Cream Ale

The turkey fryer cut my time by about 30 mins.

I haven't brewed for a while, mainly because the hassle of waiting 45-50 mins for water to boil on my stove and the mess of boil-overs and from cooling the wort in an ice bath.

But alas! I solved those problems with some new equipment. I made a wort chiller out of 20 ft of 3/8th OD copper tubing, a utility hose, some hose clamps and adapter to attach to the kitchen sink. It all come to about $20. I then bought a Brinkmann Turkey Fryer which came with a 30-quart (7.5 gal) boiler. This will allow me to do full-volume boils for 5-gallon batches and allow me to try full and partial mash brews (though perhaps a bit on the small side for the latter).

The home-made chiller knocked my cooling time
to about 10 minutes and eliminated the mess of an ice bath.

The fryer worked great. I as able to boil 3 gallons in about 15 or so minutes during a test. The chiller also worked great. It brought my wort for the batch I describe below down to 90 degrees F in about 10 minutes, which allowed for a good cold break for the proteins.

Because it has been a while since I last brewed, I brewed an easy-drinking cream ale from a Northern Brewer kit. It had been sitting around for quite a while, and the liquid malt extra leaked from a crack in the plastic jug that held it. I brought it in to Northern Brewer to ask if it was still good, and the guy there said it was still safe but oxidized and turned darker than it should be, so he swapped it for free.

The kit came with 6 pounds of Pilsen Malt syrup, steeping grains (0.75 lbs Gambrinus Honey Malt and 0.25 lbs Dingemans Biscuit malt), and 1 oz of cluster hop pellets. I used dry Safale US-05 yeast.

I followed the instructions, but added a pinch of Burton salts during the boil and a teaspoon of Irish Moss at the end to help it clear.

The new boiler brought the water temp up so fast I had to turn it way down to keep it below 170 for 20 mins in order to steep the grains. after I steeped the grains, I turned it up full-blast and it boiled in less than 5-mins and then I added the LME and hops and boiled it over medium heat for 60 mins.

The chiller worked great and I racked the cooled wort to a 6-gal Better Bottle, filled it with filtered spring water. The wort ended with a corrected specific gravity of 1.050. I pitched the yeast dry and shook it to all hell to aerate it. Put the bottle back in the box to keep it out of the light and stuck the fermentation lock in it. It should be ready to bottle in a week or two.  

Bottled The Brewhoff beer

Brewed on Dec. 23.

Fermentation went well. Final Gravity was about 1.012. According to the calculator over at "Dave's Dreaded" it is 4.45 percent alcohol by volume.

Bottling went fine. Ended up with just under 2 1/2 cases.

Tried some. Good, but yeast needs to settle out.

Here's the recipe I developed for the UW-Madison SJMC Brewhoff 2011

Hurricane Dave's Session APA

Recipe Volume = 6.5 gals

6 lbs Northern Brewer Gold Malt Extract
1 lbs Muntons Amber DME
1 lbs Briess Light DME
1.25 lbs Caramel 60 grain

1 oz @ 60 mins Yakima Magnum Hops 14.4% Alpha Acids
.5 oz @ 30 mins Cascade 6.1% Alpha Acids
.5 oz @ 15 mins Cascade 6.1% Alpha Acids
1 oz @ 2 mins Cascade 6.1% Alpha Acids
Planned Original Gravity = 1.051
Measured OG = 1.046 (Spilled some and it diluted a bit when I brought it up to full volume)

Yeast Safale US-05

3 tbs burton salts.
IBU = about 38 or 39

Bottling Day!

I started this beer June 26, so as of last night when I bottled that's 7 weeks and three days in the primary fermenter--a lot longer than the two weeks called for. But luckily the beer still tastes good. Ended up with a final gravity of 1.012 for an ABV of 3.54 according to the Brewer’s Friend calculator.

It took a few hours to clean, remove the labels from, and sanitize all the bottles I collected, but not too bad.

Scott helped bottle and cap. Ended up with 42 bottles and 2 half-gallon growlers full.

Main lesson learned was buy an auto siphon because transfer to the bottling bucket is a P.I.A. without it. A little beter organization and a few towels on the ground for spills would also help.

Also, the fermtech bottle filler did not fit inside my spigot on the northern brewer bottling bucket, reguiring me to rig up a solution using a bung as an adapter, which worked fine.

First Batch of Homebrew

This is my first batch of homebrew. It's a Scottish 70 Shilling Ale from Northern Brewer: http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/scottish-70-extract-kit.html

I'm brewing six gallons instead of the five the kit is made for, so I added about a half pound of extra malt.

It was good when I tasted a sample of it in the store, so if this tastes like horseshit when I'm done it's on me.

My brewing and bottling kit consists of various items cobbled together from Northern Homebrewing and The Purple Foot on Milwaukee's south side. My brewing vessels are 4 gallon PET water bottles from Sam's Club. Less than 5 bucks each and they come filled with water.

The pictures below show some parts of the brewing process.

Steeping the specialty grains







I boiled the wort for 60 minutes and did three additions of hops, as the recipe called for.

After that, I chilled it in an ice bath and I poured it into my bottling bucket. I added more water and then the yeast. With Scott's help I used the spigot on the bottling bucket to fill my carboys. I then aerated the wort by shaking it and put the fermentation locks on.



The beer is now fermenting (Started 11 p.m., June 26. The original gravity was 1.039.) I'm wrapping towels around them to keep the light out, and have the air conditioner running to keep it under 70 degrees.