Janet's Brown Ale

Decided to brew a Brown Ale for Ellie today. The brew seemed fitting as it was a favorite of a well known homebrewer Mike "Tasty" Mcdole's wife, Janet. She helped give him feedback on the brew which he then went on the win awards for. Sadly, she died of lymphoma or leukemia and he named the beer after her. Every time this kit is purchased a dollar is sent to cancer charity. Since Ellie loves brown ale and has lymphoma this beer somehow seems fitting. It further seems fitting that I am brewing this beer and typing this blog on a morning without her since she is at her sister's house recovering from chemo. I'm sure she'll make it here sometime today but I miss her hanging with me in the garage while I brew. Ok enough with the sad stuff. Here's the important data.

12lbs 2-row
1lb White Wheat
1lb 4oz Crystal 40L
8oz Chocolate Malt

2oz Northern Brewer 8.6% AA - 60 min
1oz Northern Brewer 8.6% AA - 15 min
1.5oz Cascade 6.4% AA - 10 min
1.5oz Cascade 6.4% AA - 1 min
2oz Centennial 10.3% AA - Dry hop 7days

Servomyces 10min
Whirfloc 10 min
1tbsp 5.2 during mash
Mash at 154F

WLP001 - Date = 4/08/12 - Lot# 1001CIEKON2-3


I have remembered to measured the mash temp before putting the grains in. It was 171 by the time I put the grains in. Beer Smith says 171 to reach a mash temp of 154. When I put the grains in I got closer to 158. No problem. Over shooting is way easier to deal with. I always put cold water in the fridge just for this. Not even 1/4 of a gallon of cold water later and I'm at 152. Well, shit. I guess the Crystal 40 will supply the body and maltiness but I was hoping for 154.

Actually, I left the thermometer in the mash tun while I fetching up the 5.2 and it now reads 154. So all seems well.

Got a new tool. A refractometer. This bad boy allows me to check the gravity of the wort at any temp. It's not useful once fermentation begins but very useful when I sparge. The first running come in at 1.085+. We will sparge at least until 1.012ish I hope. After that we start to extract tannins and other gross things.

Having problems getting the sparge up to temp. I'm now pouring boiling water in and the temp just won't rise. Also, the sparge is going too fast. I hope I get the sugars out that I want.

Hell now I'm worried that the boiling water maybe extracting the tannins and will cause the beer to taste poorly. Well I'm familiar with that test from this fall so I'll know it in a few weeks. This little experiment will tell us whether the OVERALL sparge temp in the mash tun needs to be 168F or if the sparge WATER should be 168F. I have a feeling that I was seeing poor mash efficiency due to the overall sparge temp being too low. So we'll see what we get.

Gravity is now 1.034. OVERALL mash tun temp still under 160F.

Done sparging. OVERALL mash tun temp got up to 166F. 168F is the magic number so hopefully we did good. I sparged until I filled the boil pot. At that point the sparge was running at 1.018. So we didn't get all the sugar we wanted out. Pre-boil gravity is 1.055 but I got a lot of liquid so I might boil for a few extra minutes before I add the hops to condense it down and that number should hop up.

At this point the beer doesn't smell very much like the wort I am used to smelling. I'm expecting a sweet, malty smell. Instead it smells like burnt coffee. Now I did add chocolate malt which does impart that flavor but this seems too strong. It doesn't taste very sweet either. Now I'm worried I've dorked up Ellie's beer. I guess we'll know in two weeks.

This keeps getting worse and worse. I am not on my game today. So I take a gravity reading and it measures out at like 1.040. How the hell does that happen? I'm really perplexed now. So I think maybe the thinner stuff hangs on top and the thicker on the bottom. So I figure to stir it up real good and try again. Once I do that it like hell was unleashed from the bottom. So boil goes crazy and begins throwing wort over the kettle onto the ground. And it smelled like burnt coffee. Bad. I take another reading and same thing. WTF is going on??

Then I make another error when I add the bittering hops. I always add less then what is recommended because my beers seem to come out too bitter. I accidentally add the whole thing and then try to get a spoon to get some of it back.

Then I tried to clean up the mess. This beer is fucked and I'm getting a bad attitude about it.

On top of that the wort has attracted bees. A shit load of bees in my garage. I can't close the garage because of the gas fumes.

Ok. I just cleaned the mash tun and I've calmed down a little. In retrospect I suppose everyone has a bad brew day from time to time. I did little research on the interwebs and I find that some person of unknown reliability think the temp of the grain bed it what matters. I asked reddit. We'll see. I should try to have a better attitude and try to learn as much as I can about what went wrong today and improve so that it doesn't happen in the future. Let's focus on the good. I did hit my mash temp today. First time ever.

Reddit says batch sparge. Maybe I should switch to that. I made a great Bitter with that. I think they are on to something there. It's easier and I won't have this mess I'm dealing with now.

You know this is why we need a homebrew club. So I can help fools with the things I'm good at and they can help me when I'm the fool. Dylan wanted me to lead it up. Simply because I know a bunch of them. There's Ty and his boys. Then there's Tom Kunkle. And then there's Will. Each of those people know a couple/few people.

Refractometer says gravity will be 1.055. I will verify with my hydrometer when the wort cools down. I was supposed to be 1.065 so I am way off. Maybe this isn't my fault. Maybe the guy who crushes grain at MoreBeer does a shitty job. Maybe the grain comes to me and is not crushed on accident and I never notice it. Maybe once the grain is milled it should be used right away and I don't use it for a week or so. Maybe I should embrace my lack of efficiency and just own it. It's not like it's hard to overcome. I just by 11lbs of grain instead of 10. That ain't hard. Another thing, back in November when I made Elf King Ale for the first time I did hit my gravity. As I recall, the sparge took 90 minutes to complete. I'm now thinking that temp matter a whole lot less and the amount of time matters a whole lot more.

Ok. Hydrometer says 1.061 gravity. This makes me feel a little better. After looking again at the refractometer it says 1.057. The documentation that came with it says it is accurate +-0.002. So they are close. I think I will still use the hydrometer. I will use the refractometer during the sparge to get an idea of how much more I should be sparging. If I had sparged until I reached 1.012 then I bet I would have reached my 1.065. Again, I'm betting it's a time issue. I bet if you sparge for 1 hour and get 5 gallons or 10 gallons, you have pulled the same amount of sugar off. Just with my liquid. Sparge slower.

Also, I tasted a sample and it didn't taste as burnt coffee as I thought it would. It didn't taste as sweet as I thought it would either. It tasted a little bitter. I still think we are going to get a crap beer but we'll see.

One last thing. The pre-chiller thing is not working out too well. It takes too long to cool. I'm still going to use the pre-chiller but I think I will move the boil pot the basin and fill it with ice like before.

End of day.