maltMonkey
Well-Known Member
Just some notes from my Saturday brew session....
It was my first lager--an Oktoberfest (one of my favorite styles).
I decided at the last minute that if I was going to have to wait 8 months to drink this I wanted to make the biggest batch size I could, so I bumped up the recipe to 6 gallons. I'm pretty glad I did now. I figured that it's going to ferment slow @ 54° so I don't really need much headspace in my fermenter. I also adjusted the recipe for a 90min boil. I've always done 5gal batches with a 60min boil so I was stepping outside of my comfort zone a bit. Went well though.
I mashed at 151° (2° lower than what I was shooting for) and wound up with 81% eff. That's the lowest temp I've mashed at, and the highest efficiency I've gotten.
I tried something new for my mashout--I drew off about 2 gallons into my boil kettle, brought it to a boil and mixed it back into the mash. Worked OK, but I still ended up adding a couple gallons of boiling water to get my mash out temp.
I hate wort chillers!!!! At my 15 minute hop addition I noticed that the nylon hose on my wort chiller had melted from the burner. I tried taping it quickly, no go. Jumped in the truck and sped to Lowes. Bought some new hose, got back to the house 5 minutes later than when I should have removed all the hops. It should be fine though--I had 2.5 oz of hops in there, but 1oz were high AA that had already been boiling 60min, and the other 1.5oz were low (2.5-3.5%) AA hops.
Other than that everything went well....hopefully I should have some tasty beer in 7 months!
It was my first lager--an Oktoberfest (one of my favorite styles).
I decided at the last minute that if I was going to have to wait 8 months to drink this I wanted to make the biggest batch size I could, so I bumped up the recipe to 6 gallons. I'm pretty glad I did now. I figured that it's going to ferment slow @ 54° so I don't really need much headspace in my fermenter. I also adjusted the recipe for a 90min boil. I've always done 5gal batches with a 60min boil so I was stepping outside of my comfort zone a bit. Went well though.
I mashed at 151° (2° lower than what I was shooting for) and wound up with 81% eff. That's the lowest temp I've mashed at, and the highest efficiency I've gotten.
I tried something new for my mashout--I drew off about 2 gallons into my boil kettle, brought it to a boil and mixed it back into the mash. Worked OK, but I still ended up adding a couple gallons of boiling water to get my mash out temp.
I hate wort chillers!!!! At my 15 minute hop addition I noticed that the nylon hose on my wort chiller had melted from the burner. I tried taping it quickly, no go. Jumped in the truck and sped to Lowes. Bought some new hose, got back to the house 5 minutes later than when I should have removed all the hops. It should be fine though--I had 2.5 oz of hops in there, but 1oz were high AA that had already been boiling 60min, and the other 1.5oz were low (2.5-3.5%) AA hops.
Other than that everything went well....hopefully I should have some tasty beer in 7 months!