Speed Brew

Kristen made plans for New Years and I'm running low on hoppy session beer so I am going to run a quick experiment on speed brewing this Saturday. I'm still working out the hop schedule, but I'm basically going to brew a similar beer to the SMaSH APA that I'm drinking right now. Kristen loves this beer, but I don't have any more Summit hops on hand so what I think I'm going to do for this 10 gallon batch is either use an all Munich or all Maris Otter base to get me around 1.045, first wort hop with either Cascade or Centennial, a small 60 minute addition of Magnum or Columbus, load up at 10 minutes and flameout with Cascade and Centennial (I'm thinking 3 ounces at each time?), then keg hop with Columbus.

The catch is that this needs to be in the keg ready to drink on New Years Eve, so if I brew on Saturday I've got 12 days from grain to glass. The current plan is to mash around 148 and pitch US-05 at around 62 degrees. I'll keep it cool for the first 24-48 hours to keep it clean, then slowly raise the temp so that I hit 68 or 70 by the 5th or 6th day. I'll probably keep it warm for a few days to make sure the yeast clean up after themselves, then cold crash it in the garage for a couple more days, possibly with gelatin, then keg and force carb on the 30th.

What could possibly go wrong?

In other news, the keg of Belgian Golden Strong that I fermented with the Unibroue strain is still not clear! Starting to get frustrated.