Sunday, October 4, 2009

WitWarRior

Today was brewday here at Jibby's. I pretty much used the bill that I listed before except for using only 5.5 lbs of great western 2-row. I mashed at 152 f and a ph of 5.0 for 90 minutes with amylase a and b. I mashed out at 172, then vorlaufed the wort like crazy.
After that, I drained the wort into my kettle, and started a batch sparge that ended in a stuck mash. I had to fix that before I could do anything, so I started stirring and recirculating the wort. Finally, I got it to drain to the kettle.
I then boiled for 90 minutes with an addition of 2 ounces of warrior hops at 25 minutes left and bitter orange peel and coriander seed at 10 minutes. I forwent adding Irish moss (because I forgot to) and then cooled it with my new wort chiller. This wort chiller got it down to 80 in less than 20 minutes whereas my old one would have taken about 40. I then aerated the wort for 10 minutes and pitched the yeast I had started two days prior to brewing.
I was aiming for about 1.062 SG, but only hit 1.056, so my brew house efficiency is only about 64%.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Witbier

I made the yeast starter today. I'm thinking my bill will look something like this:
6.0 pounds malted barley
4.5 pounds malted wheat
1.5 pounds unmalted flaked wheat
1 pound umalted oats
.5 ounces coriander
1 ounce bitter orange peel
1 ounce of my secret hop variety (will be high in the ibu catagory).
I should be able to start on my usual Sunday. I'm calculating I'll achieve maximum SG of 1.076, but estimating I'll only get about 1.060.