I've been moving around quite a bit lately, and ended up just putting my brewing equipment into storage. I have 4-5 brews under my belt, but its been about a year and a half since my last brew. Fast forward to Dec. 1, I was invited to a 'Homemade Holiday Party' on the 21st. I decided I wanted to bring a homebrew to the party and set off scouring the internet for a quick holiday spice ale. I found the following recipe and asked my LHBS to help me convert from all grain to extract:
Recipe says its ready in a month, 2 weeks in fermenter, 2 weeks in bottle. I was hoping to cut a week or more off and ended up picking up a keg system in hopes it will be ready to serve by the 21st.
The original recipe, ...and my substitutions
So there wasn't much instruction with the recipe, maybe all grain brewers don't necessarily follow temps and times, and just shoot for targets? Either way I just tried what I know and did the following:
I wasn't sure if my grain was the type that would benefit from conversion or not but I figured it wouldn't hurt to treat it like it was. I steeped in 2 gallons of water between 151-154F for 30 minutes brought it to a boil, and set it aside to cool. I had 3.5 gallons heating up in another pot so I rinsed the grain in that water a few times by soaking and draining the grain bag, a sort of a 'sparge' I guess.
I added the 6.6 lbs of LME to the 3.5 gal pot, brought it back to a boil, added the 1.5 oz Fuggle and set the timer to 60 minutes. With 10 minutes left I added 0.5 oz Fuggle, 1 tsp Irish Moss, and 4 tsp Ground Allspice. I went and filled the bathtub with cold water and added 10 lbs of ice. Flame out, I put the pot in the ice bath, added 5 tsp of yeast nutrient, then got the temp down to about 85 within 15-20 minutes. The 2 gal 'tea' was around 60F by this point. The 'tea' didn't have any hot/cold break or hops in it so I poured it right into the fermenter with some splashing to aerate it. I siphoned about 3 gallons off of the hot/cold break and hops from the other pot and added this to the fermenter also. I lost maybe a quarter gallon to trub and another quarter gallon to boil off. The two pots mixed to make about 5 gallons of 70-72 F wort.
It was at this point that I added the honey and molasses by soaking them in warm water to help it flow better. I stirred this into the wort to dissolve, took an OG reading of 1.060 @ 71 F (quite a bit high), pitched the yeast and put the whole thing in a room about 72-73 degrees overnight. I noticed positive pressure in the air lock after about 2 hours, and went to bed.
This morning I woke up and it was producing about 2 bubbles per minute at the 12 hour mark. At 15 hours it was producing a bubble every several seconds, so I moved it to a cooler room in the basement that stays between 66-68 F. I started it in a warmer room first to help give the yeast a boost since I didn't do a starter. Its nearing 18 hours and bubbling more vigorously.
I looked up Fuggle Hops, and they have an alpha acid between 3.8-5.5 and according to an IBU calculator hopping the 3.5 gallon will land me between 18.25 on the low end and 26.42 on the high end, so my bitterness should be about right. I overshot the OG by quite a bit which wont help it ferment any faster unfortunately. I am guessing this is both because I used a bit much LME, and possibly I extracted/converted more sugars than I was expecting with my specialty grains. I'll have to learn to convert a recipe from all grain to extract better in the future. My intent was to try to do a full 5 gallon boil by steeping the specialty grains seperate from the LME boil. If anyone has any insight or advice about what I did I'd love to hear it!
At this point my plan is to let it sit in the primary for 2 weeks, I chose a high flocculation yeast so hopefully it will be clear. I will then rack to the keg and let it sit for a day or so, and pull a pint off in case anything else settled. I will swirl the keg lightly to whirlpool anything else to the center, let it sit another day and pull another pint off. It is my hope that the beer will be clear enough to transport the keg to my party without getting cloudy or tasting 'yeasty' or green. This is my first time kegging so I welcome any comments or advice.
Anyways, thanks for stopping in and reading my new experiment!
Recipe says its ready in a month, 2 weeks in fermenter, 2 weeks in bottle. I was hoping to cut a week or more off and ended up picking up a keg system in hopes it will be ready to serve by the 21st.
The original recipe, ...and my substitutions
So there wasn't much instruction with the recipe, maybe all grain brewers don't necessarily follow temps and times, and just shoot for targets? Either way I just tried what I know and did the following:
I wasn't sure if my grain was the type that would benefit from conversion or not but I figured it wouldn't hurt to treat it like it was. I steeped in 2 gallons of water between 151-154F for 30 minutes brought it to a boil, and set it aside to cool. I had 3.5 gallons heating up in another pot so I rinsed the grain in that water a few times by soaking and draining the grain bag, a sort of a 'sparge' I guess.
I added the 6.6 lbs of LME to the 3.5 gal pot, brought it back to a boil, added the 1.5 oz Fuggle and set the timer to 60 minutes. With 10 minutes left I added 0.5 oz Fuggle, 1 tsp Irish Moss, and 4 tsp Ground Allspice. I went and filled the bathtub with cold water and added 10 lbs of ice. Flame out, I put the pot in the ice bath, added 5 tsp of yeast nutrient, then got the temp down to about 85 within 15-20 minutes. The 2 gal 'tea' was around 60F by this point. The 'tea' didn't have any hot/cold break or hops in it so I poured it right into the fermenter with some splashing to aerate it. I siphoned about 3 gallons off of the hot/cold break and hops from the other pot and added this to the fermenter also. I lost maybe a quarter gallon to trub and another quarter gallon to boil off. The two pots mixed to make about 5 gallons of 70-72 F wort.
It was at this point that I added the honey and molasses by soaking them in warm water to help it flow better. I stirred this into the wort to dissolve, took an OG reading of 1.060 @ 71 F (quite a bit high), pitched the yeast and put the whole thing in a room about 72-73 degrees overnight. I noticed positive pressure in the air lock after about 2 hours, and went to bed.
This morning I woke up and it was producing about 2 bubbles per minute at the 12 hour mark. At 15 hours it was producing a bubble every several seconds, so I moved it to a cooler room in the basement that stays between 66-68 F. I started it in a warmer room first to help give the yeast a boost since I didn't do a starter. Its nearing 18 hours and bubbling more vigorously.
I looked up Fuggle Hops, and they have an alpha acid between 3.8-5.5 and according to an IBU calculator hopping the 3.5 gallon will land me between 18.25 on the low end and 26.42 on the high end, so my bitterness should be about right. I overshot the OG by quite a bit which wont help it ferment any faster unfortunately. I am guessing this is both because I used a bit much LME, and possibly I extracted/converted more sugars than I was expecting with my specialty grains. I'll have to learn to convert a recipe from all grain to extract better in the future. My intent was to try to do a full 5 gallon boil by steeping the specialty grains seperate from the LME boil. If anyone has any insight or advice about what I did I'd love to hear it!
At this point my plan is to let it sit in the primary for 2 weeks, I chose a high flocculation yeast so hopefully it will be clear. I will then rack to the keg and let it sit for a day or so, and pull a pint off in case anything else settled. I will swirl the keg lightly to whirlpool anything else to the center, let it sit another day and pull another pint off. It is my hope that the beer will be clear enough to transport the keg to my party without getting cloudy or tasting 'yeasty' or green. This is my first time kegging so I welcome any comments or advice.
Anyways, thanks for stopping in and reading my new experiment!
.
