Blonde Beer with Extra Special Malt

Bugsy got kicked out of school today for beating up other children and then being uncontrollable. My mom wanted to hang with him today anyway so Ellie scooped him up and took him there. He's only been in school a month and has been suspended!

Also, Ellie and I adopted another little. Lucas Maximo. He's about 5 weeks now. We got to spend lots of time with the bios in the hospital. They are good people.

What the hell is Extra Special Malt? I don't know but I got a bunch of it at the Homebrew Con so I figured I use some.

We will use the same water profile as the last brew with Nate. I thought the beer came out good. The new malt should drop the pH a little more than the 5.4 it was when I brewed with Nate. Also we will try some dry yeast from Fermentis since I got a bunch of that for free at the Homebrew Con. Those guys claim that I should pitch directly and not rehydrate. So I'll try that. Also, I'm giving Saaz hops another go. It was a variable in the pH experiment. If we make apple ester beer then we know hops is a non factor.

9lbs 2 row

1lb C15

3oz Extra Special Malt

1oz Saaz 4.4%AA

Safale US-05 - Expires 07/2020 - Serial # 33159 201 1642

We will use 10 gallons of distilled and will add the following brewing salts.

3g Gypsum
6g CaCl
2g Epsom Salt
1g NaCl

Wyeast beer nutrient blend. 2 grams. Dissolved in warm water.

4:28 - Done boiling O2 stone. Also calibrated the thermometers.

5:34 - Well I've done a bunch more stuff. Measured out the brewing salts. Milled the grain. Made dinner. I think I'll eat dinner with E and then begin heating the water.

6:43 - Mash temp was a little high. We started at 156F. I worked it down to 150F. Better to be high than low. Took about 5 minutes to get it down. I'm using the mash calculator on brewer's friend for the first time. Usually I use beer smith and it works great for me but it lives on the mac and I didn't want to have to lug that thing out just for that one piece of info. Also, I mistakenly took a sample for a pH measurement before adding the salts. So I added them and took another sample. The distilled water sample came in with a pH of 5.7. The one with salts was 5.43. Of note was that I didn't calibrate the pH meter this time. I poured some pH 7 and 4 solutions in a cup and they measured pretty close so I just left it. 

7:49 - Just opened my first beer. Firestone Lager. It's really good. We are starting the boil now. Pre-boil gravity was 1.035. That means we should get to 1.045 when done. Should be a nice easy drinking session beer.

9:51 - Cleaning up now.

10:38 - Decided to use the plate chiller. Went a little better this time than last time. It's the last thing to clean up and then we are done. Something to remember is that the water flow needs to faster than I think and the wort flow needs to be slower. If the water is really hot, then it's too slow.

I did have an issue with the pi. It doesn't appear on the list of connected devices on the router when it powers up. I think if I ping the address 192.168.1.102 it might find its way there. Instead I thought something broke and I took it apart to troubleshoot. When I got it apart and took it to the bedroom (sorry pumpkin) it was working great so that sucks. I just put it back together and then no problems. There is obviously something screwy with that new router. Never had these problems with the old router. Anyhow, I need to finish cleaning up and then get to bed.

From now on I'm going to add things to buy for the next brew at the end of the blog. This will be a handy way for me to remember for the next batch. I don't have to remember what to get. I just have to remember to check the last blog post.

Needed:

pH calibration solution