Well, I've installed myself as the president of a brew club in town. Not because I want to be president of something but because I want a brew club and I know what I want it to look like. So I started one and am doing me best to mold it into that image. My hope is that in a year or so, the club will be taken over by someone more eager and I will get to enjoy culture I established until I die. Anyhow I digress...One thing I wanted for the club was to have an internal homebrew competition and I planned to do it in the fall during a yearly festival. Covid struck and as such we can no longer meet at Flight Line Tap Room (our new home). One thing I thought might bring us together would be to brew together but separately. The AHA Big Brew was May 2nd and the thinking was that we were going to get together to brew until the pandemic arrived. So I thought we could combine these two events and brew the AHA recipe as a club and use that as our internal homebrew competition. We thought we could reach out to our local homebrew shop 100 miles away and throw him some business. The recipe was strange and the ingredients hard to get to Dylan did best to substitute and put together a big ass order and had it shipped to me. I kitted these up and had the guys come over the Friday before and we all sort of brewed together but separate that weekend. Except I have kids. And I need time when they are away to brew. So I picked this Friday since I thought that FedEx would deliver my MoreBeer order which contained a new burner since the old was leaking on Thursday, which they did not. So brew bother Jacob hooked me up with a burner. That's a lot of catching up of my brewing world right there. Ok, here's the recipe:
50.0 6.00 lbs. Maris Otter Great Britain 1.038 4
41.7 5.00 lbs. Pilsener Germany 1.038 2
8.3 1.00 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt 1.033 2
1.00 oz. Chinook Pellet 13.00 49.7 60 min.
0.50 oz. El Dorado Pellet 15.00 14.2 15 min.
1.00 oz. Samba Pellet 11.60 0.0 0 min.
0.50 oz. El Dorado Pellet 15.00 0.0 0 min.
1.00 oz. Cashmere Pellet 9.60 0.0 Dry Hop
1.00 oz. El Dorado Pellet 15.00 0.0 Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Samba Pellet 11.60 0.0 Dry Hop
Lallemand Voss Kveik
We will be using distilled water with the following additions to the mash:
10g gypsum
1g epsom salt
1g NaCl
2g Calcium Chloride
We will try to measure the pH but I don't think any of the pH meters will be accurate right now. I have plans to add 1g of lactic to the mash to drop the pH to 5.4. I was going to measure and see then decide if I add it. It may just be a bust and I will have to add anyway.
Junny wants to have the spent grain for baking so I need to remember not to throw things away.
1:45 - It's late. I'm going to be still brewing by the time the kids get back and I feel bad about it. I'm going to have to find a way to make it up to the women. Anyhow, I've boiled the O2 stone, calibrated the thermometers, calibrated the refractometer, measured out my salts, assembled the mash tun, moved around the garage a bit, measured out the acid, calibrated the pH meter (it seems to be working great), and I'm sure other things. I need to heat up my strike water and grind the grain.
2:27 - I've just mashed in. I wanted a lower mash temp since I thought the Cara-Pils would be enough to give the brew body. Lowering the mash temp would also yield more ethanol. So that's nice. Initially the mash was too hot so I added some cool water. And I added too much and ended up about 147. Not tragic though. Next I measured the pH and got 5.0. That's a little low. I wanted 5.4 so this was off by quite a bit. I'm not sure if the brew calculator is off, if I used it wrong, or if I measured wrong. In any case, I am NOT adding additional acid. I did sprinkle a little 5.2 stabilizer in there hoping it would bring it up but that was a fail. I did nothing. So I guess we have what we have, don't we.
3:24 - Draining the last of the wort now. It doesn't taste as sweet as I was hoping. Pre-boil gravity is 1.040 and it should be 1.050. So this beer is a big big miss.
4:24 - Something that I did that maaaay disqualify me from the contest is that I held back on the early hop additions. Since I didn't hit my gravity I didn't have the malt backbone for so much hops. So added about 3/4. Almost done with the boil now.
5:23 - Ok I've cooled the wort and pitched the yeast. This yeast likes to be warm I guess so I'm putting it in my closet. Something I didn't pay attention to was that the yeast wants to be hydrated first before pitching. I noticed the direction on the packet as I was about to cut it open. So I go into the dishwasher and get the glass measuring cup and pour 100ml of water into it. The cup was warm from just having got out of the dishwasher and the water was warm because it was sitting in the garage. The packet indicated 30C so I think I got the temp covered. I forgot to sanitize the cup but it shouldn't be too bad it just came out of the dishwasher. The big screw up was the water. It was the water I was drinking. So all my mouth germs are now in the beer. Soooo, this beer is going to be awful. I guess I had a fun day though. I'm going to clean up now and I think I will clean the kegs while I am at it.
5:45 - O.G will be 1.050. Way off. I wanted 1.060 which I usually get. Was it because I mashed too cool. I don't know. I tasted the sample of wort that I took for the gravity measurement and it was awful. Tasted like burnt rubber.
