jdoiv
Well-Known Member
Brew day! Today was the first AG day for me in a little over two years. Wow. I had a little rust to shake off to get things going.
I decided I would bottle the 10 gallons of English Pale ale I brewed 2 weeks ago from a extract kit my wife gave me for X-mas. While doing that I would knock out a ESB AG at the same time. Might have bitten off a little too much for the first trip back.
So I started by cleaning and sanitizing all the equipment. An hour later and a few socks wetter, I had the water measured for the mash tun and HLT and my water salts added. I also picked up a tub of the 5.2 to give a try. Good thing I did, 'cause my pH meter bit the dust. Batteries needed to be changed and when I went to do this, the little battery connector thing broke off from the pH meter. #$%^! Great, damn expensive pH meter bit the dust. Can't seem to get it fixed.
So, I decide to go and wash the bottles and mini kegs for the bottling project to cool myself off. Got this done no problems.
Go back to the garage and realize that I have the mash tun facing the wrong way on my brew stand. I like to have the ball valve over the brew kettle so I can hang the hop bags off it and don't have to fish around for them in the wort (or have them melt on the bottom of the kettle). So, I try lifting the kettle up and turning it around. It has like 6 gallons of water in it and is around 5 feet off the ground. I start turning it around (spininng it on the stand) and it falls off the stand and lands on the burner (it wasn't on luckily). But it did snap the burner iright off the stand. $%$^$#! and a doube !@#@$$!
Great. Now what the hell am I going to do. No heat on the mash tun. Down to two buners for my 10 gallon batch. And my waters already measured and in the tun with no heat. Decide to drain the water into the kettle to heat. Figure I'll heat it up to 190 or so then pump it up to the MLT before adding my grains and let it cool to my strike temp.
Get this process started and move onto crushing my grain. Pull out the grain mill and go to put it on a bucket to do my crush. The mill is missing a bolt. Terrific, what else is going to get screwed up today. Are the brew gods unhappy that I haven't been brewing often enough. Dig around the work bench and find a bolt that fits. Attach the mill and start crankin' on the grist. Get that done and realize the my mash tun water is now boiling.
OOPS. Guess I got it a little too hot. No worries. I pump it up to the MLT and leave the cover off. Start up the HLT. Got 12 gallons or so to heat up. Might take awhile as the water is real cold and the temp in the garage is in the 50's.
Move back over to the bottling station. Get the two mini kegs done and a case of 20oz bottles.
Check the MLT. Strike temp is 165. Beautiful. Add my grains and hit my temp at 150. Dough in and stir gently to make a pretty mash. Now, we're cookin' (or brewin' to be more precise). It looks like beer! Man, why have I been puttin' this off so long. Fun, fun, fun.
Move back to the bottling station and finish 2 cases of 20 oz bottles and put the rest of the remainder with a little more than 12 12ozs. Now my fermenters are empty and I've left the yeast cake in them. We're goin' reuse that thar cake in just over an hour.
Go back and check my MLT. Uh-oh. Temp is droping. We're at 148. It's been about 30 mins into the mash. Ok, I'll add some hot water from the HLT and try and bring my temp back up. Put in two quarts. Temp isn't rising. It's still falling. Oh screw it. I'm putting the lid back on. It's been over 148 for more than 30 mins. Most of the work is done. I'll ride it out. It holds steady at 148 to the end of the mash. Can't Mash out with the burner. I broke it. %#@#$#!
Ok, I'll start the sparge and hope that'll do the trick. Start pumpin' water in. Oops. forgot to Vorlauf. #@#$@$!
Time to vorlauf. I set up the pumps. I'll pump from the MLT back over through the sparge arm for 15 mins. Takes me 20 minutes just to get the pump running right. Is the mash too thick? Did I get a stuck mash? No, just didn't get the pump primed right. Ok, how about that mash out. I could drop the immersion chiller into the HLT and run my mash through it to raise the temp. Nah, screw it. Let's sparge.
So I start my fly sparge. Get the pump hooked up and check my flow rate. This is the one thing during the process that I think I got right on. Flow looked good into and out of the tun. Wort is pretty. Nice and sparkly and clear. Not too bad. I'm feeling a little bit better now. Sparge temp is 168. Not too shabby.
Check my preboil gravity. 1.043. Check the recipe on promash. It should be 1.043. Wow, that might be the first time that's happened. Check my volume. Oops, ended up with 14 gallons in the kettle. Look at recipe. Oops. I looked at the total water needed and not what was supposed to be in the kettle. That should have been 12 gallons. Well, guess I got a little extra beer and hit my pre-boil gravity. Ok, I can roll with that.
