Hope that doesn't shock the yeast and get them to quit fermenting!
Hopefully not, I'm doing it slowly. Its down to about 74f from 81f right now, and it had 12 hours to do so. I cranked the temp down some more and it should continue to drop slowly till it gets to 68f.
Since my cooling is provided only by the ambient air in the chest freezer that should be a pretty gradual process. Airlock activity is about as slow as it was before I started turning the temp down.
I think I am going to brew the "new world" version of this on 6/20, and I think it would be fun to swap. I had a Westmalle 8 this weekend, and was planning on making something similar...but this sounds even better.
The mos tinteresting part is going to be making the candi sugar. Hopefully I don't make too much of a mess lol.
I'm going to let the yeast get rockin at 67 then in 36-48 hours I'll add my sugars and set my temp controller to only cool to 82. I don't think the temp will climb all the way up by itself so I might ramp the temp up 2-3 degrees a day
It will get there by itself, a lot faster than 3 degrees a day too.
It will get there by itself, a lot faster than 3 degrees a day too.
Yeah, I had a lot of krausen within 5 hours, so I think I had fermentation activity around 3. In the morning (about 12 hours since pitching) it had ramped up to my first cooling point at 78f when I had my fridge set to 70f. I raised my fridge temp to 74 that morning and it had hit 81.5f by the time I was back from lunch.
Well I'm all set to brew tomorrow. I'm excited! As an interesting aside, I always have problems with a very slow sparge on decocted mashes so tonight I decided for the first time to condition my malt before milling. The difference is incredible! The milled grain is a completely different texture, very fluffy! It's because nearly all of the hulls are completely intact, in spite of all the germ being completely crushed. I'm going to have to start doing this for every batch. For the 5 minutes it takes, it looks like it will definitely be worth it.
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I'm too lazy and have too many beers going to keep updating this!
Condition the malt? Ive not heard of that, please tell!
I did a gravity test last night, down to 1.014, should be right on target for me transferring to a corny tomorrow.
Batch #2 got postponed to a week from tomorrow for me due to me forgetting to order some D1 sugar, oops. So I'm brewing a trappist blonde instead.
Conditioning the malt is basically just adding 2% by weight of water to the grain before grinding. It makes the hulls more pliable so instead of ripping and tearing, they remain whole. You can find a better description on the wiki here: Malt Conditioning - Home Brewing Wiki.
I'm just starting the boil on my brew right now. Decoction days are so freaking long!! It better be worth it!
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I'm too lazy and have too many beers going to keep updating this!
Man, it's taking forever! The two hour boil is killer! I'm taking pictures throughout the day including before and after the boil color pics to see what kind of color the 2 hr boil adds. Preboil gravity was higher than expected meaning I got way better than my calculated 85% efficiency. Color was pretty light for the pre-boil sample so I'm not sure how much color the decoction added. Probably somewhere between 2-4 SRM. If the boil adds another 3-5 SRM I should end up right around the right color, after the candi sugar gets added.
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I'm too lazy and have too many beers going to keep updating this!
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