Tuey said he would like a beer for the Spikers. He was sure that we were going to be working very hard over the next few weeks and he wanted a way to reward the team after a hard job. I got to thinking about what kind of beer to brew and thought we should make a beer very similar to Elf King Ale. It will be a blonde beer and we will call it Spike Ale.
Here are the ingredients:
10lbs 2row
1lbs Munich
0.5lbs Wheat
0.4oz Northern Brewer 10.5%AA @60min
0.75oz Amarillo 9%AA @5min
0.75oz Amarillo 9%AA @1min
WLP001 - Dec 16 2012 - Lot #1001IBCDIN-4
Whirlfloc
5.2 stabilizer
Servomyces
Kevin Koch well water. Tastes wonderful.
I made a starter. 1/2 cup DME. 2 cups water. Dialed in 1.040 OG with spectrometer.
I wanted a blonde with a good body so we mashed at 155F.
Batch sparged. Gravity was 1.040 when done sparging. 1.051 when pitching the yeast. This is what I was shooting for so score one for the good guys. How I figured this out was to go back and look through my old posts and try some simple math. I noticed I get about 4.4 points of gravity per pound grain. That will be a key number for me in the future to hit my numbers.
O2 was added just before yeast was pitched for 1 minute.
Kevin, Jim, and Jon were in attendance. Jim left a early.
I caught my pant on fire. I should be more careful when standing over the burner.
When cooling a used a prechiller. What I noticed there was that moving the prechiller around a lot in the chiller bucket really did cool the outgoing water a lot. I think the right idea is to get a second pump and circulate the cold water around the chilling water. Then we could get the wort cooled real quick.
After 5 days the beer was sampled. The yeast was still on top. It tasted good. Just a little bitter. Ellie liked it too. Should be a good Blonde. Gravity was 1.014. I hope to get to 1.012.
