Brewing

Brew Day

Over the past few months I have been working on getting my all grain homebrewing setup up and running. It's taking me several not-so-great attempts to fine tune a lot of the details needed for coming out on top in the brew process. 

1) Souring infection – This was suprising, as I have brewed several beers without having any issues. Then I had at least 3 in a row with a sour off taste and extra foaming that is indicitive of an infection. Not ok. The biggest thing to take away from that is don't let anything sit exposed between sanitization and adding the beer. I started rinsing the iodine just minutes before pitching my beer in order to minimize the chance of infection. I also started making extra sure all bottles were throughly scrubbed before adding sanitizer. 

2) Low gravity – This is something I'm continuing to struggle with. No matter how closely I watch my mash temps I seem to continually end up with low(40-50%) efficency. My next steps are to check my grind closer, possibly sending it through the grinder twice. If that does't yield any better results I think I'll try a different shop.

And now for a few pics of brew day from my Google+ profile.

 

 

 





Pumpkin be ailing me

An Update: Brewing went sort-of ok. Made a big mess of things and lots of stuff didn't go exactly how I would have liked it. But such is the art.

 

Just wrapped up completely prepping my kitchen for brewday tomorrow. Scrubbed and sanatized 40+ bottles, cleaned fermenters, prepped ingriedients, cleaned racking canes and siphons. The recipie I'll be making can be found here, or for the lazy I've listed it below

Recipe Type: Partial Mash
Yeast: Safle US-05
Yeast Starter: No
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: No
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.056
Final Gravity: 1.014
IBU: 18
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: 12
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 4 weeks @ 164-168
Additional Fermentation: n/a
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): n/a
Tasting Notes: To be determined.

Moon Hill Pumpkin Ale ***See important notes at bottom

*Updated in separate post with FG readings, pictures, and tasting notes.

Ingredients
Extract
1 lb light DME (60 mins)
3 lbs Pale LME (15 mins)
1/2 lb brown sugar (15 mins)
8 oz wheat DME (15 mins)

Base Grains (Mash)
2 lbs pale 2-row malt
3/4 pound Maris Otter

Specialty Grains (Mash)
6 oz Caramel Munich
4 oz Briess Victory
4 oz Biscuit Malt
8 oz Briess 2 Row Caramel 80

Hops
.75 oz Mt Hood Hops (60 mins) 5.5% AA
.5 oz Hallertauer Hops (30 mins) 3.6% AA

Extras
3 15 oz cans of pumpkin (2 cans for mash, 1 can for boil)
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (2 min) 
(The following are fresh grated) 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/8 tsp nutmeg , 1/8 tsp allspice (2 mins)
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice (flame out)

Yeast
Safale US-05

I have some modifications I might make, but I'll wait till tomorrow to make the final call.