Begin Brewing!

Last weekend, I brewed a SMaSH beer using only Viking Pale Ale Malt, Mandarina Bavaria hops pellets, and Safale US-05 yeast.  As part of my ongoing effort to learn what the various base malts contribute to the flavor of a beer, I'm making this one with Munich Malt.  The main challenge this time is that I'm using 5 pounds of malt instead of the 4 I used last time.  To get the gravity close to the last two batches, I'm bumping the volume up from 2.5 to 3 gallons. Ingredients 5 pounds Avangard Munich Malt (Munich Avangard - Malz Premium 6L) 1.5 tsp. pH 5.2 Stabilizer 0.25 tsp. Brewtan B (20 min. boil) 1/4 Whirlfloc tablet 3 gallons of mash water 1.75 gallons of sparge water 1 packet Safale US-05 yeast Brewfather estimates the beer will have the following qualities: Batch size: 3 gallons (estimated and actual) Original Gravity:   1.049 SG estimated (1.055 actual) Pre-Boil Gravity:   1.042 SG estimated (1.039 actual, at 4.25 gallons) Final Gravity...

Late in 2019, I tried to brew a SMaSH beer using Viking Pale Ale malt and a sous vide setup.  The beer ended with the appearance of having kettle soured or getting infected, so I dumped it without attempting to bottle it. I recently made some modifications to my Grainfather's wort chiller and recirculating pipe connections in the hope that this would make those connections easier to use and more reliable.  Today was my first attempt to test those out. The goal of this brew session was twofold. First, I wanted to test the modifications to The Grainfather using a simple recipe with ingredients I had on hand in quantity, so that if something went hideously wrong I would only be losing a few bucks' worth of ingredients.  Second, I wanted to see how Viking Pale Ale Malt tasted when brewed by itself. Ingredients 4 pounds Viking Pale Ale Malt 0.5 tsp. pH 5.2 Stabilizer (mash) 1 capful Phosphoric Acid 10% solution (mash) 0.50 ounces Mandarina Bavaria hops pellets @ 9....

We have a lot of mint growing outside our house.  I always wondered if you could make a mint julep style beer with it.  I had envisioned a beer that was basically amber colored, with mint added late in the boil, and aged on some bourbon-soaked oak chips.  Then I visited the now-defunct Fate Brewing in Boulder, Colorado, and tasted their Mint Julep Ale. It was quite good, which convinced me to brew my own.  Theirs included rye malt in the grist, which worked well with the mint, but didn't feature any actual bourbon.  I decided to add rye to the recipe I'd been considering, and to soak the mint in some bourbon apart from the oak chips, then blend in the mint-soaked bourbon at bottling time. Since corn is a big part of bourbon and I happened to have 3 ounces lying around I didn't want to go bad, I added that in last-minute. Ingredients 6 pounds 2-row Pale Ale Malt 1 pound Crystal 60L Malt 4 ounces Rye Malt 3 ounces Flaked Corn 1 ounce Acid Malt 0.42 ounce...