Jonnio
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- Joined
- Dec 30, 2007
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Well, last night I gathered all the stuff to try and make some of Orfy's Hobgoblin. I was very excited, but I quickly ran into a few problems that I thought I would pass on in case other new brewers are branching out from kits.
First things first, I had a some things going in that I knew were going to be messed up, but I figured I would still give it a shot. 1) I accidentally ordered Dark DME instead of light, so my color is going to be way dark for the style. I decided taste was my concern so I didn't worry about it. 2) I could only get my hands on Chocolate Rye locally. I thought it would be ok as well and maybe add some unique character.
So here is where I ran into problems:
To crush the grain I mistakenly (1) thought the rolling pin would work fine, so I got a heavy duty ziplock. Put all my grains in the bag (2) and started rolling away. I quickly found out that the chocolate rye was pulverizing before the other grains were even cracking. I decided to add some more of the light grains to a separate bag to be able to crush them, but even they did not get a good crush with the rolling pin. Well, to add to mistakes 1 and 2 while looking back through the ratios again to try and determine how much more light grain to add I realized that I had put in too much of the chocolate rye (3). Had I not put them all in the bag together I could have rectified this, but oh well, too late now.
Other than the major issues above things went off pretty well. I was withing .002 of my SG, so that was at least close and overall the Wort still tasted good and was fermenting like mad this morning.
So, all in all I didn't brew Hobgoblin, but I think I will at least have a drinkable beer that will be somewhat remotely close to an English Bitter with a little less mouth feel and a little bit of Rye twang.
First things first, I had a some things going in that I knew were going to be messed up, but I figured I would still give it a shot. 1) I accidentally ordered Dark DME instead of light, so my color is going to be way dark for the style. I decided taste was my concern so I didn't worry about it. 2) I could only get my hands on Chocolate Rye locally. I thought it would be ok as well and maybe add some unique character.
So here is where I ran into problems:
To crush the grain I mistakenly (1) thought the rolling pin would work fine, so I got a heavy duty ziplock. Put all my grains in the bag (2) and started rolling away. I quickly found out that the chocolate rye was pulverizing before the other grains were even cracking. I decided to add some more of the light grains to a separate bag to be able to crush them, but even they did not get a good crush with the rolling pin. Well, to add to mistakes 1 and 2 while looking back through the ratios again to try and determine how much more light grain to add I realized that I had put in too much of the chocolate rye (3). Had I not put them all in the bag together I could have rectified this, but oh well, too late now.
Other than the major issues above things went off pretty well. I was withing .002 of my SG, so that was at least close and overall the Wort still tasted good and was fermenting like mad this morning.
So, all in all I didn't brew Hobgoblin, but I think I will at least have a drinkable beer that will be somewhat remotely close to an English Bitter with a little less mouth feel and a little bit of Rye twang.
