Brewday! Pics inside

Today was Brewday! The third AG I've done since taking a couple of years off. Starting to get me groove going again.

Here's Mini-Me grinding the grain Saturday afternoon



And here he is getting the water measured!



And checking out the system. Can't wait until he can actually help Pops with some of the work.



Got started around 8:30 or 9am heating the water. Got the MLT water up to strike temp pretty quickly and hit my temp right on the nose. I made Dude's Fat Tire clone. Had almost 26 pounds of grain to dough in. Wanted 154 and got it. It dropped to 153 or so after I stirred the mash at about 15 minutes. Held the 153 the rest of the hour.



Mash pH was just a little off. I treated my mash water with 2 teaspoons of 5.2 and really should have done a full tablespoon. pH meter said I was at 5.6 so I added another teaspoon. Mashed out to 168 by adding heat to the bottom of the tun and started the sparge with 170 degree water. I fly sparge but may try to do a batch sparge next time. The temp in the MLT dropped while sparging even though the sparge water was 170. Sparging took right at an hour, maybe a few minutes less. Stopped the runnings when I hit my target volume of 13 gallons. Reading when I stopped was 1.017. Pre-boil gravity was 1.054. Got the boil started and added hops after skimming the hot break off.


Continued...

Finished the boil and cooled with the immersion chiller and had the temp down to 68 in about 20-25 minutes. Drained the wort to my two carboys and tossed in the 1600ml starter. Setup the Fermentaps and hoiseted the carboys into the fermentation fridge. It's a little cool here today so I've got the digital control plugged into a small ceramic space heater inside the fridge to keep the temp up to 74 until fermentation starts. I'll cut the temp back down once it gets going.



Another pic of the Fermentation Fridge....



And another. You can see the little heater on top of the carboy in this one pretty well.



Final OG was 1.062 (maybe 1.063, hard to tell). I should have read Dude's recipe a little bit better. I should have had 12 pounds of regular 2 row and 4 pounds of toasted 2 row. Instead I had 16 pounds of 2 row and 4 pounds of toasted 2 row. So I had 4 pounds to many and my OG was too high. I got 72% efficiency. Was hoping for closer to 75, but was better than my last which was 70%.

Thanks for reading....

looks great and nice setup! how are those fertap? i dont hear much about them an dwhen u do its not good. well cheers and the pics were cool im gonna have to remember to take some on my first brew day... man i know that day is going to be crazy

Awesome set up and I like that brew-boy, I have 2 of them but mine are older. Got to love them True coolers....

Looks great! Thanks for the pics!

Wish I had a little mini-me brew helper!

Sweet! Is that a B3 sculpture? If so, which one?

Enjoyed the pics and your Brew Buddy looked like he had a good time!
Nice setup too!

Thanks for sharing the pics. I always enjoy seeing everyones photos. It looks like it was a nice day for you and your mini you.
That's a nice set up you have there.

don't be afraid mini-me

EdWort said:

Sweet! Is that a B3 sculpture? If so, which one?

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Yep. It's a 1500. I bought it back in 2001 when I lived in LA.

You definately have a brewmaster-in-training there. My squid likes to help out on brew day, too. It's a neat father-son experience.

Thanks for posting your brew day pics. You've got a nice setup there!

Cheers!

BTW - it looks like we share more than one hobby in common. What kind of bike did I see peeking out in one of those pics? I've had a ZX-11 for several years. I moved from CO last year. I really miss all those great canyon roads!

Lil' Sparky said:

BTW - it looks like we share more than one hobby in common. What kind of bike did I see peeking out in one of those pics? I've had a ZX-11 for several years. I moved from CO last year. I really miss all those great canyon roads!

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It's a Ducati e900 Elefant. A big dual sport bike based on the bikes they ran at Dakar. I've actually just sold it and am waiting for the buyer to come and pick it up. Not much time for riding anymore.

jdoiv said:

It's a Ducati e900 Elefant. A big dual sport bike based on the bikes they ran at Dakar. I've actually just sold it and am waiting for the buyer to come and pick it up. Not much time for riding anymore.

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That's too bad. I really like the dual sports. I'm set on a BMW R1200GS for my next ride. I'll be moving back to CO eventually and it's a go anywhere, do anything kind of bike.

you gotta love having the mini-me's around. I think my 3 year old scared his teacher by knowing way too much about how to make beer...cheers.
PS it's good to see others making the same type of mistakes (misreading recipes, etc..) as me. I don't feel so bad now.