Time to brew beer. It's been a while. Got a cream ale from MoreBeer.
5lbs 2-row
5lbs Pilsner
1lb Flaked Corn
8oz Corn sugar
1.5oz Czech Saaz 2.4AA @60min
0.5oz Hallertau Hersbrucker 3.1AA @60min
0.5oz Czech Saaz 2.4AA @20min
Whirlfloc
Servomyces
WLP001 x2 1500mL starter. Lot #1005327
Water is below:
11:26 - Starting. Things are looking good. Ellie will hang with me today.
11:37 - I think MoreBeer adds too much grain for our needs. I'm going to use 8lbs of grain instead of 10lbs. 10lbs gets me a 1.063 beer and I want something more like 1.053. BeerSmith helped me out here.
12:37 - I forgot to add the brewing salts to the strike water. I added three gallons into the mash tun before I figured it out. Had to empty the tun back into the pot and mix it all up.
Also, I think we have had a mouse in the garage since I last brewed. I found what I think are mouse droppings in the gear. As long as I don't find any evidence in the cold side of the gear I won't worry too much as everything will get boiled anyway. I think I need to set some traps in the garage.
I figured out why MoreBeer is less effiecent with grain. It's because they don't mill the grain as well as I do. This is no doubt to preserve their mill. Already my mill is showing some wear. Only one roller rolls. So I'm going to have to figure that out later.
3:03 - Things are moving along. There's been plenty of distraction. Ellie had some homies come along that distracted me. Beth came by and brought he dog which caused my brown idiot to yip and yap. In the midst of all this I forgot to add the brewing salts for the sparge water. So we sparged with distilled. So, our water will be softer than I planned and we will see how it comes out.
Once the boil started I checked the gravity and it was a little lower than I had thought. It was 1.040 and wanted more like 1.043. Not a big difference.
4:51 - All done. The pump that was circulating water in the chiller was backwards. So instead of pushing water it was sucking water. Huge mistake! OG was 1.053.
All Done!
