Session Helles

I really enjoy Helles. Simple. Tasty. There is kinda a new homebrew community standing up. We are supposed to deliver a session beer. So I'm coming in with a simple Helles.

8lbs german pilsner
2oz Hallertau 2.7%
Crystal Gyser water
Whilfloc
Servomyces
WLP940 x2 with starter. One of them was old. Date = 7-10-15 Lot# 1014141. Date = 4-17-15 Lot #1011907.

11:07 - It's a Sunday. I'm hoping to get all the mash run off before dad calls for lunch. We are currently mashing right now. 150F. It's going ok so far. The mash tun is leaking a little. No big deal. While we mash I boiling to O2 stone. The gas tank is finicky and it sucks but we got is to work.

12:14 - Sparge done. The plan today was to sparge and then go to lunch dad, then start the boil. So now I'm waiting for my family to call. They should any moment. Things are going well so far. Once I got the sparge water heated up I put it in the mash tun. Then I looked at the clock. It was at 50 minutes instead of my usual 60. It probably won't matter. Most starch is converted within 45 minutes anyway.

5:43 - Done. Went to food with mom and dad. That part of the day worked out ok. During chilling a fly buzzed into the beer. I was livid. It will probably be ok but I'm losing my mind about this. I only got one bag of ice for a lager beer. Note to self, in the future you need two bags of ice. I had to raid our freezer but I got it chilled. It appears the beer is now at 58 degrees. I was hoping for more like 52 when we went to the fermentation fridge but again we should be ok. If anything it means less of a change/shock to the yeast when I pitched them in. I'm going to set the fermentation temp to around 51F. The OG was 1.044 so that part workout good. The starter smelled good. The sink is leaking and Ellie got Ricky to come over and fix it. I am not a handy man. But I am a hungry man. There is chicken in the fridge.

Brew brother Jacob split batch update

Just sampled both the beers that Jacob and I brewed. They tasted very similar. Appley. Not too bad though. Ellie tasted the same. From this I can conclude that the issue is not my fermentation. It's not my cool fermentation chamber. It's not a dirty fermenter. It's not the keg. Can't wait to do a repeat with him at his place on his gear.

As a side note. I'm not sure it's my gear either. My O2 experiment is on going. I just bottled up beer that was fermented with very little of my gear. I used malt extract and brewed it in the kitchen with kitchen equipment. It's probably not in the O2 stone since the shake batch was the same. The funnel was recently replaced. I just don't know what it could be. There is one constant in all this and that's the WLP001 yeast. Maybe that yeast is just not as clean as the world says. I don't know.