I broke in the mini mashtun today with the Late Harvest Autumn Ale clone I've been working on. The recipe is in the previous post. I used 5 quarts of water and 4 pounds of grain. I think I could do 5 pounds of grain but I would definitely have to do a thicker mash to fit it in there, probably 1 quart/pound instead of 1.25. I did make a few mistakes though. First, my strike water was a little too warm - about 168 after I added it to the mash, so I had to stir for a while to bring it down to 158, which I now realize is still probably too warm. Next time I'll just heat the strike water to 160. My next mistake was getting worried about the mash being too hot. About halfway through the mash I opened up the cooler and stirred some more to drop the temp. I ended up losing more heat after this because after an hour it had dropped to 148. As a result of these, the OG was 1.050, but I was shooting for 1.059. Oh well, lessons learned. Hopefully it's still drinkable. If I get motivated I'll post some pictures.
The "pilsner" has dropped to 1.012 and is golden and tasty. I put it in the garage to cold crash it before I keg tomorrow or the next day. The Centennial IPA is tasting pretty good too, but it's well on it's way to being kicked. I am having a really rough time keeping 2 beers on tap! Any of you have that problem? I'm going to have to crank out a quick APA next weekend to rebuild the stash, I'm thinking Nugget to bitter and Ahtanum for flavor and aroma to get a feel for what it can do.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Partial mash is pretty cool man. I am definetly not ready for that. Considering that, like the others, I too have been lazy about brewing the past few months. I havent even checked this awesome blog in awhile. Towards the end of summer I pretty much gave up on brewing thanks to the ever growing amount of baby stuff forcing me to keep beer outside to ferment and the fact that it was 90 degrees every day. However, now that we are finally going to be under 70's consistently I am planning a batch. This year I did an ESB, Dubbel, Phat Tyre, and Imperial IPA. Im leaning towards trying the Tripel again. Any suggestions??
Partial mash is pretty easy actually, but it does require some more time. I won't PM every batch. I plan on experimenting with it here and there, but I don't always have time to add an extra hour plus to my brewday.
Can you keep a constant temp where you'll be fermenting? If I were you I would whip out a quick APA. Ferment out in 2 weeks, bottle, drink. I'd go 6 lbs light DME, .5 lb Caramel 60 (or more if you want), .5 lb of Carapils for head retention and body (optional), 25 IBUs of a high alpha bittering hop like Nugget, Magnum, Horizon, Columbus, then a few ounces dropped in with less than 15 minutes left in the boil, including one at flameout so you don't have to mess with dryhopping and can drink it faster. But that's just an idea.
"Awesome blog." Heh.
Post a Comment