IPA Moved to Secondary Fermenter

Normally this is not noteworthy. We moved the Two Hearted clone to a carboy after the initial fermentation. Gravity was ~1.021, which is quite a bit too high. This is probably due to mashing way too thin, which causes the enzymes and sugars in the mash to be so dilute that they react slowly.

We'll see - it will probably go down a little... hopefully a lot.

Dunkelweisen II

I'm a sucker for wheat beer, and here in NM I long for something like the Edelweiss Dunkel I used to drink in Austria. It's nowhere to be found, so with Clark's help I tried to brew one, for our 12th beer. Sadly, along with the Roggenbier it fell victim to voracious wild yeast when we diluted it with unboiled tap water to reduce the starting gravity after the boil. We learned from that mistake and this morning we're having another go at brewing dunkelweisen.

The recipe is based on the Trigo Oscuro on p194 of Brewing Classic styles.

Notes during the brew:
- HLT water heated to ~175 F

- Originally transferred 4 gallons to MLT and added grain. Deemed not enough water, added 1/2 gallon more. Temperature was suprisingly low: 147F. Boiled about 1.5 gallons, added around 20 minutes into mash. New temperature was 153F -- phew. Hope this is not too dilute now; still seems like a nice thick mash. We mashed for 70 minutes instead of an hour in hopes of not coming in too low on the gravity.

- Vorlauf and lautering went well except the grain bed was channelized around the edges.

- We forgot to heat the strike water until it was time to strike so the grain sat for a while while the strike water heated.

- First lauter didn't get us up to high enough volume. We ended up sparging twice more.

- Boil started with 8.5 gallons, hopped with 1oz Hallertau from the beginning (first wert hop).

- Pre-boil gravity: 1.045

- Took about 30 mins to get to rolling boil, then boiled for 90 minutes.

- After boil, gravity was high, around 1.06 (target was 1.55) and volume was at 6 gallons, so we decided to dilute it, and then boiled for another 10 minutes or so. We used 0.4 gallons of tap water, which we calculated using the following equation (conservation of sugar!):

([gal wort])*([gravity of wort])+([theoretical total volume wort] - [gal wort])=([target gravity])*[theoretical total volume wort]

This equation was off by a factor of 2-3.

- We chilled using the HLT as a cold reservoir, with 40 lbs ice. We didn't need that much; cooling went very fast and we were at 74F in less than 20 minutes. The yeast was taken out of the fridge around the beginning of cooling and pitched a few minutes after hitting 74F. Blowoff tube was installed with some difficulty.

- Yeast was encouraged verbally and yeast bottle was given a good luck kiss before pitching.

- Beer moved to fridge, which was adjusted to 60 to 64F

Bell's Two-Hearted Clone

Alright, it's March 13 and it has been nearly 4 months since the last brew. We're finally operating again after a few weeks (months?). I'll put up a picture here in a second if I can figure out how.

Improvements to the brewery since last time:

-Soldered fittings on all kettles
-Sight glass added to BK for volume measurement
-Permanent thermometer added to HLT
-Second pump
-Angle-iron frame for holding the MLT and mounting pumps

Recipe:
- 11 lb Briess 2-row malt
- 1 lb Briess 2-row caramel 40
- 1.5 oz Centennial @ 60 minutes
- 0.5 oz Centennial @ 30 minutes
- 0.75 oz Centennial @ 10 min
- 0.25 oz Centennial @ flame out


We did a super thin mash, basically filling 100% of the space in the MLT. We got out about ~8.5 gal after a quick batch sparge at ~ 1.038 SG.

During a normal boil,we lost about 2 gallons out of the BK. 1.051 OG.

We need to figure out how to chill from the HLT instead of doing it gravity style.

We'll see how it turns out.