Brew day Priorities!

[bad coffee]

Start mash water, then start coffee pot!

Brewing today, A what's left that I can make a Bass ale-ish beer- kinda brew.

1#2oz Pale
1#9oz MO
2# Cara pils
8oz cara munich
8oz crystal 120

1T burton water salts.
Dough in with 2.5 gallons @ 163, mash temp 152.2
another 3 gallons at 168 to sparge, let it sit for 20 mins, then add enough water in the bk to make 7 gallons.

I should probably figure out what hops I want to use soon. I'm thinking challenger for bittering and fuggles and ekg for flavor/aroma. Any suggestions?

I'll add enough DME to get up around 1.050 OG.

another half hour and it's sparge time!

B

 

[bad coffee]

Collected 1.75 gallons of 1.056 (15brix)

Added sparge water, didn't really measure. I'm guessing about 3 gallons.

Also thawed and started boiling wort for krausening the chimay blue clone I did last month. Now I just have to sanitize a keg and free up a carboy for this batch.

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

Start mash water, then start coffee pot!

I think if I did anything brew-related before the coffee I'd have a lot more 'Is my beer rooned?" threads. Sometimes it takes me three tries just to get the coffee right.

 

[bad coffee]

Here's what's been going on the last few hours...

Hop schedule:
3/8oz Challenger 7.1 90min
1/2oz EKG 4.0 30 min
1/2oz EKG 4.0 15 min.
1 tsp moss @ 15 min
FG of boil was 6 gal @ 8Brix. (1.030 corrected)

2.5# DME at 0min. Which should put me right around 1.050 for my actual OG.

Resting now for 15 minutes then the IC gets turned on.

I also realized I wanted to save some of the yeast from the chimay batch (WLP500) so I boiled and chilled some water, and made a starter. The plan is to wash the yeast in the carboy, then pitch it right into a starter, then freeze the starter yeast. I figure with the washed yeast, I should get a nice big dose going into a 1L starter.

The beer in front, the starter in back.

 

[BeerPressure]

I like that coffee mug, I want to get one of those next order i place at northern brewer.

 

[bad coffee]

The mug was a christmas present, along with my banjo burner!

Brew is downstairs in the temp controlled bath. Going from pot to carboy it was crystal clear. Probably the cleanest brew I've done (going into fermentor.) Hydro sample tasted pretty good, but a bit harsh. That hopefully will mellow out in fermentation.

I pitched about 600 ML of stirred up slurry from my starter. Not 600ml of yeast, I don't want to be cleaning the basement ceiling!

Kitchen is mostly cleaned up.

Except for the cookies.

Not 'make your best friend cookies,' because I still have a bunch in the freezer. I made me cookies this time!

1c crisco
1/2 C brown sugar
3/4 C white sugar
2 eggs
1 T vanilla
1 1/2 C flour
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
2 c spent grain.
1 bag chocolate chips.

325* for about 18 minutes.

they go really well with the coffee. The cookies aren't all that sweet, and a bit grainy. I will probably run the spent grain through a food processor before using them next time. I'll also up the sugar a tiny bit, probably use 3/4c both white and brown.

B