Start the boil. Takes a little while to get the hot break. Get the hot break, skim it off. Lots of hot break in this one. Add my bittering hops, Magnum. These were a little old but had been vacuum packed and stored in the freezer. Smell ok, look ok.
In they go. Turn around after a few minutes to clean up the bottling station.
Spash! oops, boil over. Quick turn around and cut the gas back. Ok, didn't lose too much. That'll be a little mess to clean up, but no biggie.
Time goes by, boil is good and strong. Time to add the flavoring hops. These too were a little old but were vacuum sealed and stored in the freezer. Open them up and what the @#$@. They're a little brow and sort of dusty (Kent Goldings, pellet). Smell them. Well they smell sort of like hops. I have 8 oz that need to go in, and I'm not sure about this one. Too late to run to the LHBS. Screw it. They are only going in for 5 min and 1min. Toss em in. Wow, what is that smell....
Must be the hops. Pull those babies out. Toss the chiller in and start the chill.
I use the first bit of the water coming out of the immersion chiller to fill up my HLT with hot water and add some PBW into it. Nice hot cleaning water. Wort chills down. Get it to 75 or so and time to pull the chiller. Pull the chiller take a measurment and hit 1.052 for my OG. Not too shabby. Should have been 1.057 with 10 gallons in the kettle. I'm at 1.052 with 11.5. Move it to the fermenter and end up with 9.5 gallons after my cold break losses and kettle losses. Move fermenters into fermenter heaven (a used pepsi cooler I picked up on ebay for $75. It's a double sliding door model like you see at the grocery check out stand). Check my efficiency. 73%. I was shooting for 75, but I'll take it.
Beer sure is cloudy. Must have been that dusty golding hops. Hope that settles out and doesn't have a bad flavor. Drank a Stella and realized that they must use goldings as well. Has the same musty smell. Maybe it won't be too bad. Color is good.
Check on the fermeneters a couple of times. Within 2 hours I had started active fermentation. Within 4 I had huge krausen. Probably going to have a good blow off on this one. Good thing I've got a blow off hose on those bad boys.
Day's done. Lots of work, but it felt good. Fix a couple of little things and the next day will go smoother, I hope. Anyway, thanks for reading....
jdoiv
I decided I would bottle the 10 gallons of English Pale ale I brewed 2 weeks ago from a extract kit my wife gave me for X-mas. While doing that I would knock out a ESB AG at the same time. Might have bitten off a little too much for the first trip back.
So I started by cleaning and sanitizing all the equipment. An hour later and a few socks wetter, I had the water measured for the mash tun and HLT and my water salts added. I also picked up a tub of the 5.2 to give a try. Good thing I did, 'cause my pH meter bit the dust. Batteries needed to be changed and when I went to do this, the little battery connector thing broke off from the pH meter. #$%^! Great, damn expensive pH meter bit the dust. Can't seem to get it fixed.
So, I decide to go and wash the bottles and mini kegs for the bottling project to cool myself off. Got this done no problems.
Go back to the garage and realize that I have the mash tun facing the wrong way on my brew stand. I like to have the ball valve over the brew kettle so I can hang the hop bags off it and don't have to fish around for them in the wort (or have them melt on the bottom of the kettle). So, I try lifting the kettle up and turning it around. It has like 6 gallons of water in it and is around 5 feet off the ground. I start turning it around (spininng it on the stand) and it falls off the stand and lands on the burner (it wasn't on luckily). But it did snap the burner iright off the stand. $%$^$#! and a doube !@#@$$!
Great. Now what the hell am I going to do. No heat on the mash tun. Down to two buners for my 10 gallon batch. And my waters already measured and in the tun with no heat. Decide to drain the water into the kettle to heat. Figure I'll heat it up to 190 or so then pump it up to the MLT before adding my grains and let it cool to my strike temp.
Get this process started and move onto crushing my grain. Pull out the grain mill and go to put it on a bucket to do my crush. The mill is missing a bolt. Terrific, what else is going to get screwed up today. Are the brew gods unhappy that I haven't been brewing often enough. Dig around the work bench and find a bolt that fits. Attach the mill and start crankin' on the grist. Get that done and realize the my mash tun water is now boiling.
OOPS. Guess I got it a little too hot. No worries. I pump it up to the MLT and leave the cover off. Start up the HLT. Got 12 gallons or so to heat up. Might take awhile as the water is real cold and the temp in the garage is in the 50's.
