Spike Ale II

I wanted to give the Spike Ale another go. Here are the ingredients:

Here are the ingredients:
10lbs 2row
1lbs Munich
0.5lbs Wheat

0.4oz Northern Brewer 10.5%AA @60min
1oz Citra 13%AA @5min
1oz Citra 15%AA @1min

WLP001x2 - Feb  03 2013 - Lot #TCCDIN-10

Whirlfloc
5.2 stabilizer
Servomyces

Albertsons spring water.

2:12 - Ellie is here with me. We are heating us the mash water. The oxy stone has been boiled to sterilized. Mash tun ready. I intend to mash at 152.  Medium body. I tried a full body last time and everyone said it was too sweet because of it. So we will back off a little. Also, we will use the two vials of yeast instead of one vile and a starter. It is windy today so I will need to be extra diligent with the sanitization.

2:42 - Mashing in. Temp = 153F. Got the 5.2 in. A teaspoon this time. I think a table spoon just too much. Ellie has left. Maybe cause I am listening to the brew cast instead of talking to her. All is well. I have an hour so I think I will setup the gate for the dog and clean the keg.

3:50 - Got the keg cleaned. Also cleaned the chest freezer. While I was at it, I figured to clean the laptop. It was getting pretty bad. I cleaned the mouse pad and then that thing stopped working. This is why there has not been much update in the last hour.

We are sparging now. Normally I add two gallons of boiling water first, drain, add 3 gallons 170F, hold for 10 min, drain. This time I thought I'd try to add 1.5 gallons 170F, drain, add 3 gallons of boiling to raise the grain bed to 170F, wait 10 min, and drain. We'll see how it goes. So far all is going well.

BTW, restarted the laptop and all is well. Had to get a mouse just to shut the thing down.

4:05 - Well that worked. I'm doing that from now on. I added 3.5 gallons of boiling and the temp got to 172F. I had to add back cold water and stir like hell and got it down to 169F. We'll see how it effects the gravity.

4:16 - Went to pee. Ran into the wife. She confirmed she left due to podcast listening. Lesson learned. If we want her to hang. No podcast. I dumped the remaining sparge water and now I wonder what if I need a little more. I guess I can get some filtered water from the tap and heat it up. We'll see what happens. Beginning to drink beer now. Fezziwig from Sam Adams.

4:33 - Sparge done. I think I got all I needed from the mash tun. I did get a little better efficiency. Last time was 1.040 after sparge. This time 1.043. Shouldn't make too much difference in the hops or anything.

5:08 - All going well. Hot break came and went. Added the hops. Cleaned the mash tun. Saved some for Ellie. Saved some for Rachel for her boyfriend's family. They got chickens. She said she would get off of work at 5:30 and then come on by so good timing. On my second beer now. Ellie poured herself one. She poured it poorly and got foam everywhere. It's like the girl never went to college. Come on!

5:30 - Just opened the third beer. Getting hungry. 1.5 hours ago Ellie asked about food. I said maybe in an hour. I was hoping she would feed me 30min ago. She seemed in a good mood. Maybe that beer and Lifetime movies are making her loose track of time. Well I tried a little experiment and I think we are onto something good here. I got two pumps. One will move the wort around the chiller the get the best heat exchange. I also have to chillers. So I can use one as a pre-chiller and put it into an ice cold bucket and use the other pump to move around the bucket water for best temp exchange. I just tried hooked up the pump and some tubing to the bucket and it works great. I may need help to hold the tubing so I may need to get Ellie. Of course if I draft her into service she won't aquire food. I think I've got problems. First world problems.

8:46 - In bed now after eating pizza with wife and watching big bang. The chilling system worked real well. Chilled to 70F in 40mins. 20mins faster than normal. I think in the future I will not use salt to make the pre-chilled water colder since I don't like the salt all over the equipment. I took pics of the setup and will post tomorrow. The beer came in with an OG of 1.056 which was higher than the 1.051 of last time. This means it will likely be sweet when done. But I did add two vials of yeast so it better not be fruity. I finished cleaning at around 8pm. All in all I would say this was one of the smoothest brew days ever.