Well it's been awhile since I've brewed beer. I've spent most my free time with my wife. She's got the cancer. All seems to be going well though. I drank some Sam Adams Alpine Spring which is a seasonal brew for them and got inspired to brew to lager. A light lager. Which is the most difficult beer to brew. It will be a true test of my brewing skill.
I stopped by More Beer in Riverside on the way to see Ellie who is now staying with her sister in Lake Forest. It took forever to get to it. The damn bridge just goes over the shop with no apparent way to get at it. Eventually I pulled over and looked at the More Beer website and found directions to get to the shop. Obviously I wasn't the only retard since they made a special note to give directions on the website. I got there just as it was closing. I've never helped myself to the gain before so I was a little leery. But they were cool and helped me out. The one guy stayed just a little let to help check me out. He was very friendly and we had nice chat about nothingness. He even gave me free hop candy. It was good. So here's the ingredients:
12.5 lbs German Pilsner
1lb Vienna
2oz Hallertau Mittlefruh 3.2% AA
Two vials WLP830. Date = June 16, 2012. Lot number = 1830PCC8378381 for both vials.
Servomyces.
Whirlfloc.
I intend to mash at 153F. We'll see.
Last night I made a starter. A large one. We need large starters for lagers. I made a 1.8L starter. Largest I ever made. I put it on the stir plate and it's been going on for 20 or so hours. The starter looks very active. It has a large krausen already.
One note was that the lager yeast is the first yeast I've smelt that actually smells like beer. All the ale yeasts that I've open up and smelled smell like a slightly sour yeasty smell but no "beer" smells.
3:43pm. Everything is cleaned and ready to go. Heating up the strike water now. Already hit our first snag of the day. The propane tank emptied. That's cool though. I thought ahead. Already got another one. I hooked it up and couldn't get it to give me some gas. I had to screw it in pretty tight and then it went. But for a few seconds I thought I was going to have to go and get another propane tank. Currently drinking my first Sam Adams Alpine Spring. Had breakfast/lunch at Midway Cafe. Got a sandwich from Albertson's and some chips. I'm ready. Let's do this.
4:06pm. Mashing. Seems to be going well. Beer Smith told me to get up to 170F for mashing. I put in about 4.2 gallons into the tun. The water was a little warmer at 172F. This is to account for the loss in temp in transferring from the pot to the tun. Once I got in the mash tun I threw a thermometer in and left for a few minutes. The temp was then measured at 167F. Looking back at Beer Smith, I changed the mash tun temp to 150 and and the mash water temp should be at 167F so I thought I was right on. I put the grains in and stirred it up and hit the mash temp of 153F. Nice! I took the pH of the mash and it looked a little high. I then added the 5.2 and sure enough it dropped the pH to what looks like 5.2. I took a pic of this if I get around to it it will be posted below. So all seems well for now. I think I'll clean the brewery up a little while a wait for the grains to mash.
4:27pm. Done cleaning stuff. Guess I'll surf the internets.
4:32pm. My iPod shuffle appears to have died. Probably just out of battery. :(
4:46pm. Did I mention I'm on my second Sam Adams. Guess it's about time to heat the water. I'm going to try and add 2 gallons boiling water to the mash to raise up the temp and then vorlof and batch sparge. Let's see if that improves efficiency a little.
4:52pm. Shuffle seems fine now. I plugged it into the computer and it came up green. Plugged it in and turned it on. All seems well. It's such a beautiful day today. 74F right now. Clear. Slight breeze. Which everyday was like this. Wish Ellie was here enjoying a beer with me in the nice weather. She actually wanted a beer Friday. She saw people drinking on TV. She likes lagers. Before we got into craft beer she drank Corona like a boss. Two at a time. With lime and salt. I told her that she can have some of this Helles when its ready in a couple of months. Also, I wanted to note that I labeled it a Helles because it fit the style according to Beer Smith. It thought the ABV was high but since I have terrible efficiency I'll probably be right there.
5:29pm. Ok I added 2 gallons of 200F water to the mash tun and stirred it up. This got us to 164ish. I did a vorlof, and then opened the spigot and got like 3ish gallons. So, I added two gallons and change to the mash tun and am letting it set for a bit. I checked the gravity of the first runnings and it measured 1.068.
6:02pm. Sparge done. We got a lot of sugar. Pre-boil gravity 1.052 before adding third sparge (about 2/3 of a gallon). That's what Beer Smith says I should get with 60% efficiency. I should get an OG of 1.60ish. Which is a little much but we will roll with it. I did get about 7 gallons of wort. I did three sparges. I've left quite a bit of sugar still in the mash tun. I measured a gravity of 1.030 when emptying the mash tun. I want it to be more like 1.012ish. I guess I suck at efficiency and I have begun to just accept it. All in all I'm very happy with how things are turning out.
For the future it seems to be a good idea to add the two gallons of boiling for the first runnings. I would make the second runnings about 3-4 gallons and make it 185F.
6:24pm. Hot break done. Hops added. We'll call it 6:23 is the 60min mark. The malt looks and smells great. It smells better then the 2row I'm used to. Also, the hops are good. Not too bitter. Kind of earthy but too much so. When I added it to the boil kettle it smelled wonderful.
6:53pm. Mash tun cleaned. Made a mess. Ate my sandwich too. It was turkey. It was good. Got to clean the mess. On my third beer.
8:02pm. Wort is cooling. Currently at 82F. Need to figure out a way to cool faster. On my 5th beer now.
8:19pm. Wort almost done. Will siphon soon. Getting tired but still need to clean up after this. Shuffle died again. It is charging. Looking forward to kicking back with last beer and calling wife.
Took sample and measured with hydrometer. It measures at 1.060. It tasted wonderful. Be wort ever. Not bitter. Sweet and lovely.
9:22pm. All is cleaned. Brew day done. It was a good brew day. Would have been perfect if E was here. :(
