Windy brew day!

[lexuschris]

Hey all,

I was able to sneak in a brewday today amidst the gusty winds and constant shower of bottlebrush flowers, leaves & dust. I was starting to 2nd guess trying to brew today, but drew inspiriation from a conversation with jward at the last club meeting. Basically, that I was probably a lot more nervous about beer infection than was realistic. (a by product of my early learnings on sanitation & brewing)

So, I decided to relax, go-for-it, and don' worry brah. Had a great brewday, and the winds died down just as I fired up my full boil. (I knew that could not be kept covered) So the odd bottlebrush flower might have made it into the HLT or MLT, but it was easy sailing from boil to ferementer.

Cheers!
--LexusChris

p.s. brewed a repeat of my Speedbump IPA... am on my last draught of the 1st one ... so its just in the nick of time!

[backyard brewer]

Shoulda brewed a "Bottle Brush Bitter"

[lexuschris]

Shoulda brewed a "Bottle Brush Bitter"

Hmmmm... I wonder...

[JonGoku]

Hey Chris, I really liked your Speedbump IPA when you brought it in last meeting and since your recipe was posted here I tried to convert it to extract and brewed it on Sunday.

This is only my second non kit extract where I have tried to convert an AG to extract so I may be off some here, but this is what I went with:

8lbs LME
1lbs Munich (GWM)
1lbs Wheat Malt
8oz 15L
8oz 35L (Steinfillers didn't have 20L or 40L and they claimed these were equivalent)

Hops Oz AA Time
Glacier 0.5 6.00 60min
Warrior 1.0 15.8 60min
Amarillo 0.8 7.5 30min
Amarillo 0.8 7.5 10min
Amarillo 1.1 7.5 5min
Amarillo 1.1 7.5 flame out
Amarillo 1.5 7.5 Dry Hop

I used Glacier and Warrior to bitter instead of Mt.Hood and Nugget since that's what I had on hand. The odd weights for the Amarillo were just distributing the extra hops from the two 2oz packages I opened. (yes, at Steinfillers what they mean by 4oz of hops is 3.8oz )

My OG came out to 1.62 for 5.1 gallons and I pitched with US-05.

Anyways, I'm wondering if your brewing software had a convert to extract function and if it did, how close did my conversion come?

Cheers!

[lexuschris]

Heya Jon,

I've not used the convert button on BeerSmith before, but here is what it did with the recipe.

Amount Item Type % or IBU
0.21 lb Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 1.76 %
6.25 lb Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract 51.28 %
2.29 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 18.79 %
2.06 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 16.93 %
1.37 lb Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 11.24 %
1.50 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (Dry Hop 7 days) Hops -
1.00 oz Nugget [13.00 %] (60 min) Hops 34.5 IBU
0.50 oz Mt. Hood [3.90 %] (60 min) Hops 5.7 IBU
0.75 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (30 min) Hops 12.7 IBU
0.75 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (10 min) Hops 6.0 IBU
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (5 min) Hops 4.4 IBU
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] (0 min) Hops -
0.25 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) Yeast-Ale

Looks like it replaced the Crystal Malts with 2.06 of Pale Malt (2 Row)..? I would think the Wheat & Munich malts have enough diastolic power to convert the Crystal malts you used without any issue .. and your recipe looks like a good conversion to me!

Looking forward to hearing how it turns out!
--LexusChris

[JonGoku]

That recipe looks like a partial mash recipe instead of a pure extract with specialty grains. The grains I used I steeped at 155 for 30 min and then removed, holding the sack over the kettle until the dripping stopped.

I really needed to take advantage of the time I had to brew to brew so that's why I went extract, I am serious about moving to AG and just need to get the gear together. I can tinker in small spurts of free time, but a full 4-6 hours free time is rare.

BTW slightly off topic, I found that the hot water coming out of our tap runs right around 165F. That's almost ideal temperature to add grain to given the thermal mass of the grain will lower the temp. Using this method I don't think I'd have to worry about a second burner, just need a MLT cooler which I think Brad W. said he would be able to hook me up with.

[brew captain]

Hot water from your water heater likely contains a lot of minerals/oxidized crap that you have not accounted for and won't be shown on your water report (for this reason I don't cook with it either, not even to boil a pot of water faster). Plus you still need to filter it to remove the chlorine/chloramines. I do not suggest that you go with this idea Jon-Jon. Then of course every beer has a different grist and mash in temperature requirement allowing the all grain brewer the ability to control the level of fermentability (from dry and crisp to satiating maltiness) in order to achieve the intended product in his glass.


Cheers!

[JonGoku]

Hot water from your water heater likely contains a lot of minerals/oxidized crap that you have not accounted for and won't be shown on your water report (for this reason I don't cook with it either, not even to boil a pot of water faster). Plus you still need to filter it to remove the chlorine/chloramines. I do not suggest that you go with this idea Jon-Jon. Then of course every beer has a different grist and mash in temperature requirement allowing the all grain brewer the ability to control the level of fermentability (from dry and crisp to satiating maltiness) in order to achieve the intended product in his glass.


Cheers!

Erf, good point, I did not even consider this. I do throw in 1 crushed camden tablet though to nuke the chlorines. Do you think using the strait tap hot water would still be a bad idea then? (Darn thought I had a good one there).

[Marotte Brewery]

+1 on Robert. I never use hot water in the kitchen, except for cleaning.

[backyard brewer]

One other thing to add is you shouldn't run hot water through a carbon filter. It causes the carbon to open its' pores and actually will release organics previously captured.

Unless you have an on-demand HWH don't use it.

[JonGoku]