Brewed a group brew on 10/27 - We're doing a "12 Days of Christmas" brew and everyone picks a number and designs a beer that represents what they interpret that number to be. Then we're all swapping bottles amongst our group, as well as swapping with another homebrew group based out of Omaha. I'm looking forward to trying everyone's brew.
I picked "2 Turtle Doves" which immediately made me think of the Turtle Dove chocolate covered caramel candies. So I designed a recipe that I hoped would make people think of that.
We're trading bottles with the Omaha club right around the 1st weekend in Christmas, so brewing anything too big was out of the question as it wouldn't have time to mellow and come together.
Recipe; 2 Turtle Doves Brew - 12 Daze Group Brew
9 lbs - 2 Row
3 lbs - Caramalized table sugar
1 lbs Pale Chocolate Malt
1 lbs Chocolate Malt
.5 lbs Carafoam
.5 lbs Crystal 40
.5 lbs Crystal 80
.25 lbs Milk Sugar/ Lactose added in secondary as part of this will have no lactose so our vegan friends can partake
1 oz Newport for 90 min
1 oz Pecan extract (starting much smaller will have to taste to determine correct amount for a 5 gallon batch)
Planned OG 1.062 - and 33 IBU's, which brings this in at about 6.6% ABV with a finishing gravity somewhere around 1.010
The brew day went great. I brewed over at Andrew's house and "helped" remove stuff from his garage while he takes it all out, cleans it, and turns it into a brew house. (See HERE)
My current system is a hobbled together, gravity fed, 3 tier system I pieced together from stuff lying around the house and trying to spend as little as possible. I'm used to ghetto rigged, I'm used to having a brew day go bad and spending more time fixing and salvaging than I do actually brewing. But today I used Andrew's not quite as ghetto brew set up. And it REALLY threw all my numbers off.
I normally get about 78-80% efficiency and had planned the recipe above accordingly. I'm not sure what went "wrong" but I ended up boiling for 90 minutes instead of 60 in order to evaporate more water. His system doesn't boil off nearly as much as mine does, possibly due to his boil pot (Blichmann 10 gallon gorgeous lady affectionately known as Megan Fox) being a little taller and skinnier than my pot. So instead of 6 gallons left at 60 minutes I had 6.75, so back to the boil for another 30 minutes trying to get it down to 6. After 30 minutes I was down to 6.5 and called it good.
And that's when I took my 1st gravity reading and noticed I was WAY high. So I have 1 gallon more water, and I'm still a full 20 points higher than planned. Not sure at all what happened except after asking Andrew he says he normally gets upwards of 90% efficiency, and I had milled the grains a little smaller than normal to see if it made a difference. The combination worked great - IF I had planned for it.
So 5 gallons into the 5.5 gallon fermenter and a nice 1 liter healthy starter of US05 that was cleaned and decanted from a brew done 2 weeks earlier of Pale Ale.
The extra gallon of wort got put into a growler to take home and ferment there.
(continued)
I picked "2 Turtle Doves" which immediately made me think of the Turtle Dove chocolate covered caramel candies. So I designed a recipe that I hoped would make people think of that.
We're trading bottles with the Omaha club right around the 1st weekend in Christmas, so brewing anything too big was out of the question as it wouldn't have time to mellow and come together.
Recipe; 2 Turtle Doves Brew - 12 Daze Group Brew
9 lbs - 2 Row
3 lbs - Caramalized table sugar
1 lbs Pale Chocolate Malt
1 lbs Chocolate Malt
.5 lbs Carafoam
.5 lbs Crystal 40
.5 lbs Crystal 80
.25 lbs Milk Sugar/ Lactose added in secondary as part of this will have no lactose so our vegan friends can partake
1 oz Newport for 90 min
1 oz Pecan extract (starting much smaller will have to taste to determine correct amount for a 5 gallon batch)
Planned OG 1.062 - and 33 IBU's, which brings this in at about 6.6% ABV with a finishing gravity somewhere around 1.010
The brew day went great. I brewed over at Andrew's house and "helped" remove stuff from his garage while he takes it all out, cleans it, and turns it into a brew house. (See HERE)
My current system is a hobbled together, gravity fed, 3 tier system I pieced together from stuff lying around the house and trying to spend as little as possible. I'm used to ghetto rigged, I'm used to having a brew day go bad and spending more time fixing and salvaging than I do actually brewing. But today I used Andrew's not quite as ghetto brew set up. And it REALLY threw all my numbers off.
I normally get about 78-80% efficiency and had planned the recipe above accordingly. I'm not sure what went "wrong" but I ended up boiling for 90 minutes instead of 60 in order to evaporate more water. His system doesn't boil off nearly as much as mine does, possibly due to his boil pot (Blichmann 10 gallon gorgeous lady affectionately known as Megan Fox) being a little taller and skinnier than my pot. So instead of 6 gallons left at 60 minutes I had 6.75, so back to the boil for another 30 minutes trying to get it down to 6. After 30 minutes I was down to 6.5 and called it good.
And that's when I took my 1st gravity reading and noticed I was WAY high. So I have 1 gallon more water, and I'm still a full 20 points higher than planned. Not sure at all what happened except after asking Andrew he says he normally gets upwards of 90% efficiency, and I had milled the grains a little smaller than normal to see if it made a difference. The combination worked great - IF I had planned for it.
So 5 gallons into the 5.5 gallon fermenter and a nice 1 liter healthy starter of US05 that was cleaned and decanted from a brew done 2 weeks earlier of Pale Ale.
The extra gallon of wort got put into a growler to take home and ferment there.
(continued)
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