Holiday Ale

Time to make a Christmas beer.

10lbs 2row

8oz C120

8oz Caravienne

4oz Honey Malt

2oz Black Roasted

2oz Special B

1oz Northern Brewer @60min

1oz Willamette @1min

WLP005 w/ starter - MFG: Oct 27, 2016 - Lot# 1030830

Whirlfloc

Servomyces

Added these towards the end of the boil:

1tsp ginger

1tsp allspice

2tsp cinnamon

I'm going with my Scottish 70/80 water profile. 1/2 Ridgecrest water. 1/2 Distilled. 12g chalk. 3g gypsum. 1g calcium chloride. 4g epsom salt. http://shanebrewblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/scottish-80-part2.html

2:48pm - I am lazily typing this up in the bedroom. Going to get some decent clothes on and get to the store and get water and ice.

4:25 - Heating up the mash water now. All seems well.

5:17 - Freed up the fermentation chamber. About to heat up the spare water.

7:01 - Pre-boil gravity was 1.045. That should get us around 1.055 going into the fermenter which is about where the more beer documentation said it should be. All is going well. About 45 mins into the boil now.

8:55 - All done. Really boring brew session. Nothing happened. I guess that's good. I don't know. For funsies I decided to check the pH once I had a sample and it measured on the strip at below 5.0. It looked similar to what the last blonde ended up looking like at the end. I'm thinking those strips are crap. The wort tasted good. Came in at 1.055. I only have one plastic fermenter so this brew went into a glass fermenter I had. That was a workout. Stay fit kids!

Christmas Meader

While I was brewing the Christmas beer I went ahead and made cider/mead mix with some holiday spices. The must tasted delicious.

I added to a 1 gallon fermenter:
1/4 tsp of nutmeg
1/4 tsp of allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2/3 of a container of honey that was old and crystallized
filled the rest with apple juice
1 packet of sweet mead yeast wlp720 - mfg sept 24, 2016 - lot 1029685

So I warmed up the honey with the sparge water. I added the spices first, then the honey, then the apple juice, then the yeast. I shook it up real good to aerate as much as I good. Below are the pics of the honey and apple juice. OG was 1.088!

EKA w/ Acid Corrections Update 1

I've got really high hopes that this pH correction stuff will end my apple ester woes. After a week, I've pulled the fermenter from the chamber and moved it to the bathroom to finish up (I needed the chamber for another beer). I added a silicon cap and while I was doing that I got a sample. The gravity is now 1.008. It tastes yeasty. Lots of diacetyl in there but it's still young. I expect it to clean up. So far no apple ester but I never taste it until the yeast clears up. So we will see. It doesn't taste amazing and that makes me sad. But it's too early to give up on it. Should have done side by side split batch, one with acid correction and one without.

EKA with acid corrections

It's November. Looking at the brew blog it appears I haven't brewed since July. I had a high grade tear of my dispel biceps tendon that I "acquired" in the gym. As such, I was unable to do anything with my arm for a few months. All healed up now.

Snikers lager was good. I was about to bottle it and enter in some competition. Then the keg blew. Such is life. This summer while at the Mammoth Blues and Beer fest I ran into the boys at White Labs and asked if they had any feedback about my apple ester. They said they get that when the pH gets too high. So I have since went out and bought some lactic acid. The goal here is to drop the pH in the mash to 5.2ish. I also bought some new pH strips. Those things get old after a while I think. I've done some calculations and I can expect about 0.07 lowering of pH per gram of lactic acid for the mash. I intend to mash in, check the pH, and then make corrections. I'll even check the wort after runoff.

8.5 lbs 2 row
1 lb C10
2oz German Hallertau 2.5%
WLP001 w/ starter (starter was made in the morning) - MFG: 10-11-2016 - Lot# - 1030256
Arrowhead spring water
Whirlfloc
Servomyces

Also got a new O2 stone. I think the last one broke.

4:01pm - I've already ground the grain. I'm now boiling the O2 stone and calibrating the thermometer.

4:40pm - We're mashed in. Mash temp 152. Needed to add a little cold water but not much. Pretty good for just eyeballing it. I checked the pH. It's about 5.2. I quite often check the pH right when I dough in and it always seems about 5.2. So, I guess I will keep checking to see when/if it changes.

6:36 - We are well into he boil now. Things are going well. The starting gravity was a little low. 1.033. I think it's because of the mill. I fiddled with it a bit. No matter. We will soldier on. After the mash was done I added about two gallons of spare water and checked the gravity again. You can see it's become a little more basic.

Then I check again after the first run off and the addition of the next spare water.

You can see if looks like it may be 6 or more. Then once more when it was all blended together back in the kettle.

Now I'm frustrated. Because we are shooting for 5.2 and by golly it looks like it is already 5.2. That can't be right. It's what we've always done. Well not this time. We came here to acidify this thing and now we will. Maybe I will invest in a better quality pH reader next batch. But for now we are going to add some lactic acid. I added 2g worth which should be about 2mL. Here what I measured after that.

It looks to me like the pH definatly dropped. I may add another later. Because why not.

8:10 - I added another gram. I mean, what are we doing here. Let's do this thing right. Beer is in the fermentation chamber. Cleaning up now.

9:00 - All done. I need to be sure to rinse the re-circulation portion of the chiller. Don't want things growing in there. Other than that it went smooth. Can't wait to see how it comes out. If this makes a difference then I will for sure purchase a fancy pH meter.