1st Brew Day!

Yesterday I had a few buddies come over for my first brew-day, and aside from rewarded them with some pizza, home-made bacon-wrapped, chorizo & cream cheese-stuffed jalepenos, and plenty of beer to boot!

For the record, I am using a all-grain setup with a 10g cooler mash-tun & 8g kettle.

The brew - Arrogant Bastard clone

Grain bill:
12lbs 2-Row
1/2lb Caramunich
1/2lb Aromatic
1/2lb Melanoiden

Hops:
1oz Magnum (60min)
2oz Chinook (15min)
2oz Chinnok (5min)

Yeast:
Wyeast 1056

I used a Wyeast smack-pack for a 3L starter; propagated for about 30hrs, and the put in the fridge for about 18hrs before brew-day to settle the yeast, (as I was going to discard the bulk of the DME "beer").

Come brew-day, once I put the strike water in the mash-tun, I noticed a leak at the valve -- Oh no!! -- There was a crack in the inside of the cooler! So we had to put things on HOLD for a hour or so to run down to the local hardware store to pick up a MUCH bigger washer and grommet material to try to cover the cracked area, (and lucky for us it just barely fit!). With that patched up we were good to go with no real further complications (other than a slightly stuck sparge...)

(While reading this, picture three guys drinking & brewing beer, while playing Irish tin whistles...because we were...)

Mashed at 152F for an hour with 4.25g, then batch-sparged with another 3.75g at 190F for 15min, and ended up with a pre-boil volume of 6.25g @ 1.057, which was right on target, however, post-boil we came to 1.065 which was a bit lower than expected (shooting for 1.072) BUT, I forgot to check the post-boil volume, so perhaps the volume was a bit high...also, I forgot to check the post-boil gravity until AFTER pitching the yeast, (not sure if that would've made much difference).

Today, the bubbler is bubbling at about 2 bubbles per second (and smells fantastic I might add!)

Oh yeah, one more thing, the 8" strainer got delayed in shipping, so I wasn't able to strain the hot-break & hop material from the boiled wort, so they are in the fermenter...will this cause any issues other than clarity?

 

Looks to me like you guys had a fun first brew day. As far as not being able to strain the brew as long as you cold crash before bottling or kegging you should be good. Congrats and welcome to the obsession.

 

Awesome job. I wouldn't worry about the straining. It will make beer.

 

Looks like fun was had by all...good job! ...Leave it in Primary for 3 weeks to condition and it will all drop out and be nice clear beer ready to bottle.

 

Looks like you guys had a bunch of fun. Needs more banjo though. I can tell you guys are going to need to get a pipeline going based on the pictures. When I saw your back yard, I thought you might be local. When I checked your profile, I see that you are. Make sure you don't wait too long to dry hop.

 

Congrats. Is the first picture the sun just coming up it setting?

 

Ha, I was wondering the same as above! It does look like a good time, and how can it not be??!, but I do hope you didn't go from sunup to well beyond sundown! I know my first AG went about 7hrs w/cleanup. I've shortened that up (60min mash/60min boil/no ending whirlpool) to a bit under 4hrs if all goes smoothly- cleaning up along the way for ex.

Only question I'd have is why so hot on the sparge? I personally try to stay below 170, though I think the "magic" number I've read is always 180 to stay below.

Welcome to the hobby/obsession/money drain etc! Cheers!

 

The sun was setting in that pic. We started at about 1:30pm, and around 2pm realized the mash-tun was leaking and tried to fix it with stuff from the garage, but didn't have anything that worked, so we had to go to the hardware store. Took a while to get started for real...probably closer to 4:30pm, and finishing about 9pm.

The recipe said to sparge with 190-200F water, which seemed high to me, but when asking around on various fora it seemed like 185F was a good number to hit, however the thermometer that I left in the mash had somehow fallen over and sunk to the bottom, so it took some digging around to try to find it again before I could properly gauge the sparge water temp, so by then I figured I needed to go a little bit higher than originally planned to make up for the now cooler grain temp. After adding the sparge water and stirring for a minute, the temp landed at 168F - perfect!

 

190f is hot enough to leech tannins from the grain, I'd stick to sparging with mash temperature water (150f ish)

 

It dropped to 168F after adding to the mashtun.

 

So my Arrogant Bastard clone hasn't shown any signs of activity for a few days now (been in the primary for 12 days), so I took a reading which was about 1.008, and using the NB calculator the ABV should be close to 7.4%, so not bad. I will take another reading in a couple days, and if it hasn't moved I will get ready to bottle.

 

This looks delicious. I'm gonna give it a shot pretty soon.

 

Oops, I said 10 days, it's actually been 12...calendars are hard.

 

Something else worthy of note: this certainly doesn't LOOK like Arrogant Bastard (needs to be darker & redder), and it looks much closer to Ruination, IMO. That said, it does TASTE more like Arrogant Bastard than Ruination. Perhaps adding some Special B malt to the grain bill would change that.

 

Congrats on the brew! Go online for a priming calculator, recipe directions are notoriously bad IMO for priming (for some silly reason I'm guessing your bottling, not kegging your first batch, but I could be wrong). You don't want to over carb your liquid gold! Enjoy the beer and post tasting notes in a few weeks.

 

That is great advise!

My first batch after a 10 year hiatus, I followed the directions to the letter. Through sloppy processes, I ended up with about 4 gal instead of 5 in bottles which compounded the problem of too much priming sugar (per the instructions). I had bulging caps and couldn't hardly pour a beer it was so carbonated. When I discovered the existence of online calculators I checked my specs and had used *twice* as much priming sugar as I should have. I am amazed none blew up.

 

In some of the kits they give you more priming sugar that you need. They need to be clearer in the directions and say don't use all of this sugar.

 

Thanks. Very fizzy, huh?!
My 3rd batch back from a long hiatus was a hoppy IPA with 7oz of dry hops. I tried the priming sugar first in bucket merhod, figured on 5g. With hop losses, I ended with 4g, primed on high end and over carbed it! My process is better but I still wait to calculate until I have beer in bucket.

 

Today I decided to bottle, and I ended up with just shy of 5 gallons of brew, so I was able to fill 48 bottles (and a half) - good enough for me!





...here is the half:

 

NOTE: Now that the beer is finished, I can clearly say that, while this is still a delicious beer(!), it certainly is NOT a very accurate Arrogant Bastard clone. The color, taste & note all say the same thing - THE MALT PROFILE IS WRONG! The hops seem about right, but the malt...it might be something as simple as adding some Special B malt (my best guess anyway), but as you can clearly see, it's missing that deep reddish amber color, and it's missing that raisin nose & the flavor follows.

Again, still very delicious...just NOT Arrogant Bastard.

Here's a pic:

 

Looks amazing, dude. Cloning a beer is incredibly difficult, and even if you get the recipe right, the process (and even mineral content) can make or break it. I find it more interesting to try my own spins on a theme and aim for the ball park -- which is what it looks like you've done.

Welcome to the obsession.

 

Thanks man. I plan on attempting a Velvet Hammer clone next brew day (probably in about 3 weeks, as I have a hectic couple of weeks ahead of me).

Oh, and I will be bottling the double chocolate stout tonight.

 

I brewed a similar one today, i was confused by how light it was when I followed the recipe pretty closely. Will do another one after I let the GF choose one and add .5 lb or so of something dark.

 

Wow. Congratulation!

 

I'd recommend some Special B malt.

Thanks!