Piety and scholarship under Lupulos.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Citroen in primary

Citroen brewed last night. Simple recipe pitched on top of existing yeast cakes from last batch.

Stuff is taking way too long and driving me crazy. Boil time seemed forever. I bailed on cooling and pitched at around 100F, hoping the cellar would further cool the wort. I think this was a bad idea but it was after midnight and my "helper" was retiring for the evening.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Brew from Belgium

Finally got my setup for the new "brew house" mostly complete. Brewed yesterday: a simple variant on Pining for Pliny. This was of course not without challenges.

First, I forgot to order DME from the brewstore, and the yeasts I purchased were both propagators -- meaning not enough cells for a real batch. I tried making an all grain starter but it was impossible: the cooler could not keep such a small volume of water warm. In the end I decided on an approach that turned out even better. I decided to brew a normal sized batch (~3G) and split into two fermenters and pitch the different yeasts on each one. This has the advantage of keeping the volume to a reasonable amount for the yeast w/o starter, plus I get to learn the differences between the yeasts!

Second, no barley mill. Rolling pins do not provide a consistent crush and are labor intensive. I used a coffee grinder and achieved reasonable though not ideal results.

I learned about my setup today. My kettle and stove will take over an hour to bring 3.5G of wort to a boil. That kind of sucks but now I can plan.