Ingredients:
- 8lbs Maris Otter
- 4.00 oz 2008 Fuggles hops (whole)
- WLP001 California Ale Yeast
- 7.25 gallons Drexel Hill water
24 hours before starting my first brewing session I created a 2 qt yeast starter using Extra Light DME and one vial of WLP001 California Ale Yeast. After 24 hours on a stir plate I decanted the yeast, let it settle and cool down gradually in my basement. After decanting I ended up with a little under a quart of yeast slurry.
On Sunday morning I picked up 45 pounds of ice for my pre-chiller and boiled 7.5 gallons of water to get rid of the chlorine. I let it cool down to 168 degrees (strike temp as calculated in BeerSmith)
I preheated my mashtun to 168 degrees with 1 gallon of water and combined it with 6.25 gallons of water from the other pot. I dumped 8 pounds of Maris Otter into the tun and let it sit for 90 minutes. I did have an issue with temperature control, actually it had to do with the strike water being too hot by 10 degrees. When I dumped MO into the tun it lowered the temp to 164; that is no where near the high end of what it should be (155-158). So I left the pot open to cool down as quickly as possible. What I should have done was to perhaps use ice or ice packs (inside a plastic bag) to lower the temperature. I came up with that solution a day later, unfortunately. Although the strike water was too high I think it would be easier to cool it down versus heating it so in the future I think I’ll stick with strike water that is a bit warmer then needed. Since I’m so new to brewing I really haven’t figured out how this high temperature will impact the final brew, maybe someone with more experience can chime in.
After 90 minutes I started to transfer the wort into the boil pot but before doing so I recalled what Dave Miller wrote in his book about transferring wort into the boil pot. He said it should take between 40 to 60 minutes to do the transfer. Basically the flow of the wort has to be very gentle and slow so the grain bed doesn’t collapse plus the slow flow helps to improve efficiency. With that knowledge I timed the flow out of the ball valve so it would take 50 minutes to fully drain. The first gallon or so I recycled back into the tun gently to remove any grain residue until the wort came out clear. My pot has a false bottom which helped with that.
After the wort drained into the boil pot I started to boil it for 90 minutes. Once it started to boil I added 2 oz of the hops at 90 minutes and 2 more ounces at 60 minutes. At 75 minutes I immersed my chiller in the wort to sanitize it for 15 minutes in the boiling wort. This is where a major problem occurred; I had iced water running through the chiller already which in turn caused the boil to stop! I panicked a bit at this point and increased the propane flow to bring the wort back to a boil. This turned out to be another mistake because the heat from the wort melted all 45 pounds of ice in my pre-chiller in a matter of minutes. In the end I was not able to bring the wort back to a boil and instead added more ice to my pre-chiller and continued the cooling process. It took about 30 minutes to lower the temperature to 68 degrees. I’m sure time would have been shorter if it wasn’t for the fact that I turned up the heat on full power for few minutes mid-way through the chilling phase.
Once chilled I drained my wort into a 6.5 gallon carboy and aerated with an aquarium pump for the duration of it being filled. Once full I pitched my yeast, covered it with a airlock and moved it from the garage to the basement.
Within 12 hours the yeast was going crazy! The airlock kept popping like mad releasing a lot of CO2. This was a good sign. As I finish this post on Sunday my beer has been fermenting full 7 days. I tasted it yesterday and it is not bad, a bit grainy but that is because it is still green. It is very hoppy as well so maybe I overdid it with 4 oz of hops but the flavors will most likely even out over time.
I brewed another batch today which took me half the time of the first batch. I made correction in the areas where I erred last time (ie the high mash temp and lowering of the chiller filled with ice water). I am hoping both batches will be good, so far both are looking good!
