July 4th - Best Brew Day Yet

CGengo · 07-06-2008, 04:55 PM

On Friday, I brewed my third batch - Jamil's Harold-Is-Weizen from Brewing Classic Styles. This is the first batch that I created a starter for, a 2L beast using about half a pound of pilsner DME and a tube of WLP300. This was my first full boil and I had a couple minor boilovers but nothing serious.

This is also the first time I got to use my new DIY cooling rig that I constructed from a 50' roll of 3/8" copper tubing from Home Depot, 10' of 3/8" tubing, a female hose fitting with barb, and hose clamps. I rolled a ~35' immersion chiller and a separate 15' pre-chiller but after some testing settled on using the pre-chiller as more of a post chiller to flow immersion-cooled wort through an ice bath to get it to ~60 degrees. Worked great...the immersion chiller took the wort to ~78 degrees in 20 minutes and the post-chiller cooled it to a solid 62 degrees in the time it took to siphon the wort through it into the carboy.

I also invested in a Johnson temperature controller and converted a small chest freezer that was barely used into my new fermentation chamber, holds temperature very nicely which is good because it's really expensive to keep a Tampa home at 62 degrees in July. Here's the brew about 36 hours into fermentation, looks strong and the freezer smells like banana bread. Overall, a great brew day!

Cheers!

eschatz · 07-06-2008, 07:04 PM

looks GREAT! let us know how it tastes!

jay672 · 07-10-2008, 05:56 PM

Nice setup, my 3rd brew i was still using my walmart ceramic pot and and didnt know what a chiller was...lol

nealf · 07-10-2008, 07:12 PM

Looks great!! Let us know how the banana/clove comes through. I'm really curious if the large starter will reduce the amount of banana/clove; this seemed to be the case in my American Wheat... but I used Wyeast 1010 AM Wheat yeast which is fairly neutral anyway.

**Southwood** · 07-10-2008, 08:25 PM

Just brewed this recipe on Monday using wyeast 3068. I used a smaller (1 pint) starter & am holding the temp @ 61-63F. My OG was a good bit lower than I was expecting (1.036) but I figure I'll be drinking this by the liter come the dog days of August, so maybe smaller is better.

Prost!

CGengo · 07-11-2008, 01:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Southwood

My OG was a good bit lower than I was expecting (1.036) but I figure I'll be drinking this by the liter come the dog days of August, so maybe smaller is better.

That's pretty low, mine came in at 1.050. Fermentation seems to be winding down slowly, still has a nice krausen on top. The banana bread smell was knock you down strong for the first few days but seems to have settled down a bit now, smells really nice now - I'm hoping the flavor is more neutral than the early smell, if not...oh well, I like bananas too.

**Southwood** · 07-11-2008, 12:14 PM

The smell will hit you hard during fermentation, but I think the cooler temps should keep the flavors balanced. I was nervous about going that cold, I had to keep my ferm fridge in the mid-50's to keep my fermenting wort reading 61-63. It's been cruising steadilly for 3 days now & is giving me those delicious bananna smells. Not sure why my OG was so low, I'm hoping it was just a bad reading (partial boil), but I'm sure it'll be delicious anyway.

Here's to Hefe!