I brewed my first genuinely small all-grain batch this evening: slightly
more than 1 gallon into the fermenter.
I brewed Beercraftr's Black IPA
<https://www.beercraftr.com/1-gallon-black-ipa-recipe/>, which I keyed into
BeerSmith and made slight adjustments (PDF attached) based on some of the
malts and hops I had on hand.
I used my new AWS Gemini-20 milligram scale to measure the water chemistry
and hop additions. I needed to be able to measure small amounts if I'm
going to have any consistency with small batches.
I used BeerSmith's mash temp of 152 F vs. Beercraftr's 156 F.
And I don't fly sparge; I heat the sparge water separately, then add it to
the mash. *If I had a second pot large enough, I'd move the grain bag from
the mash to the sparge water because I think that would be more efficient
in washing out remaining sugars.* Stir & tea-bag for a few minutes, then
"mash out."
And I just realized I forgot to adjust the pH of the water with phosphoric
acid because BeerSmith doesn't call for it (but Bru'n'water does). Maybe
I'll brew it again tomorrow with pH adjustment for comparison... At nearly
69 IBUs, the small samples I tasted did have noticeable bitterness.
I gotta figure out what's going on with my hydrometers. My glass hydrometer
read 1.070 or 1.069. The refractometer read 1.062 or 1.058 (different
samples before pitching yeast). That's a fairly large range. Ah, well. It's
up to the yeast now.
The "1.2 oz CTZ" was originally 0.25 oz Columbus pellet hops in the
Beercraftr recipe. But "leaf hops" was the closest option for whole hops I
could find in BeerSmith. I actually added 1.8 oz of frozen CTZ whole hops
-- the last of the hops I picked courtesy of Justen at hop farm -- and let
them steep / whirlpool under 180 F, then chilled, and removed them as I
transferred to the fermenter. I'm looking forward to getting the dry hops
in there, too, once active fermentation settles down.
I'm re-using Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II) for pretty much everything
lately, although I'd like to try another strain or two.
And Brian had asked about the recipe that I brewed and brought to Studio
Brew (PDF and BeerSmith file attached). To me, there's sort of a nutty
harshness in the finish. Maybe one of you can look at the recipe and figure
which ingredient may be contributing that. Cluster at 5 minutes? I'll have
to look back and see if I actually used* dehusked* Carafa I or not
(BeerSmith only had regular Carafa I as a fermentable). I want the finish
to be clean and dry. I will be brewing it again soon with flaked corn
rather than grits.
--Steve
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1gallonBlackIPA.pdf
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KentuckyCommon5gal.pdf
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