Just took a gravity reading. 1.005. Wow, that Notty sure was hungry. -bake

We brewed up an Irish Red today. Hit our est OG spot on at 1.044. The recipe was from NB, however it looks more amber than red. We broke in the Blichmann burner which is insanely quiet and packs a ton of heating power, we learned pretty quick that the regulator and air-flow make a huge difference -the kettle was submerged in flames and covered in soot. We our calling this batch Notty Bodygurad (Nottingham yeast and in honor of the late Whitney Houston).

-bake

tried out another brew-in-a-bag batch on friday night which went a lot smoother than the first one. I ended up tweaking the safety champ 2 recipe to only 8lbs of malt in the bag. I made up the extra gravity with 2lbs of amber DME (I picked amber instead of light to bring it up to 15srm and give a little more munich maltiness). I scaled back the hops to 1oz ea @60,10min since the leaf cascade from SCBS packed 8.9%AA. The leaf hops also helped with filtering the wort through the bazooka screen. And finally, I subbed  WY1056 with WY1272 american ale 2 because they say it's a more flocculant strain making clearer beer.

bake had this brilliant idea of clipping the strainer to the kettle with a carabiner during the lauter process to keep it in place (last time the strainer, grain bag, and 9lbs of grain slipped into the hot wort and splashed all over my kitched), which worked like a charm. here's the whole brew session listed:

5gal strike water heated to 140F for dough in
5# maris otter
1#dark munich
1#crystal 60
1#biscuit
mashed @ 152F for 60min
malt bag placed in strainer over kettle
vorlauf 3gal through grain bag to help filter wort
sparged with 2gal near boiling water get to 6gal pre-boil volume
2#amber DME added @ 60min
1oz whole cascade @ 60min
wort chiller @ 20min
1 whirlfloc tablet @ 15min
1oz whole cascade @ 10min
whirlpooled and chilled to 68F
aerated and pitched WY1272 with 1qt starter
OG 16.5brix (1.063) got to use the refractometer brynne got me for my bday -nice.

it's been bubbling steady for 2 days now.


I've also been working on a couple other projects lately:
a stir plate, which I haven't used yet because SCBS didn't get their shipment of stir bars yet.

and a mashjacket for my kettle since I'm using it as a mash tun for biab's and it has a hard time keeping a steady temp. I'll post more about these on the projects page when I finish them up.

-kris

Moved the Hella Malt Long inside for a diacetyl rest. Planning on throwing it in some carboys and then back in the fridge on Monday. Reading on the refractometer was 7 (1.008) putting it at 6.8% abv.

-bake

bake got me a badass blichmann brewmometer for my birthday, which showed up just in time for our brew-in-a-bag experiment. along with the ingredients for a patersbier (basically a session strength belgian style trappist ale) I picked up a few new toys from SCBS with a gift card my parents gave me: a 2L erlenmeyer flask, a plastic mini mash paddle, and an XL straining bag and strainer for the brewing in said bag.

we started with 5 gal of strike water (I'll propably up to 5.5-6 which should be fine in my 8 gal kettle). since we were mashing in my kettle on the stove, we were able to do a traditional 4-step mash with different protein and enzyme rests- which we hit for the most part.

 didn't really need a starter for this beer with an OG of 1.050ish, so haven't used the flask yet. need to pick up a stir plate anyway.
the sparging process was a little difficult, brynne was kind enough to help get the strainer under the grain bag (9# of grain was definitely pushing it for this method)- I did still vorlauf several times draining the wort from the kettle valve and pouring it over the grainbag and ended up sparging 3 times with water from an electric tea kettle.

ended up with only 4 gal of wort at a gravity of 1.057 (which should've been 1.047, I think I'll sparge more next time.) as of today, we are bubbling vigorously with a good 3 inch krausen. I used NB's all grain patersbier recipe if anyone is interested.

-kris

A new toy showed up in the mail today from Blichmann. The burner is way heavier and sturdier than I could have ever imagined, props to Blichmann. Can't wait for her maiden voyage.

-bake