Ryan's Dusseldorf Alt Bier

Somehow I got Ellie to agree to brew this beer. It's another kit from MoreBeer. Here's the ingredients:

8lb 2-row
2lb Munich
1lb Vienna
1lb Crystal 40L
4oz Chocolate

0.5oz Magnum 12.3% @60min
0.5oz Saaz 2.9% @20min
1.0oz Mt. Hood 5.5% @0min

WLP036x2 with 1 liter starter. Lot number 1004255. Date Apr-23-14

Whirlfloc and Servomyces.

Now for water. Ellie and I wanted to use 50% Ridgecrest water and 50% distilled and then some salts. But I ran out of Chalk. This really upset me and I think Ellie could see it. She told me to not worry about, do the best we can and roll with what we got. In the end we put 2g of Gypsum and 2g of CaCl. This gave us some calcium and balance out the Cl and SO4. We came up short on residual alkalinity and ended up with too much sodium. Ridgecrest water has too much sodium which is why we cut it with distilled. So we'll see.

Got the mash tun assembled no problem. We noticed a slightly foul smell in the ball valve. It appeared to be in some trapped water in the ball valve somewhere. Every smelled great right up until we opened to valve and some water came out and we smelled it.

Other things that went wrong were that I forgot the water filter for the tap. So, I had to go get that. Ellie mashed in a little too high and we added to much water. The mash seemed to settle at 151F. The pH was a little high at 5.5ish. Not too bad.


We are now eating while the grain mashes. She made some food and it was good. I cleaned up a little while she was cooking. I'm already really tired and I think we got a few hours to go still. She has to get up really early to hang with a buddy on a road trip. I'm rambling now. Back to beer.

Ok, it is now midnight and we are all done. Clare hung out for a bit. Ellie did a lot of the work. I lifted heavy stuff. But she brewed the beer. Even if the witnesses find that statement debatable we got the spend the evening together and I am happy about that. There was nothing really mentioning. The OG is 1.050. This is a little lower than I thought we would get. The beer tastes bitter. I think if we lager it properly then that will diminish. Nonetheless I'm tired and want to go to bed.