Forecast for today: rain outside with a strong chance of brewing inside

Forecast for this weekend looked terrible. Canceled plans of bike riding, and
brewed my third batch indoors.
(disclaimer: crappy celly pics ahead)

Here's a list of ingredients I used:

7.42# Alexander's Pale Ale Extract
1# Crystal 60L Steeping Grains
1.25oz Cascade hops (bittering, 60min)
1oz Cascade hops (flavoring, 30min)
0.75oz Cascade hops (Aroma, 5min)
Wyeast 1056 American Ale Liquid Yeast

Warming up water for steepage:



Sanitizing equipement:



Neighbor next door has a reverse osmosis filtration system he uses for salt water fish tanks...Free water for me?



Steeping grains. Rigged thermometer holder. hah Floating thermometer?



After 30 min of sitting, grains were removed to drain. Used one of the clips to stick it to the hood. Brilliant!



Heating up to a boil and preparing extract (i.e. warming up container in water to make it easier to pour)



Wort boiling away, bittering hops added (empty extract container to the right)

Continued....

Close-up of thermometer-holder-thing (10 points to anyone who can guess what that thing is)



Cold-ass ice bath. Worth every penny of the $3.99 bag of ice. Took about 25 min to reach 62F. (frozen 2-liter place inside to speed it up....its sanitized)



Straining wort into carboy filled halfway with water. This part took forever! Stuff in strainer refused to let any fluid past!



Covered that sucka!



Almost there...(lots of sediment)



Eventually topped off to about 5gal. Wort stirred (bad?) and liquid yeast added.





...One thing I didn't think about until the end (maybe I should have researched this..)

When adding hops...should I have added bittering hops, boiled for 60 mins, THEN added flavoring hops for 30 min, THEN add aroma hops?

What I did is add bittering hops, then half hr later added flavor hops, then half hr later added aroma hops. So, total boil time was about 1.5 hrs.

That thermometer holder looks like something that a jeweler would use.

The boil time should be 60 minutes. Your hop schedule looks like this:

1.25oz Cascade hops (bittering, 60min)
1oz Cascade hops (flavoring, 30min)
0.75oz Cascade hops (Aroma, 5min)

So, when the wort comes to a boil you set a timer for 60 minutes and add the first hops.

When the timer has 30 minutes left, add the 30 minute hops.

When the timer has 5 minutes left on it, add the 5 minute hops.

The number of minutes denote the amount of time the hops are boiled.

Boiling for longer won't matter much, though, as long as you only boiled the last addition for 5 minutes. Anything added before about 20 minutes left is just going to give you bittering, not flavor, and you really don't get much bittering beyond 60 minutes. It sounds like this was pretty successful for you!

Your thermometer holder is what is known as "Helping Hands". It was first made by X-acto. It is used mostly by DIY types to hold wires when soldering.

Mine pre-dates the addition of the little magnifying lens.

Wayne1 said:

Your thermometer holder is what is known as "Helping Hands". It was first made by X-acto. It is used mostly by DIY types to hold wires when soldering.

Mine pre-dates the addition of the little magnifying lens.

Click to expand...

DAMN! You win, sir. The one I have has the priceless "Radio Shack" logo. heh

Mr. Yooper,

Thanks for clearing that up. Kinda what I was thinking but I wasn't sure.

Cheers to this forum. What an incredible asset!

Time for some homebrew...

rainingbullets said:

DAMN! You win, sir. The one I have has the priceless "Radio Shack" logo. heh

Mr. Yooper,

Thanks for clearing that up. Kinda what I was thinking but I wasn't sure.

Cheers to this forum. What an incredible asset!

Time for some homebrew...

Click to expand...

You're welcome.

By the way, I'm a girl. The avatar is a guy, but I'm definitely not a guy!

YooperBrew said:

You're welcome.

By the way, I'm a girl. The avatar is a guy, but I'm definitely not a guy!

Click to expand...

Sorry. Ms. Yooper

Today's update:

Woke up this morning and checked on the bubbling monster in my closet.

OH SNAP! OVERFLOW! BLOW-OFF TUBE STAT!



Caught that just in time before I had a mess. Was just reading the "warzone" pics thread too. haha