sharpstick
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2007
- Messages
- 177
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my wife was out of town for the weekend, i got bored and did three batches.
friday night i disposed of an old pilsner partial grain kit. i put in fresh hops, belgian yeast, coriander and orange zest. i'm calling that one a belgian pilsner, about as much of an oxymoron as polish reggae, but we'll see.
second up was an american brown ale. i think i have a system. sort of. my thermometers seem to all be on the fritz, and my hydrometers are not agreeing with my refractometer, so i just winged it. i did sort of a fly sparge. i kept an eye on the SG best i could and stopped it when the SG of the wort was in the ballpark. i had calculated for a 6 gallon batch and i think i stopped it at about 4.5. there was still some weaker wort running out and i hated to waste it, so i dumped it into another pot and boiled it separately. i got about 4 quarts of somewhat weaker wort, added three glurps of wildflower honey to boost the brix, and brought it up to about 1.050 and put it into a 3 gallon carboy.
today i made a belgian strong dark, preparing for a local competition in october. it's based on a chimay blue clone recipe i found. fortunately, i realized that the 20 lbs of grain would not mash in my 5 gallon igloo BEFORE I TRIED TO PUT IT IN! , so did an emergency conversion of a larger 48 qt igloo "ice cube" cooler with some spare hose, teflon tape and electrician's tape. when this one hit target SG, i again had leftover wort, so i did the same thing, processed it separate and dumped it into the same 3 gallon carboy. that got treated pretty much like the ale except i don't like grapefruit, so i used magnum and williamette instead. i'm gonna call this monstrosity "sloppy seconds".
it was all pretty seat of the pants. it rained twice, my car got broken into last night and i had to talk to the police today in the middle of it, and this all occurs in my driveway. these were my 2nd and 3rd AGs.
friday night i disposed of an old pilsner partial grain kit. i put in fresh hops, belgian yeast, coriander and orange zest. i'm calling that one a belgian pilsner, about as much of an oxymoron as polish reggae, but we'll see.
second up was an american brown ale. i think i have a system. sort of. my thermometers seem to all be on the fritz, and my hydrometers are not agreeing with my refractometer, so i just winged it. i did sort of a fly sparge. i kept an eye on the SG best i could and stopped it when the SG of the wort was in the ballpark. i had calculated for a 6 gallon batch and i think i stopped it at about 4.5. there was still some weaker wort running out and i hated to waste it, so i dumped it into another pot and boiled it separately. i got about 4 quarts of somewhat weaker wort, added three glurps of wildflower honey to boost the brix, and brought it up to about 1.050 and put it into a 3 gallon carboy.
today i made a belgian strong dark, preparing for a local competition in october. it's based on a chimay blue clone recipe i found. fortunately, i realized that the 20 lbs of grain would not mash in my 5 gallon igloo BEFORE I TRIED TO PUT IT IN! , so did an emergency conversion of a larger 48 qt igloo "ice cube" cooler with some spare hose, teflon tape and electrician's tape. when this one hit target SG, i again had leftover wort, so i did the same thing, processed it separate and dumped it into the same 3 gallon carboy. that got treated pretty much like the ale except i don't like grapefruit, so i used magnum and williamette instead. i'm gonna call this monstrosity "sloppy seconds".
it was all pretty seat of the pants. it rained twice, my car got broken into last night and i had to talk to the police today in the middle of it, and this all occurs in my driveway. these were my 2nd and 3rd AGs.