It’s like a horrible rash I cannot rid myself of. The Brewer’s Itch. I now have three batches of homebrew sitting downstairs waiting which all need to be bottled in the near future. That is nearly 60L (or 120 pints) of potential beer sitting in my basement.
Today I began my Brew Day by moving the Dark Tower Graff to the secondary fermenter and taking an specific gravity reading. It seems to have attenuated to 1.010 which is exactly what I was aiming for.
Right on target!
Following that I cleaned up the primary and began brewing my next batch which is an English Brown Ale.
Ingredients -
- 3.75lbs of Pilsner LME
- 0.5lbs of Light DME
- 0.5lbs of Demerara Sugar
- 0.5lbs of 120L Crystal Malt
- 0.25lbs of Black Patent Malt
- 0.5oz of Fuggles @ 60 min
- 0.5oz of Fuggles @ 30 min
- 0.5oz of Fuggles @ 15 min
- 0.5oz of Fuggles @ 5 min
- 1tsp of Irish Moss @ 10 min
- 1tsp of Yeast Nutrient @ cold break
- SafAle S-04 English Yeast
Steps -
- Steeped the grains for 30 minutes in 7L of water at 75c
- Added the sugars and malt extracts to the pot and brought to boil
My favorite part - Watching a pot boil
3. Added hop additions at the times listed above, babysitting the boiling wort, stirring frequently
I love the smell of hops in the morning.
4. Removed from the water and placed into an ice bath to bring the temperature down to 45c
Achieve a quick cold break prevents "chill haze" which creates a cloudy beer
5. Moved into the fermenter, topped off with cool water and pitched the SafAle S-04 English Dry yeast onto the wort at around 26c.
The Original gravity was 1.034 which is exactly what I was aiming for. The beer is a bit darker then I wanted, but that is not a big deal. I plan to give this one 3 weeks in the primary and then straight into bottles for 2 weeks of bottle conditioning. The total cost of this batch was around $25.00.
I swear this is the last batch I am making for a long while. I really hope I have enough bottles…