Post Brewday

Brewday went pretty smooth. Besides my normal PH mishaps, and once again coming short of five gallons, everything else went well.

One thing I learned today is that a 9 gallon kettle finally gives me enough room to boil enough wort to end up with 5 gallons. I've only ended up with around 4 gallons today, because I was using the same amount of water as I would have used for my 7.5 gallon kettle. I'll need to be using a minimum of 8 gallons total in the future, more if the grainbill is big. I need to end up with 6-6.5 gallons in the pot before I boil.

The 90 minute mash... may have ended up closer to 120 minutes. Oh well, I do like my brews dry... there were a couple of times that I forgot to reset the timer after stirring, and I think i forgot to mark down one stir. I was supposed to stir every 15 minutes, 5 times. I think I stirred more like every 20 on average, 6 times.

Pre-boil gravity was 1.036 at 100F, which should be about 1.041 or so at 70F. I think that might be right on... if I had harvested 6.4 gallons of wort. Since I only got 5.3 or so, my gravity was low, again. Even with that long ass mash... I gotta ask the brewclub about some ways to increase efficiency. Maybe a better mash tun for fly sparges.

I'm actually chilling it right now. It's take a ridiculous amount of time, 42 minutes so far, and it's at 76F or so. I want it to be 65-70 when I pitch, the closer to 65 the better. I'll let it go a little while longer.

The color on this seems right, and the taste pre-boil was good. I'm anxious to taste this as it's my first brew with the Glacier hops! Besides a porter I made, and there was little hop flavor or aroma in that, this'll show me a bit about Glacier!

Ok, I'm going to go pull the chiller, pour my wort in the primary and pitch my yeast...

Ok wow, 3.5 gallons. That's nearly 2 gallons of boil-off! This new kettle does havea bigger surface area, so I suppose that's what I'll have to work around. So I'll need 7+ gallons pre-boil to end up with 5 gallons of beer. If I had more jugs of water around, I could've used them, but I don't like topping off fermenters, I swear it's lead me to infections problems before.

The beer is a bit darker than I was shooting for, thanks to the boil-off, and may be a bit sweeter and more bitter than I was shooting for. Now I'm questioning whether I will lager it, as it's right in line to be an English Pale Ale, and a somewhat strong one at that, possible 6.5% or so. It's too late to make it more bitter, which is what I would really like, but I could dry-hop it and give it more hop flavor, but then I would loose more beer... Oh damn, it'll just be a strong Pale Mild or something. With German yeast... I guess I don't care what style it is as long as it tastes good!

So now I have to decide if I want to brew a DunkelWeizen next, or go for Colin's Colsch again with the right amount of water. Actually, the next brew may be an IPA, if I can get it done in time for the August Red Ledge Brewers Club meeting!