Mothman
Well-Known Member
Thought I'd post my brewing experience from today.
I'm still waiting on batch #1 to carbonate/condition in bottles, and found some time today to do batch # 2.
For #1 I brewed with a buddy, today I was solo (other than my 8 yr old daughter looking over my shoulder and asking a ton of questions)
I decided to try the Blue Moon clone posted here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=24978, specifically Biermunchers extract version, which I tweaked.
I scaled the recipe to 3.25 gallons in Beersmith, rounded off the numbers, added a bit of oats, and a little bit of corn sugar (I had some laying around) to boost the ABV a smidge, and I reduced the boil to 30 minutes, increasing the hops slightly to compensate.
Everything went pretty well I think.
I treated the wheats and oats like a mash, more for practice than anything else, as I haven't actually done a real mash (partial or full), and was able to hold the temperature within a couple degrees for an hour.
I split the extract additions between start of boil and 15 minutes left, got it all added fine, got the spices added when called for, hops all good.
Decided to use a bag for the hops this time to reduce the hop debris I have to deal with later, and I think it worked well.
Full volume boil went well, I didn't get much hot break, but maybe that's normal for extract brews, cooling went pretty good, got it down to about 70F in about 30 minutes using an ice bath, got quite a bit of cold break.
I chose to try to leave some of the cold break in the kettle and siphoned into the primary bucket rather than dumping, I left behind maybe a liter of the thickest trub. Still got a fair amount of cold break in the bucket, which is totally fine.
Rehydrated the yeast before pitching the yeast into 67F well oxygenated (stirred the crap out of it until nice and frothy) wort.
Volumes were very close. Looking for 3.25 gal into primary, and pretty much got there... between 3.2 and 3.3 gal. (my measuring is crude)
I was a little low on OG. Beersmith predicted 1.054, I got 1.050 which I figure is at least partly from the wheat and oat issue. Beersmith, I think, treats them like a true mash, despite the fact that I really wasn't mashing them... they were on their own, so no conversion. The same recipe with the wheat and oats removed (so only the extract and corn sugar) predicted 1.048, which I was slightly over.
Beersmith tells me I got 44% efficiency, but I don't believe that really means anything, as I was relying on extract/sugar for fermentables, and the missed OG is seemingly due to the wheat and oats, which are not fermentable anyways, so I think the efficiency measure here is meaningless?
Got the primary into the Coolbrewing cooler, with a bit of ice, it's currently sitting at 65F, I anticipate it'll drop another couple degrees before fermentation takes off and heats things up a tad (that's what happened with my last batch).
All in all, it went pretty smoothly. Long brew day though. From the start of getting my supplies organized, to finishing with cleaning, was a 6 hour process.
I tasted the OG sample just for kicks, and it tasted like sugary sweet, but also bitter, nastiness, which I think sounds about on target. lol
Good day, I had a lot of fun doing it.
I'm still waiting on batch #1 to carbonate/condition in bottles, and found some time today to do batch # 2.
For #1 I brewed with a buddy, today I was solo (other than my 8 yr old daughter looking over my shoulder and asking a ton of questions)
I decided to try the Blue Moon clone posted here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=24978, specifically Biermunchers extract version, which I tweaked.
I scaled the recipe to 3.25 gallons in Beersmith, rounded off the numbers, added a bit of oats, and a little bit of corn sugar (I had some laying around) to boost the ABV a smidge, and I reduced the boil to 30 minutes, increasing the hops slightly to compensate.
Everything went pretty well I think.
I treated the wheats and oats like a mash, more for practice than anything else, as I haven't actually done a real mash (partial or full), and was able to hold the temperature within a couple degrees for an hour.
I split the extract additions between start of boil and 15 minutes left, got it all added fine, got the spices added when called for, hops all good.
Decided to use a bag for the hops this time to reduce the hop debris I have to deal with later, and I think it worked well.
Full volume boil went well, I didn't get much hot break, but maybe that's normal for extract brews, cooling went pretty good, got it down to about 70F in about 30 minutes using an ice bath, got quite a bit of cold break.
I chose to try to leave some of the cold break in the kettle and siphoned into the primary bucket rather than dumping, I left behind maybe a liter of the thickest trub. Still got a fair amount of cold break in the bucket, which is totally fine.
Rehydrated the yeast before pitching the yeast into 67F well oxygenated (stirred the crap out of it until nice and frothy) wort.
Volumes were very close. Looking for 3.25 gal into primary, and pretty much got there... between 3.2 and 3.3 gal. (my measuring is crude)
I was a little low on OG. Beersmith predicted 1.054, I got 1.050 which I figure is at least partly from the wheat and oat issue. Beersmith, I think, treats them like a true mash, despite the fact that I really wasn't mashing them... they were on their own, so no conversion. The same recipe with the wheat and oats removed (so only the extract and corn sugar) predicted 1.048, which I was slightly over.
Beersmith tells me I got 44% efficiency, but I don't believe that really means anything, as I was relying on extract/sugar for fermentables, and the missed OG is seemingly due to the wheat and oats, which are not fermentable anyways, so I think the efficiency measure here is meaningless?
Got the primary into the Coolbrewing cooler, with a bit of ice, it's currently sitting at 65F, I anticipate it'll drop another couple degrees before fermentation takes off and heats things up a tad (that's what happened with my last batch).
All in all, it went pretty smoothly. Long brew day though. From the start of getting my supplies organized, to finishing with cleaning, was a 6 hour process.
I tasted the OG sample just for kicks, and it tasted like sugary sweet, but also bitter, nastiness, which I think sounds about on target. lol
Good day, I had a lot of fun doing it.