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WarpedBrewer

Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
17
Reaction score
2
Location
Shreveport
So I am swimming in uncharted territory here. I have been brewing mostly extract beers for a few years but not sporadically. I have only brewed basic ales up until now. I entered a competition and they gave me 5 gallons of wort from a Schwarzbier. It is a wonderful beer. However it was not was i expecting to get due to last minute miscommunication so I had to act quick on me feet. Heres what I did, if anybody has any prior experience, I would love to know what to possible expect.

I took the wort and added a a Saf04 english ale yeast. I made a "beer fort" over an ice water bucket and have kept the temperature of the carboy at 59-68 degrees. After 7 days I racked to a secondary and added:
12 oz frozen rasberries
1 oz of Hershey's Cocoa powder (i boiled water and mixed it up with an ounce of water and added that to an empty carboy before anything else)
1/2 oz of fuggle pellet hops (in a muslin bag)

I plan on letting it sit in secondary for 4-5 days then bottle it. I've heard with the cocoa poweder time makes a huge diference but i only have a little over a month until tasting for the competition. I tasted before adding to secondary and it was amazing. I will spend the next month thinking I ruined it.

Any critique on what i could have done better is welcome.
 
I see you took the wort and added yeast to it to start... maybe this is a no-brainer but was the wort boiled? A local brewery here gave wort away last week which was second runnings from a big barleywine they do. However, it needed boiled as it was just runnings from the mash tun. Just checking.
 
It was preboiled. They suggested bringing it to a boil again for sanitation but I picked it up right before work and didnt have the ability to boil it and cool it off, so I just added yeast.
 
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