Skip to main content

Test Pale Ale 1.0

Recently, I have struggled to get the desired final volume out of the Brewie+ system. To try and resolve that issue, I've decided to brew a couple of recipes and babysit the mash and sparge process to see where the problem is occurring, as well as double-checking my calculations to ensure they are correct.

The first test was this Pale Ale recipe.

Ingredients

5 pounds of 2-row Pale Ale Malt
1 pound of Munich Malt
4 ounces of Flaked Corn
0.75 ounces of Mandarina Bavaria hops pellets @ 9.2% AA at 10 min.
0.60 ounces of Citra hops pellets @ 14% AA at 5 minutes
1/4 tsp. Yeast Nutrient
1/8 tsp. Brewtan B in the mash water
1/4 tsp. Brewtan B in the boil at 10 min.
1/2 tsp. Irish Moss in the boil at 15 min.
1 packet of Lallemand Nottingham dry ale yeast
9.2 liters of mash water
3.2 liters of sparge water

The mash schedule began with a mash in at 104F, followed by 20 minutes at 140F, and 40 minutes at 158F. Mash out was 15 minutes at 168F.

BeerSmith estimated the following qualities for the beer:
  • BJCP Style: 18.B Pale American Ale
  • Batch Size: 2.5 gallons (actual was 2.5 gallons)
  • Original Gravity: 1.054 SG (actual was 1.054 SG)
  • Pre-boil Gravity: 1.034 SG (actual was 1.047 SG)
  • Final Gravity: 1.011 SG (actual was 1.013 SG)
  • SRM: 5.8
  • ABV: 5.5%
  • BU/GU Ratio: 0.656
Boil schedule:
  • 90 minutes: No addition
  • 15 minutes: Irish Moss
  • 10 minutes: Brewtan B, Mandarina Bavaria
  • 5 minutes: Citra
  • 0 minutes: Chill to 68F
Fermentation schedule is to place this in the corner of the basement with an ambient temp of 60F and leave it there. (In practice, this worked well. The beer never exceeded a temp of 62F throughout the brew.)

Post-Brew Notes and Observations

03/09/2019:  Thanks to carefully measured water, the beer came out very close in gravity and volume to the expected values. I had to add a little water to hit 2.5 gallons, at which point the gravity also hit my target value of 1.054 SG.

03/17/2019:  The beer has stayed within a degree of 61F throughout fermentation. Gravity is down to 1.013 SG, which is within a point of the expected final gravity.  I expect to bottle the beer within the next day or two.

03/19/2019: The beer was bottled with 5-6 small carbonation tablets per bottle. Yield was 24 bottles.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Note that comments to this blog are moderated in order to minimize spam comments and things that might be offensive to readers.

Popular posts from this blog

Yellow Label Angel Yeast vs. Typical Brewing Yeast

I currently have my second batch of rice wine fermenting with the "magical" yellow-label Angel Yeast from China, and wanted to share some of the more unusual aspects of using it.  If you've never seen or used this yeast, I suspect you're not alone.  It ships in a 500 gram package that looks like this: What makes it "yellow label" is that yellow box you see in the upper left corner of the package.  This implies that it's yeast for distilling (though you do not need to have a still or distill the output to use it).  As I understand it, inside the package is a mix of yeast and other materials which will convert starch into sugar and directly ferment it, without the need for a traditional mash step.  This can radically shorten your brewing time.  For my most-recent batch of rice wine, I heated 3 gallons of water to 155F, poured it over 13+ pounds of uncooked rice straight out of the bag, let that soak for an hour, rehydrated some of this yeast in warm water,...
Post a Comment
Read more

2021 Batch 1 - Rice Wine made with Yellow Label Angel Yeast

I've become a big fan of the Still It channel on YouTube.  About a month ago, Jesse posted a video about how he made rice wine using nothing more than water, rice, and a purported "magic" yeast from China called Yellow Label Angel Yeast. Perhaps even more amazing was the fact that he was able to make the rice wine without gelatinizing or mashing the rice.  He shows three batches in the video.  One was made by cooking the rice before adding the yeast mixture. Another was made by adding uncooked rice to boiling water.  The last was made by adding uncooked rice to room temperature water.  All three fermented out to roughly the same amount of alcohol in about two weeks. He was amazed by this, as was I. I resolved to buy some of this magical yeast from Aliexpress.com and try it out. In the Still It video, the rice is ground up in the grain mill into smaller chunks to make it easier for the enzymes in the yellow label yeast to convert and ferment.  I'm changin...
Post a Comment
Read more

What I Learned About Brewing in 2021

Last year, I brewed 20 batches of adult beverages (primarily beer and test mashes). In no particular order, here are things I learned during the year: The COVID-19 pandemic left me with more time at home to brew, but at the same time made doing so a bit less enjoyable.  Why?  Because I could not share my homebrew with family and friends as easily as I could pre-pandemic.  Without feedback from my friends about what they did (and didn't) like in my beer, I was less motivated to brew and less able to improve my beer than in prior years. The pump on The Grainfather has a life span (in my experience) of around 200 brews before it dies, and the "official" replacement is way too expensive to suit me (like $190).  I was able to replace it with a pump from Amazon for about $70 that seems to flow much better and stronger than the official pump.  It took some redneck-looking jerry-rigging to fix it, but the system flows better now and I can continue brewing. On a personal...
Post a Comment
Read more