keeps getting easier.... Thanks HBT Pros

Just brewed a NB Town Hall brewing King and Hope Scotch Ale on Friday using everything I learned here so far.
I built a stirplate using a super quite 80mm fan and made a stepped starter (1ltr decanted then additional 500ml) Guess I need a 2 liter flask.
I was given 40ft of 3/8 copper that I made a wort chiller with. Worked great 190 to 68f in 15 minutes.
I also treated my water with campden since my water company uses cloramine. Swamp cooler is keeping the beer in the low to mid 60's and it has a continuous flow of bubbles from the blow off tube for 1 1/2 days now. :rockin:
NB recommends 2 week primary and 4 secondary but I plan on probably 6 week primary then bottle.
I am really looking forward to this one being a Great beer!
The only goof I can think of was pitching my yeast.. Stirbar and all and I had the fricken magnet in my hand.. guess i got to excited! oh well.:rockin:

Grem, sounds like you're both having fun and brewing good beer.

About your city water, can you smell or taste the chloramine in it?

Rick

I was thinking maybe 4 weeks myself with 4 weeks in bottle as an alternative. From the comments on NB site for this it seems this beer really likes the extra time in fermenter and bottle.

F250 said:

Grem, sounds like you're both having fun and brewing good beer.

About your city water, can you smell or taste the chloramine in it?

Rick

Click to expand...

Our water actually tastes pretty good, or maybe i'm just used to it. After reading the water report and stuff on here I figured why not, campden is cheap and i have my future mashtun to treat the water in. I really need to setup the ball valve in it though, holding that button for the boil and topoff water gave me a hand cramp

In my previous batches I had trouble keeping temps stable for steeping grains (got over 170) so this time I heated my water to about 160 and poured over the bagged grains in a 2 gallon cooler. Temp ended up being about 153-154f for the 30 minute steep. Really stoked about this one!

After 2 days of very active fermentation on 3rd day I decided to replace the blow off tube with an airlock. Almost immediately the airlock started bubbling faster than I ever saw it on previous brews. After about a 30 seconds it had the starsan in the airlock foaming up out of the cap! I reinstalled the blow off tube. Last thing I need is a volcanic eruption all over my computer workbench and server!
I don't know if this is normal for a 1.060 OG and/or a good yeast starter but its fricken awesome!
Since I am low on homebrew so I think I better restock with some craft beers so I'm not temped to rush this one.

WOW! Warm and flat this is fricken awesome! In fact its better flat than my last batch after 2 months in the bottle.
If i wasn't bitten by the HB bug before well......... it will be 4 weeks in primary Friday and cant bottle till monday. Its going to be a long 3-4 weeks waiting on this one.

Did you break down and try an early bottle??

I'm brewing this tomorrow. Pretty psyched for it. Got it as a Christmas present. Been typing the recipe into beersmith for the last hour or so.

Let us know how it turns out!! :rockin:

Tried one today (shame on me only 12 days in bottle) and it is fricken awesome! Still light on carbonation but it is smooth and malty with none of the bite my earlier brews had. Can't wait till this one is fully carbed and conditioned!
This is the first time I used a yeast starter and campden tabs to treat the water (they use chloramine here).

Is it to early to say this one will in my regular rotation?

Never to early... well, maybe sometimes haha. Brewed my kit today... completely forgot the irish moss tablets... but, it was a double brew day for me and a buddy and when we couldnt find any in my apartment for his IPA, I felt only slightly better about forgetting it before haha.

Scotch ale is on the left... imperial IPA on the right

All the comments on it says it really gets good 4- 6 weeks bottle conditioning, can't imagine it getting better but looking forward to it.
Looks like you had a nice brewday. I left my scotch ale in primary 4 weeks in a swamp cooler to keep temps in low 60s first 2 weeks then let get to upper 60s.
I was going to brew yesterday but SWMBO got the flu real bad so i postponed it to monday

It's gonna be tough to be patient with this one. It was already chugging along when I woke up this morning. I realized, this brew day was the most efficient ever for me. BeerSmith gave me an est. OG of 1.063... I ended up with 1.066 in the fermenter before pitching. Now, I just gotta figure out how I managed to do that. I forgot to take the pre-boil gravity to see what I pulled out of the mash unfortunately.