SMaSHing as we speak!! Excitement Meter Pegged

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Deacon1856

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I've been very excited about this for several weeks now, and SWMBO has hightailed it off with her mother, so I am left to my own devices!! I am currently mashing my Golden Promise/Amarillo SMaSH, and I really feel like this is going to be a wonderful exercise in learning more about my ingredients. Here's what I'm doing:

10lbs Golden Promise
1 oz Amarillo 9.3% FWH
.5 oz Amarillo 9.3% 20 min
.5 oz Amarillo 9.3% 5 min

Mash 90 min. at 151*

Boil 60

Safale 05 or Notty...haven't really decided but leaning toward the 05.

Plan on dryhopping 1 oz Amarillo 9.3% for 14 days. I'm letting this one sit for at least 8 weeks. That's UNHEARDOF in my Beerworks...but the pipeline is looking good, so it shouldn't be that big of a problem.

Anyway, just wanted to share the joyfulness I'm feeling this chilly Saturday morning. I'd love to hear from anyone who's done this one before and maybe what I can expect to end up with.

:rockin:

Deacon
 
more and more people have been doing the FWH...I think I'm going to when I do my 1st AG in a few weeks. Do you get good results?

Does that grain have any special qualities to it? As in flavor or feel??
 
Those are good questions.

1. This is my first FWH. I have no idea how it will turn out, but I'm psyched to try!
2. I don't know anything about Golden Promise other than it's golden and it's ain't 2-row, my two prerequisites for this brew. Plus, it was a little more expensive per lb...so that means it has to be good right?? =)

As I said, this is a complete experiment for me as I have never used either GP or Amarillo hops. Gotta start somewhere though!
 
Just took my first runnings....either I have a stuck sparge or that GP SUCKED UP 2 GALLONS OF WATER. I mashed in with 12.5 qts and only have, currently, a little over a gallon in the pot. The grain bed looks pretty dry. I'm going to continue letting it go, but I may have to make up for it in my batch sparge.

On another note, the wort smells better than any I've done so far and is SWEET to the extreme. The hops smell insane!
 
Brew finished. Things didn't go 100% as planned, but when does it ever? Here's the rundown -

In the pot with about 6.75 gallons. Boiled vigorously for 60 minutes and ended up with almost exactly 5 gallons. I really need to work on controlling the boil better. My last couple of batches have kindof been all over the board in this regard.

Cooled to 70 in about 15 minutes. Dropped from 90 to 70 in about 5 minutes when I turned on my submersible pump sitting in ice water. That thing is the cat's ass.

Got it in the bottle and pitched my Safale 05. Expected FG: 1.052. Recorded FG: 1.051. So I'm pretty happy with that.

Overall it was a good brew day. Tried some new things. Mashed 90 minutes with about a 2* temperature loss...overall not bad. Had some issues with sparge volumes, but nothing too serious. Ended up with just a HAIR under 5 gallons when I was looking for 5.5, but I hit my numbers, so whatever. I'm attaching pictures below. The first one is right after it got in the bottle...last one was about 10 minutes later:

1mincloseup.jpg


7min.jpg


10min.jpg


And just because, here's a picture of the Ladies in Waiting: Top right: EdWort's Haus Pale. Top left: BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde. Bottom right: GP/Amarillo SMaSH. Bottom left: EdWort's Apfelwein. That black box in the lower right is the space heater that's hooked to my temperature controller to keep it at 67 in there. I love beer.

theladies1.jpg
 
Nice write up and pictures.

Noob questions: would have topping off with a couple pints of water have dragged your OG down too much to bother with?
How would you do it next time so that you get closer to the amount you wanted 5.5Gal?
 

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