Saturday, February 6, 2010

Ruddy Ale

The Morning started off at 6:30 when I heated 2 gallons of strike water and doughed in with 7 gallons of British Pale malt. I mashed for 1 hour at a ph of about 5.2.
I then prepared my sparge water by heating 5 gallons to just over 200 and then poured it into my old mash tun turned hot liquor tank. I then vourloughed the wort until it ran clear[ish] and started the sparge for 1.5 hours.
This new mashtun I have works much more efficiently than the rig I had set up before. I was able to hit about 1.047 SG to get a BH value of about 90%. I had to dilute the wort with an extra gallon to get it down to 1.38.
I added the Halertau (4.5 aa) at the start of the boil and no additional hops for the length of the 60 minute boil.
I added Irish moss in at 15 minutes left and placed my chiller in the kettle. I then chilled to as low as I could get the wort in 15 minutes while I boiled 1.5 lbs of raspberry puree. I know everybody says to not boil the puree but I wanted to have a haze to the final product, so I just boiled it for about 3 minutes and dumped it in my carboy as soon as the temperature reached less than 100. I then racked the wort over the puree and aerated. I pitched the yeast at 80 degrees, put in 1.5 tsp of nutrient and placed the blow off hose in the carboy.
My SG was 1.042, so I'm expecting the FG to be about 1.009. I'll check back in 2 weeks after racking over to my 5 gallon secondary carboy.