Thu Aug 20, 2009 8:54 pm
SO I chose this as my very first brew. I paid extra special close attention to the episode and the followup recipe. So many things did not go right that it is hard to describe them all. I am still holding out hope this will be drinkable.
So, it all started at MoreBeer in Los Altos. A fine place to shop! Unfortunately none of the grais match anthing to do with the grain bill. OK, the american 2 row was easy enough. Nothink said Crystal 80. Nothing said Black Patent. There was Chocolate but nothing matches the recipe names. There must be some special language to this game. So I get some help. No crystal 80. 60 should be close enough. We figure out the chocolate easy enough and the black patent was a just black and there is just a tiny bit there.
Things went bad when I misread .5 oz as 5oz of black patent. I am cursing the transcriber for not listing in grams. So my grain bill is:
10.8lbs of American 2 row
1lb 2oz of Crystal 60
5.5oz of Chocolate malt
5oz of Black Patent
I have no idea what this will do besides make this very, very black.
Brew Day! I just can't go into all the stupid little things that sabotaged this session. Filtered water was a bit one. I wish I took a pictire of the system I engineered.
I used some online software to help calculate strike temp and water to grain ration. Unfortunately, their default was not my default and I put in 1qt per lb and not the 1.5 I was planning on. Luckily my brewing buddy dropped in after seeing my tweets and pointed out how low my mash was and the temp was never getting to 154 (from the current 140). So, we added 6 or 7 more quarts and got the temp and water level just right. So, I was at 140 for 30 minutes and 154 for 60 more. What the heck is that gonna do?
Mash, transfer to boil keg and boil went fine! Chilling went fine. Use the hose to get close to 85 then dropped the boil keg in a large bucket of ice water and chilled to 58. Unfortunately, the copper chilling coil pinched the drip tube attached to the drain valve tightly closed. So I had to siphon into the carboy. The OG is 1.050. Close to thetarget 1.052
I pitched a single vial of wpl002. I know nothing about a starter or how to make a starter. Sure I know a lot more now after listening to the yeast rinsing podcast. I also see JZ demands 2 vials. Oh well, I chilled the yeast to wort temp and pitched. I did a lot of rolling and shaking of the carboy getting all that nicely mixed up.
It decided to warm up a few days here in San Jose. So I put the carboy in a shallow bucket of water and drape a towel over it with a fan. That actually kept it at 62 for a while then 66 then 68. It gor really warm the next day and got up to 74. We did some ice treatmnts and got it down to 68 again. Temps been swinging form 66 to 72.
Day 1, just a little activity 24 hours later
day 2 bubble in the airgap like mad. every second.
Day two same thing
Day three things lsowed down to every 3 seconds
Now on day 4, it is about every 6 seconds
Oh, and the hops. They had Kent Goldings but the AA was 30% higher than the recipe. They did not have eithe rof the others so I substituted glaciers and simcoe but someone put Amarillo in the simcoe box and I ended up with:
1.25oz Kent Golding 6.1aa at 60 minutes
.5oz glacier 6aa at 10 min
.5oz amarillo 8.6aa at 0 min
What will this be? We are calling it Moose Droppings.
thanks for the shoulder to cry on.
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