And I will call it...Mini-Mild

So I'm all lined up with ingredients and recipes, but I can't brew anything. I finally decided to get a grain mill, so all my grains are uncrushed. Problem is, Crankandstein is taking a long time to ship my order (first they were out of adjusting knobs, now they're out of packing peanuts, if you can believe that)

So I'm itching to brew, and I was going to cultivate a tube of WLP051V Cali Ale yeast into multiple tubes anyway...so I decided "If I'm gonna boil a pound of extract anyway, might as well make beer"! Thus was born the Mini-Mild:

1# Muntons light DME
2 oz Crystal 60L
1 oz Chocolate
0.25 oz Wllamette leaf hops 4.9% AA

A) Steep grains in 1Q H20 for 20 min @150F
B) Dissolve DME in 3Q H2O heated on stove, add hops (a first wort hopping...kinda)
C) Strain/sparge A into B using kitchen sink sprayer, to make 7Q total
D) Boil 30 min to get 5Q (10 min into it right now)
E) Cool to 75ish and pitch yeast
F) When complete, harvest yeast. Rack beer into 2L soda bottles, force carb, enjoy.

Something to drink while I'm making my "real" beers (if my mill ever arrives...)

OG: 1.038 FG 1.010 SRM 14 IBU 16

ha! awesome...fun stuff

Yeah, why not. Papazian actually suggests using hopped wort for yeast propagation instead of an extract-only due to the aneceptic quality. I wonder how much of a difference it actually makes in the long run.