Begin Brewing!

One of the best batches of beer I've made in recent memory was a La Trappe Quad clone recipe.  I had a couple of ideas that I thought would improve it, so I'm re-brewing it today. I decided to swap the corn sugar for Demerara Sugar and add a couple of ounces of Special B Malt to darken the color and punch up the dark fruit flavor a little.  I'm extending using a step mash to generate some ferulic acid to help the Belgian yeast express itself, and to improve malt complexity.  A 90-minute boil is also being used to help improve malt complexity in the finished beer. Ingredients 5 pounds Belgian Pale Ale Malt 3 pounds Belgian Pilsen Malt 8 ounces English Medium Crystal Malt (60L) 4 ounces Acid Malt 3 ounces Belgian Biscuit Malt 2 ounces Belgian Aromatic Malt 2 ounces Belgian Special B Malt 1 pound Demerara Sugar (15 min.) 0.50 ounces Styrian Goldings 6.2% AA (60 min.) 0.30 ounces Styrian Goldings 6.2% AA (20 min.) 0.25 ounces Styrian Goldings 6.2% AA (5 min

After a semi-successful brew last weekend with the sous vide setup, I altered a few components to try to get a smoother and more efficient process.  Today's setup included: 19 quart plastic bin Anova sous vide cooker 3 gallon pot Instant Pot sous vide cooker Mesh basket made by Arbor Fabricating for the PicoBrew Zymatic 4 gallon kettle Two one-gallon plastic pitchers My goal for today's brew was to see if I could improve on the efficiency of the previous brew while also making brewing and cleanup easier. I also wanted to see if I could create something like a Belgian style Dubbel with intense dark fruit flavors.  I'm calling it a Pseudo Dubbel because it mixes Belgian yeast, candi syrup, and Special B malt with British hops, British malt, and Viking Malt from Finland.  The Viking Pale Ale malt gives us a somewhat European base. Special B and D-90 syrup should provide some dark fruit flavor.  Caramel 120L should also provide some dark caramel and dark fruit flav

With the demise of the Brewie, I wanted an easy enough alternative for producing small pilot batches of beer (2.5 gallons or less) with as little hands on effort necessary as possible with maintaining what will hopefully be some reliability (and easy repair/replacement upon failure).  Toward that end, today I decided to try brewing a SMASH beer using the following setup: Anova Sous Vide Recirculating Heater 3 gallon sous vide plastic container with lid Grain bag from the Brewie+ system 4 gallon induction-ready kettle 1800W Induction cooktop Stainless steel immersion chiller Since I couldn't be sure this combination would work (though, from what I've seen published online, I wouldn't be the first to attempt something similar), I decided to do a SMASH beer (single malt and single hop) to keep things simple and inexpensive. Ingredients 5 pounds Viking Pale Ale malt 0.45 ounces Mandarina Bavaria Hops pellets @ 9.6% AA (15 min.) 0.55 ounces Mandarina Bavari