Elf King Ale I

This will be my first official Elf King Ale. I'm sick so I'm not in the mood to drink. So to pass the time I'll write the brew blog as it the day goes on.

It is New Year's Eve. Ellie is in the garage with me. She is doing the laundry. It's nice to have her here even if she doesn't help or even talk to me. She got this do-dad that turn anything into a speaker so she turned one of my old foam coolers into a speaker and it playing some music. It's nice.

Gonna try a pre-chiller today too. Let's see how that goes. Also used a stir plate for my yeast starter. It took some work but I got it work. It needs some tweaking though.

Ingredients are as follows:

9lbs 2row
1lb Crystal 15L
0.75oz Magnum 14.1% AA - 60minutes
1 oz Amarillo 9.3%AA - 5 minutes
1 oz Amarillo 9.3%AA - 1minute

WLP001 - Mar-24-12 - Lot# 1001CIIKONA1

Servomyces and Whirlfloc at 10min
5.2 during mash
Mash at 151-152

Missed my mash temp. It will be 149. I'm shooting for a OG of 1.048ish.

Sparging now. A little worried. Sparge looks light in color. I'm not getting the super awesome grain aromas I'm used to. I tasted the wort and it wasn't as sweet as I expected. I do have a throat lozenge in so maybe that matters. The grain was in the fridge for over a week. Maybe that matters. Maybe I should just wait until I measure the gravity before I freak out.

I want the sparge temp to be 170. I keep putting 170 in the mash tun but it maintains 150. This maybe the reason I've not been extracting the sugars I think I should. In the future what I need to do is have a thermometer in the mash tun during the sparge and watch the temp closely.

Wort looks thin and light. I doesn't taste sweet. I measured the pre-boil gravity. It came out 1.020. That doesn't seem like a lot. The wort was hot. It was on the burner already. Now I'm freaking out.

A thought on mashing. I should get a temperature dialed in to exactly what I want and THEN add the grain. That way I can remove the water if needed and heat it up or cool it down. I think I did that last time. Why didn't I this time. It's time to create a procedure. Just spend the day and make it. Then refer to it on brew day and make improvements the second I feel the need to. Not sometime later.

Ok. Waiting for the wort to cool now. The pre-chiller seems to be working. I can feel the copper coming from the ice bucket and it is nice and cold. The boil was uneventful. All went well. I've got that down pat.

One thing that did happen was that I turned the hose on too hard and the water from the hose found its into my wort. So if it tastes like total shit or gets some bacteria in it that likely the source.

All done. OG = 1.041. Very light. We should call this Elf King Ale Light.