Hooray - It's Brew Day!

Saturday was brew day. I decided to go with a clone of Alaskan Smoked Porter. I bought the all-grain ingredient kit from Austin Homebrew. If you’re like me and have limited local sources for your supplies, these folks do a great job. This is probably the 4th kit I’ve purchased from them, and I’ve never been disappointed. They formulate your recipe, mill the grain, and ship you as much as you want for a flat $6.99 shipping fee. One day I’m planning to order an entire truckload of grain to see if I can have it shipped for $6.99.

The grain bill consisted of 11 lbs 2-row, 1 lb Rauch, ¼ lb chocolate, ½ lb Black Patent, and 1/8 lb Crystal 90L. For hops I used 1.5 oz Golding @ 90 minutes, 1 oz Williamette at 15 minutes, and ½ oz Golding @ 5 minutes. I went ahead and added some Irish moss at 5 minutes, and started with a couple of Tbs of gypsum to keep my pH right.

9 gallons of water ready to convert to beer!

Ingredients from Austin Homebrew - grain, hops (3 bags), yeast package, and booster (for more alcohol!)

I mashed for 60 min at 160 deg F. My neighbor Bryan came over for a short while to get educated and to help me manage water at the beginning of the sparge. Like the typical male, I’ll never ask for help but am always appreciative when it’s offered. His wife and daughter also wandered over to see what the strange new guy next door was up to in his garage. Good for Bryan; beer brewing was meant to be fun for the whole family.

Boiling in process; note the water loss due to evaporation and retention by the grain

The sparge went pretty quickly with some minor improvements made to my false bottom plate. (Look for details in the forthcoming beer-giek section). I went ahead and checked the OG before boiling just for yuks. I measured 1.042 @ 59 deg F. More giek (as in Aggie-k) stuff. My FG came in at 1.052 @ 68 deg F.

I had to cool the beer twice through my counterflow heat exchanger because the tap water is still fairly warm in Louisiana.

Oops - I believe that the reason I had to run it through twice is because I hooked the hoses up wrong. Dooooh! I created a parallel flow heat exchanger setup! Someone poor me another homebrew!

Cooling the wort while letting the waste water run on the ground

My wife explaining how to be more environmentally responsible while cooling the wort

Cooling the wort in an environmentally friendly fashion for future plant watering with the waste water (note the extra bucket)

Next time I’m thinking about using my pool water instead, which sits at 56 deg F this morning. I’ll probably have to schedule that for a day when the wife is out of town.

I plan to skip the secondary and go directly to the keg next weekend. I’ll let it condition in the keg for a couple of weeks before drinking. I’ll probably bottle a couple of gallons as well.

The finished product prior to pitching

Some more pictures from my busy day:

Happy yeast. Note the expanded package while the yeast turns sugar into alcohol and CO2!

Daddy's little helper. I kept a small glass full and was prepared to say "I only had one small one" when asked. Nobody asked.

Check the edge of the glass. Even the bees in Louisiana like a homebrew in early January!

Until next time, cheers!