I made 5 gallons of this on New Year's Day, for my first attempt at all-grain. Things were a little stressful, but overall it turned out well. After a week in the primary and a week in the secondary, I bottled it on Saturday. I drank the hydrometer sample, and GOODNESS, it tastes amazing. I've never had a green beer taste so good. Congrats on a fantastic recipe! I can't wait for it to carbonate!
And you're right that it's a forgiving recipe; I had quite a few "variations". First off, my LHBS accidentally gave me only 1/2 lb of cara-pils instead of 3/4 lb, and I didn't catch it until I got home (not a huge deal, but a little annoying). Secondly, I didn't have any idea how much temperature loss to expect when stirring the grains into my preheated mash tun (filled with 2.75 gallons of 166-degree strike water), and after dough-in, the mash temp was only 145F.
I tried to fix it by adding 1-1/2 quarts of water at 169F, but with opening the lid and stirring, I only raised the temp 2 degrees. I tried to add water a second time, but this time with the stirring I actually lost temp! I eventually decided to leave well-enough alone (and had a homebrew) and ended up mashing at around 145.
When sparging, I forgot to take into account the extra water I'd added, so I ended up with nearly nine gallons of sweet liquor, which wouldn't fit in my 7-1/2-gallon brew kettle. I ended up boiling it down enough, but total boil time was 105 minutes! I also didn't delay the hop additions long enough, so the first addition of Centennial ended up boiling for 85 minutes!
I got an O.G. of 1.037 (63% efficiency?), so that's not bad for my first AG. The lower mash temp (and thinner mash) favor a more-fermentable wort, which explains why my F.G. was 1.005. And I guess the longer boil time might make the beer a bit darker than expected, but color looked great as I was bottling.
Anyway, I write all this just as an excuse to ask a question: BierMuncher, do you use whole hops or pellets? I've read you ought to scale back the hops by 25% if you're using pellets in a recipe that calls for whole hops, but I didn't even think to ask. I used pellets.
Also, do you have a label for this somewhere? I could make my own, but I'd rather use yours if you have one.
Finally, this is an encouragement to other brewers considering making the jump to all-grain to GO FOR IT! I was able to get a used cooler for $10 off Craigslist, and FlyGuy's
MLT conversion instructions were easy to follow. It added a couple of hours to my brew day (this time), but overall it wasn't bad at all.
Thanks again for the awesome recipe, BierMuncher. Next up: EdWort's
Haus Pale Ale....
-g-