Buster's Brown Clone

I roped the brew club into making a clone of Bravery's Buster's Brown. Brian Avery sent over a skeleton of the ingredients and let us fill in the details. This is my attempt at said ingredients:

12 lbs 2 row
8oz C40
6oz cara-pils
8oz white wheat malt
4oz chocolate malt

2oz Magnum
2oz Northern Brewer
2oz Cascade

2 packets of US-05

I'll add the Northern Brewer with 10mins to go and Cascade at flame out.

For a water profile I'm going to add the following to distilled (which I got from ezwatercalculator.com):
Mash:
4g CaSO4
2g CaCl2
1g MgSO4

Sparge:
4g CaSO4
2g CaCl2
1g MgSO4

This should yield the following:
77ppm Ca
5ppm Mg
0ppm Na
51ppm Cl
134ppm SO4

With a pH of 5.6

1.5mL of Lactic Acid should get us down to a pH of 5.5

We mashed in a little high. Around 158. I got it down to 154-156. The pH measured 5.4. So, I will not add any acid.

OG will be 1.064. A little high. The wort tasted bitter. I went with 1.5oz of magnum and 1.5oz of Northern Brewer. Glad I did that. All in all it was a very ho hum boring brew day. Here's to hoping the beer comes out tasty.

Club SMASH beer

 Th club thought it would be fun to do a SMASH beer. I don't remember what grain or hops we landed on but I know I've got 15# of the grain. I think I will try to make beer fast.

I didn't calibrate the thermometers. I've crushed the grain just now and am heating up the strike water. I bought Crystal Geyser water. 

9:57 - All mashed in. I'm going to wait an hour. I'll clean the keg and when I'm done, I will sparge. Mash temp is about 150F. I went a little high and added some cool water. About 1/4 of a gallon bu that was too much so I added some hot strike water. It initially looked a little thick and now looks like what I'm used to seeing. I probably added about 5 gallons. I also added a little acid to the mash. How much? I don't know. Did it need it? I don't know.

10:36 - It was a 30min mash. I'm sparging now. Just ran off the first as fast as I could. Then poured 3 gallons of cold water in, stirred 

12:15 - All done. I'm guessing it rook 2.5 hours. Maybe 3. The OG will be 1.056. It tasted ok going into the fermenter. Other than that it was a boring day. Will all the short cuts spoil the beer. We will see how it comes out.

Some other things I did, I added the hops, whirlfloc, and yeast nutrient to the kettle just before I ran off the sparge. I used the immersion chiller. I thought it would clean up quicker.

A Hefe

So I entered the AHA competition. Seemed like the thing to do to set an example in the homebrew club. I'm not sure where I got this recipe. I may have made it up. I may have grabbed it from somewhere. I don't know. I'm pretty sure part of it is just old un-used yeast. So way to go me for using fresh ingredients. Gotta put your best foot forward.

5lbs Maris Otter
5lbs Pale Wheat
1lb Dark Munich

1oz Hallertau Mittelfruh 4% AA

2x SafAle WB-06

Distilled water with the following salts in the mash:
3g gypsum
1g salt
4g CaCl

Some quick math tells me that I need two packets of yeast. Thankfully I got 2. What I need to do it take 10 times the weight of wort during cooling to re-hydrate. That would be 220ml. So, hopefully I don't forget. 

It's 1pm as I type this and I still have to get to the store and calibrate thermometers and all that. So it could be a while before I'm actually boiling things.

3:13pm - We are now heating the strike water. I've measured out the salts. I've calibrated the thermometers and the pH meter. Grain has been milled. So far everything is going smooth.

3:38 - I've mashed in. Mash temp is 150 which is exactly what I was after. So that's awesome. The pH came in at 5.1 which is a little low but not tragic. I'll assemble the brew kettle next. So far everything is going very smooth.

4:20 - Heating up the sparge water now. I've assembled the boil kettle, cleaned the fermentation chamber, and made some cider. I entered that into the NHC as well. I didn't put much effort into that. I put in a some all spice, nutmeg, and cloves in a 1 gallon fermenter, apple cider, and yeast. I did add a little yeast nutrient.  How much of each spice? You know, just a little sprinkle. What yeast? WLP 775. I will say the expiration date was two days ago.I give this an extreme low chance of turning out good. This is where my life is.

5:20 - We are well into the boil now. The first gravity reading I got was 1.040. Things are going well. Bugsy has been in and out of here all afternoon. 

7:04 - Done. OG will be 1.052. It tasted really good. I went with the old fashioned copper coil for heat exchange today. I stirred like hell and I think it cooled faster than the plate chiller. I'm going to move to this method from now on. This was one of the most easy, pleasant brew days I've ever had. Not sure why. Days like this make me want to brew more.