An odd one here. A couple weeks ago there was a small accident regarding a computer keyboard. Well, it’s in the shop getting fixed ($46 installed, but it’ll take about a week to get the part). Well, this is where I had the copy of beersmith that had today’s homebrew recipe on it. Thus, today didn’t exactly start out with 100% efficiency on perfection.
But alas, if you’re gonna do something, do it right. OR if you’re not gonna do something the right way, don’t skimp on it. Go for broke! Well that was today, go for broke!
The recipe at one point was clear and I had a specific plan (at least that was before I ordered the grain!). That’s out the window, obviously. All I had was a bag of grain of around 12 lbs that I wasn’t sure exactly what was in it, but there was approximately…
- A decent amount of 2-row
- some munich malt (or some other non-2-row base malt, I can’t remember what it was)
- some crystal malt (I am sure it was eight ounces of crystal malt total, there wasn’t a lot of crystal)
- 3 oz honey malt (I am positive there was 3 oz honey malt in there)
I am guessing 12 or so lbs total grains, OG in the 1.055-1.060 range. I didn’t measure. Why bother!
Might as well guess on the hops too (though I did use a scale to weight them)…
- 0.5 oz cascade FWH
- 0.5 oz each cascade/centennial/citra at 7 minutes
- 0.5 oz each cascade/centennial/citra at flameout
Dry hops (pre-weighed and bagged for when the time comes):
- 0.5 oz each centennial/citra dry hop
- 0.75 oz cascade dry hop
The yeast was a proper starter of NW ale yeast, WY1332. That much we couldn’t possibly slack off on!
Then the thermometer took a dump during brewing. We’re about a 60 mile round trip from anywhere that we could get a thermometer (or even a battery for the one that took a dump), so we used the one that came with the turkey fryer. Prolly not as accurate, LOL, but it went from 50-300 and read just over 210 at boiling. Good enough. Mashed at 165-ish strike water (which probably left me at around 152-155 mash temp) and stirred once during the 1+ hour mash. No point in using a timer either, eh? Well I timed it on my phone to “close enough.”
So all during this brew-stravaganza, we continued work on the “man-cave” / brewhaus. Today we framed the roof and added two of the skylights and some of the roof panels. Then it started raining! When it rains, it pours!! It’s gonna be totally badass though, a big, nice sheddy kinda shed with plenty of room to brew, and several “add-ons” to the outside, including two built in, covered, insulated freezer/controller boxes (will eventually be enough for 30 gallons of fermenting beer in three different temperature controlled freezers with controllers, 5 gallons times 2 buckets per freezer). Also the new 10+ gallon system (burners and all) will be on the outside, with a tiled sink and floor on the inside and storage for everything on the inside. It’s gonna kick total ass man! We’ll be on the man show for sure! More on this in the future!
Well, when I get my other computer back, I can find out what exactly were the grains that were in there. Will my hops schedule work? I bet it will!
We shall find out soon!
Beer and Stuff 