First off let me say that the upgrades are not going so great. The stir plate is slow going but it is coming along. The closed loop chiller didn't work out. More on this later. I'm not ready to throw in the towel on either of these yet but let's just say work has been put into both.
The brown ale was kegged on Thursday. I added the dry hops to the keg. I tied floss to the steeping bag and tied it to the outside of the keg. This will help retrieve the hops the following Wednesday. The brown ale finished at 1.020 and tasted good. Can't wait on that one.
So now I wanted to make a wheat beer for Ellie. I ordered up the German Hefe kit from MoreBeer. Ingredients:
4lbs 2row
6lbs Wheat
0.5 oz Northern Brewer at 60min.
Servomyces at 50 min.
No whirlfloc.
Hefeweizen Ale Yeast WLP300 Lot number 1300IPTPORA1.
When the kit came in the mail the yeast seemed warm and I was worried they might be sick or dead. I did make a starter for them and I noticed the next morning that they flask was warm so they were in there doing something.
I invited dad over to help brew. It was HOT. I tell you what. Poor efficiency again. I added all the DME I had to the wort at the 50min and got the OG to 1.049 which was pretty close to the 1.050 I wanted. We used to glass fermenter this time so I can fit it in the chest freezer with the keg of brown. I did turn the temp down to 62F for the first few days to keep the yeast in check. Those hefe yeast can go nuts and then we have banana beer. But so far no strong banana smells so we are doing good.
The brew day was long and hot and the only thing notable was the chilling. I had this great idea to have the March pump push ice water through the coil. This was a miserable failure. The pump just didn't have enough pressure to make this happen. I'm thinking I may be able to shorten and widen the pump lines and give it another go on another weekend that is not a brew day.
This beer should be ready in a couple of weeks and then we can have the beer party. Wish us luck.
