Got crazy with the cheese whiz and decided to try my hand at all-grain brewing. Found this recipe and thought I’d give it a try. Due to availability, this is what I ended up with:
- 7# RAHR 2-row malt
- 0.75# CaraFoam (should be Cara-pils)
- 0.5# Crystal 15L
- 0.5# German Vienna
- 1 package Safeale US-05
- 1 oz Centennial hops @8.3% (scheduled half each at 55 and 35 minutes of boil)
- 1 oz Cascade Hops @8.7% (scheduled half at 20 and 5 minutes of boil)
- ~$20 worth of ingredients
How it happened (brew batch #4):
- Mashed with 4 G of water. This is 1.5 to cover the false bottom and 2.5 to wet the grain. This was a mistake and should have used about 3 – 3.5 G
- Mashed with Mashed at 150-152˚F for 60 minutes and then brought up to 170˚F.
- Sparged with ~2.25 G hot liquor. Needed more sparge volume and less mash volume.
- Yielded 5.0 G of wort after sparge.
- IG preboil: 1.041, which yields about 64% efficiency. Not shabby for the first all-grain attempt — but leaves some room for improvement (damn my perfectionist tendencies)
- Added .5 G of water during the boil to help maintain volume.
- Racked to keg on 3/5 — 9 days in primary. Put on CO2. Probably should have let it settle in secondary.
- FG: 1.008 — 4.3% ABV
- After 2 weeks in the keg, it’s turned nearly clear, losing almost all of the chill haze. Taste is moderately hopped, with a refreshing hop aftertaste that is not bitter. Ohh so very drinkable. Very happy.
Batch #6:
- modified ingredients: 7.5# of 2-row, and 0.8# carafoam (instead of 0.75 cara-pils). Subbed 0.5 oz of Amarillo for the 20 minute cascades (due to insufficient cascades). Rest same.
- made modification to false bottom to reduce the below space to only 1 gallon.
- Mashed with 3.25 gallon water
- Strike: 164˙F. Maintained 152-154˙F mash for 1h, 5m.
- Overshot mash-out and brought it upto 185˙F. Ooops.
- Sparged with 4.25G
- Pre-boil yield: 6.0 G at 1.042, which makes a brew house efficiency of 75.4%. Hot damn!
- Post-boil 5+ gallon at 1.047
Batch #16: Brewed on 3/28/2011
With the start of spring, it’s time to renew this favorite in the kegerator. I’m going to hop this one up a bit more, and dry hop it as well. While measuring the base malt, I had 1 pound left over from the sack, so, I just dumped it in.
Even with that, I’m tracking at the upper limits of the BJCP style guide for a blonde. Good enough!
- modified ingredients: 8.5# of 2-row, and 0.8# carafoam (instead of 0.75 cara-pils)
- Bumped the hops up: 10gm Centennial for 55; 11gm Centennial for 35, 12gm Cascade for 20, 14 gm Cascade for 5
- Centennials were 9.2%, and Cascades were 5.0%
- Estimated IBU: 28
- Pitched 2 packets of hydrated US-05
- Targeted mash of 156 to bump the maltiness up a bit. It averaged a bit lower than that.
- Collected 5.3 G at 1.056, for an efficiency of 78%.
- Dry hopped for ~2 weeks with remaining hops from 2 oz packages. Should have used more cascades.
- Stuck fermentation. Racked to keg on 4/28.
- FG: 1.011, for 7.2% ABV
Batch #18 Brewed 7/17/2011
Doing 10G batch, splitting it halvsies with S-05, and half with WLP568 Belgian Saison strain. The Belgian will get 5# of Apricots in secondary.
- 15# 2-row, 1.3# cara-pills, 1# 10L, 1# Vienna
- Mashed at 150. Little hot, then little cold, then stable. Used Recirc pump during mash. Worked great.
- Collected 10.7G at 1.0465 (corrected to 60°), for 75% effeciency
- Belgian is targeting 72° ferm. Got warm for a 1-2 days and went up to 75° and slowly came back down to 72.
- S-05 is targetting 68°
- Both finished at a 1.010, for a 4.8% abv
- Kegged S-05 version on 7/27
- Racked Saison yeast version to secondary with 5# of apricot on 7/27
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