Move back over to the bottling station. Get the two mini kegs done and a case of 20oz bottles.
Check the MLT. Strike temp is 165. Beautiful. Add my grains and hit my temp at 150. Dough in and stir gently to make a pretty mash. Now, we're cookin' (or brewin' to be more precise). It looks like beer! Man, why have I been puttin' this off so long. Fun, fun, fun.
Move back to the bottling station and finish 2 cases of 20 oz bottles and put the rest of the remainder with a little more than 12 12ozs. Now my fermenters are empty and I've left the yeast cake in them. We're goin' reuse that thar cake in just over an hour.
Go back and check my MLT. Uh-oh. Temp is droping. We're at 148. It's been about 30 mins into the mash. Ok, I'll add some hot water from the HLT and try and bring my temp back up. Put in two quarts. Temp isn't rising. It's still falling. Oh screw it. I'm putting the lid back on. It's been over 148 for more than 30 mins. Most of the work is done. I'll ride it out. It holds steady at 148 to the end of the mash. Can't Mash out with the burner. I broke it. %#@#$#!
Ok, I'll start the sparge and hope that'll do the trick. Start pumpin' water in. Oops. forgot to Vorlauf. #@#$@$!
Time to vorlauf. I set up the pumps. I'll pump from the MLT back over through the sparge arm for 15 mins. Takes me 20 minutes just to get the pump running right. Is the mash too thick? Did I get a stuck mash? No, just didn't get the pump primed right. Ok, how about that mash out. I could drop the immersion chiller into the HLT and run my mash through it to raise the temp. Nah, screw it. Let's sparge.
So I start my fly sparge. Get the pump hooked up and check my flow rate. This is the one thing during the process that I think I got right on. Flow looked good into and out of the tun. Wort is pretty. Nice and sparkly and clear. Not too bad. I'm feeling a little bit better now. Sparge temp is 168. Not too shabby.
Check my preboil gravity. 1.043. Check the recipe on promash. It should be 1.043. Wow, that might be the first time that's happened. Check my volume. Oops, ended up with 14 gallons in the kettle. Look at recipe. Oops. I looked at the total water needed and not what was supposed to be in the kettle. That should have been 12 gallons. Well, guess I got a little extra beer and hit my pre-boil gravity. Ok, I can roll with that.
Start the boil. Takes a little while to get the hot break. Get the hot break, skim it off. Lots of hot break in this one. Add my bittering hops, Magnum. These were a little old but had been vacuum packed and stored in the freezer. Smell ok, look ok.
In they go. Turn around after a few minutes to clean up the bottling station.
Spash! oops, boil over. Quick turn around and cut the gas back. Ok, didn't lose too much. That'll be a little mess to clean up, but no biggie.
Time goes by, boil is good and strong. Time to add the flavoring hops. These too were a little old but were vacuum sealed and stored in the freezer. Open them up and what the @#$@. They're a little brow and sort of dusty (Kent Goldings, pellet). Smell them. Well they smell sort of like hops. I have 8 oz that need to go in, and I'm not sure about this one. Too late to run to the LHBS. Screw it. They are only going in for 5 min and 1min. Toss em in. Wow, what is that smell....
Must be the hops. Pull those babies out. Toss the chiller in and start the chill.
I use the first bit of the water coming out of the immersion chiller to fill up my HLT with hot water and add some PBW into it. Nice hot cleaning water. Wort chills down. Get it to 75 or so and time to pull the chiller. Pull the chiller take a measurment and hit 1.052 for my OG. Not too shabby. Should have been 1.057 with 10 gallons in the kettle. I'm at 1.052 with 11.5. Move it to the fermenter and end up with 9.5 gallons after my cold break losses and kettle losses. Move fermenters into fermenter heaven (a used pepsi cooler I picked up on ebay for $75. It's a double sliding door model like you see at the grocery check out stand). Check my efficiency. 73%. I was shooting for 75, but I'll take it.
Beer sure is cloudy. Must have been that dusty golding hops. Hope that settles out and doesn't have a bad flavor. Drank a Stella and realized that they must use goldings as well. Has the same musty smell. Maybe it won't be too bad. Color is good.
Check on the fermeneters a couple of times. Within 2 hours I had started active fermentation. Within 4 I had huge krausen. Probably going to have a good blow off on this one. Good thing I've got a blow off hose on those bad boys.
Day's done. Lots of work, but it felt good. Fix a couple of little things and the next day will go smoother, I hope. Anyway, thanks for reading....
jdoiv
