12lbs 2row
8oz munich
8oz rye
1lb flaked wheat
1lb Crystal 75L
2oz Black roasted barley
.75oz Northern Brewer @60mins
1oz Columbus @1min
2oz Columbus dry hop
WLP028 Edinburgh x2 - Apr-12-13 - Lot CCB755-762
whirlfloc
servomyces
French Oak chips which will be added after primary fermentation for 7-10 days. I'll add it the last week in the fermenter before I transfer to the keg.
Water breakdown:
Let me start by saying I was trying to make a beer I saw on MoreBeer that looked interesting. They called it Fire in the Hole.I would have bought the Fire in the Hole kit but they were unavailable. So I thought I'd just by the ingredients myself separately and I quickly learned why the kit was unavailable. The recipe called for Carafa II which they were out of. This is key since it adds the color to the beer without the acrid/roasty/coffee type flavors. I think this is because they remove the husks. Since I couldn't find it I substituted in the black roasted barley. Also, they didn't have any Magnum hops that the recipe call for in bittering. I've still got some Northern Brewer in the freezer so this wasn't a problem.
Dad was coming over to brew with me. Before he got there I measured out the hops and the brewing salts and got the water ready. Got the O2 stone boiled. Got the mash tun together.
In some sort of bizzaro type brew day from the last time, we had a hell of a tough brew day initially, then things got smooth and boring. It started with me adding the brewing salts to the brew water. It then looked very cloudy and the chalk settled on the bottom. Afterwards I do some google fu and learned that you don't add chalk to the brew water, you add it to the mash because it needs the low pH to actually dissolve. So there was that screw up.
Then I thought it would be cool to show dad the grain mill. I get the grains in the hopper and the drill hooked up and start milling and something happened that never happened before. As soon as I started the drill, the mill flew off the bucket and emptied the hopper full of grains onto the garage floor. Half of this ended up under the dryer. So dad lifted the dryer and I did my best to gather up all the grain from the garage floor. So now the grain is a nice mix of rye, barley, and lint/dirt/bugs/whatever from the garage floor. This might sound gross but it's really not a big deal since the mash will filter almost all of that out and even if something does get through it will be boiled for an hour so life goes on. But still what a pain in the ass.
I've lost that cool key used to tighten and loosen drill bits from the drill. So I tighten it but turning on the drill and letting it torque down onto the mill and tighten up. We ran all the grain through the mill and then focused on the strike water. I'll get back to that screw up. So now it comes to getting the drill off of the mill and I can't seem to do it with a pair of pilers and my strong as an ox dad grabs the neck that tightens/loosens the bit and turns the drill on. I'm sure it will break his wrist but instead it just burns up the AC motor on the drill and we end up with a lovely electrical burned smell in the garage for a few minutes.
So we get the strike water into the mash tun and I swear we hit the 168F we wanted. So I go to take the mill off of the bucket and I look at the grain. What do I see? Not a single grain has been crushed. That's right kiddies, if you run the mill in reverse the grains will get shifted to the sides of the rollers and pass through the mill completely uncrushed. So now I've to get the smelly drill back out and get it attached to the mill but I can't since when dad ran the thing in reverse the open the drill bit he jammed it. So, I have to get him to do the same thing he did to burn up the drill the first time only this time in reverse. After we get through that, I mill the grain in the correct direction and all is well. It now made sense to me why the mill jumped off the bucket the first time. When it spin in the wrong direction the force torques the mill off the bucket. When done right, it would torque down onto the bucket and spillage. So we do a better job getting the drill off the mill when done. All we needed was a little practice I guess.
Ok so now we get the grain in the mash tun and the temp is 148F. Too low. And why should it go right? Nothing has yet anyway. So we pull out some grain and boil it up and add it back into the mash to raise the temp. I got about +2F. Then I pulled out about three times as much grain as I did the first go around and boiled it and added it back. At that point I was at 156F and we left it.
So at this point things start to go smoother. It's like we exercised all of the bad brewing demons in that first hour or so. We heated up the sparge water and did a batch sparge. We got about 7 gallons and the pre-boil gravity was 1.048. We boiled for an hour and during the last minute I added the columbus hops. This is my first time with these hops and as soon as I opened it smelled it I was floored. I've been used a lot of citrusy type hops lately (cascade, amarillo, citra). I found this hop to be pungent, dank, and earthy. Very interesting odor.
Then we set our minds to cooling the wort and it took about 45 mins to cool. I had dad stirring the wort while I stirred the prechiller. That led us to about 2:30ish and mom was hungry and took him away. I left the wort for a few minutes for the cold break to settle. Then I racked it over and hit it with O2 for a minute and pitched the yeast. It now sits in the chest freezer. The OG is 1.062.
All that was left at that point was to cleanup. Next time I brew I will brew with the brown dog. She sneaked out of the house and into the garage for a minute to hang with mom, dad, and me. It was nice to see her there. At least this time our brewing adventures did not necessitate a major cleanup of the garage like last time.
