Sunday, October 19, 2008

Homebrew-Starving Brewer IPA

There's 5 gallons of freshly made India Pale Ale. The recipe:

7 # Briess dry light malt extract
2.4 # British Crystal 50-60L
2 tsp. Gypsum
1 tsp. Kosher salt
2.25 oz. Fuggles pellets, 4.6% A.A.
1.25 oz. Styrian Goldings pellets, 3.5% A.A.
1/4 tsp. Irish Moss
2 packets Danstar "Windsor" dry yeast

Mash British Crystal with 1 gal. 170˚F water (with gypsum & salt).
Hold at 158˚F for 45 minutes, then lauter to kettle with 170˚F sparge water.
Dissolve malt extract with wort and fill to a volume of about 3 gal.
Bring to boil and add 1 oz of Fuggles pellets at start. Add 1.25 oz. Fuggles 60 min. into boil.
As the wort condensed I topped up to 3 gal. with boiled water, about a quart at a time.
The last hop addition is the 1.25 oz. of Styrian Goldings 75 min. into the boil. Put the Irish Moss in at 80 min. into boil, and remove from heat at 90 minutes.
Whirlpool and rest. If you have a wort chiller, bring the temperature below 80˚F.
Rack to carboy, straining out trub, and top up to 5 gal.
Prestart yeast in 2/3 cup 80˚F water.
Stir wort and take gravity sample. This batch had an O.G. of 1.052 (13˚P).
Pitch the yeast and get it going!

This was a pretty good brew, with only a couple of minor problems during the process. The first was trying to get the siphoning going with my new stainless steel racking cane. It's a lot longer than the plastic one I used to have so it took a bit of getting used to. Luckily, I had some time to practice and plenty of iodine solution to siphon.
The second was the water filter I was using being so slow. By the time I figured that it wouldn't be able to run enough water through by wort cooling time, I was able to boil enough water in my mash pot to handle topping up. I just dropped my wort chiller into the boiled water after I was done with the kettle pot and racked that when the wort was finished.
Like Charlie sez: Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew!

s b

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