Thanks for the recipes Steve! How did you go about picking what water profile
you wanted for the beer?
From: overmountainbrewers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<overmountainbrewers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Steve Paulson
<blueangel6@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2019 12:50 PM
To: overmountainbrewers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OMB] Re: Genuine small batch
Rebrewing this AM (started prepping a little after 6am, started the mash at
7am, currently more than halfway through the boil).
"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"
By reversing the order of my kettle usage (2 gallon pot for the mash and 5.5
gallon pot for the sparge & boil), I was able to do just that. I left the mash
liquor / wort in the 2 gallon pot (looked like a little less than 1/2 gallon in
there) and moved the bag to the sparge water.
One thing I noticed with small batch is how quickly the water heats up! I'm
used to getting the mash water heating up, then getting other things in order,
prepped, etc.. It went so quickly that I felt like I was behind the 8-ball
until I got the boil started; that may also be partly why I forgot the acid.
(Last night, I overshot the sparge temp by a few degrees. I discovered at this
volume, 1 ice cube lowers the temp by about 1 degree.) Chilling is similarly
quick.
--Steve
On Wed, May 22, 2019 at 11:10 PM Steve Paulson
<blueangel6@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:blueangel6@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
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://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.beercraftr.com%2F1-gallon-black-ipa-recipe%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cdc2e69f3d9fa4f9f8a0f08d6df7d5ca8%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636942126845841393&sdata=WHAujuacMOfg%2BSKNB%2BO9Zu2dadAUi3jOuknLuzYiRbE%3D&reserved=0>,
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
