten, much the same way the cider did as it fermented; similar but to a lesser degree than the pumpkin ale.I think that from now on when if I brew something that has undesirable odors in the fermentation stage, when I keg and bottle I will artifically carbonate whenever possible. the fermentable sugars from priming are putting off the same undesirable gases as when they were fermenting but now in this case I am forcing them to disolve in my brew.
Yea the cider I have is pretty dry. It's not what we were looking for, but I want to pour some out and get it cold to see what it tastes like. I am thinking that I will bring a bottle to Thanksgiving to see what people think.
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