February 2009 Archives
The base of the brew is a pale malt extract with a mini mash of specialty grains. For the mini mash, I used the following grain:
• Half a pound of Vienne malt
• Half a pound of Munich malt
• One pound of Special B malt
• Half a pound of Biscuit malt
I mashed the grain at 152 degrees F for 45 minutes and then added the wort to the brew kettle that already had 4.5 gallons of water coming to a boil. At that point, I added 2 pounds of light DME and brought the water to a boil
Once the boil began, I added 3 pounds of pale malt extract and the first addition of hops, 2.5 ounces of Chinook.
With 20 minutes left in the boil, I added the final addition of pale malt extract and 1.75 ounces of Columbus hops.
With 15 minutes left in the boil, I added a half a teaspoon of Irish Moss.
I added 2 ounces of Cascade hops with two minutes left in the boil. Before I began brewing, I rehydrated a packet of Danstar Nottingham ale yeast. Once the wort was chilled to about 78 degrees, I aerated the wort for 20 minutes and then pitched the yeast.
I strapped my heating pad to the primary and turned it to low. I usually keep follow this process and the temp stays around 78 degrees. I wrapped the fermenter with a fleece and let it go.
My plans for this beer are to add 4 ounces of oak chips to the secondary after it is racked. By doing this, I hope to achieve the same flavor as the Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard. I plan to rack this next weekend and I hope to bottle sometime around the first week of March.
That's all for now.
Yesterday I wrote about how cool all of my all-grain brewing equipment is. Well today, you get to see for yourself how cool it really is.
Ok, maybe it's not that cool, but
I did construct the mash tun myself. Here are some pictures of the mash tun.
The only thing missing is the digital thermometer which I will mount on the
side.
These pictures are of inside the
mash tun. The lateral copper tubing is the manifold. It drains the wort out of
the tun. The horizontal copper tubing is the sparge arm. It rinses the grain
bed with hot water.
Above is the outside of the mash
tun. The first is the ball valve for draining. The second pic is of the connection
point for the sparge arm. A hose connects the hot liquor tank to the mash tun where
160+ degree water flows through the valve and feeds the sparge arm. I plan to
use a much thicker hose.
Here are the kettles used during the brewing process. The first pic is the hot liquor tank. This one was my go-to kettle for extract brewing. It is/was a turkey deep fryer and holds up to 7.5 gallons of liquid. I love the integrated spigot. The middle shot depicts my newest brew kettle and my old brew kettle. The last shot is the ball valve on the new brew kettle. The new brew kettle is a converted keg and can hold up to 15.5 gallons of liquid.
I currently do not plan to brew batches larger than 5 or 6 gallons. However, all I would need to do is swap out the hot liquor tank for another 15.5 gallon keg. Not bad.
There are a few other miscellaneous items not shown here. I have a pump that I use for wort chilling. I also have a home-made immersion wort chiller. It’s basically 20’ of soft copper tubing coiled up. Works very well and can chill a 5 gallon batch to yeast pitching temps in less than 20 minutes. I so can’t wait to play with these! Is it spring time yet?
