Casket Ale v1.1 Brew Day

It's 6:30am and I am up. This is not unknown to happen during the week, but it's a Saturday. Who would be up that early on a Saturday!? This fella would be, but why? Cause it's brew day!

The night before I had set up as much as I could to save time on brew day, as my brew days tend to go on for most of the day. Equipment was cleaned. Check. Hops measured. Check. Brew day equipment ready. Check. Grains and yeast. Check. Water measured out and. Dosed with Camden tablet. Check.

The start of brew day went to plan, strike water temp achieved, target mash temp was 66.7 C, I hit it on the nose, measured mash temp was 66.7 C. Now to wait for the 60min mash with added brewing salts. In total I was planning a 75min mash, with a 15min recirculation to clear our the wort. Tubedinoz arrived just in time to help me recirculate as I do not have a pump yet, so had to jug it. This is when I had the grand plan to try a poor man's fly sparge... It kind of worked, it added on another 40mins to my brew day and was a lot of work. Had a few issues with the mash getting disturbed and some grains got through, but was easily fixed.



We collected 32l of preboil wort of 1.045, the target was 1.036. The poor man's sparge worked, but was a bit of a hassle - some upgrades are needed! Now, the biggest problem of the day was starting to rear it head. The gas burner I use was going a bit iffy but I did not think it was a big problem, thought the slight breeze was effecting it, checked the gas, and it felt like there was plenty...
First wort, 60min hop, and boil salt additions went with out a hitch, but burner was still iffy... 30min left of the boil and the burner really starts going blah, kept going out and a very sub-standard boil. A meeting of minds later, I went to get another gas bottle and boom, burner rocking like a rock star. Once the boil was rolling, I left it for another 10min, the started adding my last hop addition, add chiller, wordloc tablet and yeast nutrient. Once the boil was done, I chilled down to under 75 C and add a 40g hop steep/whirlpool addition and let it sit for 20min. The rest of the brew day went quite smoothly, chilled the wort, transferred to the fermentor and pitched the yeast.

It is now the Monday after brew day, and the fermentation is going well. It is keeping within the 18 C ferment temp that I want and is on its way to high krausen. Tomorrow I will raise it to 19 C and then Thursday to 20 C. Fermentation is not going crazy but just chugging along. I will then raise the temp to 21 C at the end of the week for 1 week. After that I will dry hop for 5 days, crash chill and transfer to the keg.

So what did I learn for the brew day?
1. It's always great to have a brew buddy to help with an extra hand.
2. The bayou burner is great, but it needs a full tank to get a good rolling boil, anything under half is not good.
3. The poor man's fly sparge does work. It is a lot of work and can disturb the grain bed, but the extra efficiency is great. I can see some upgrades in my near future

Now, what I was planning was to use this batch's yeast cake to ferment my next version of Pale Death Ale. I have changed my mind. I forgot that I was going to dry hop the beer and I do not use hop bags, so having hops in the yeast cake will not be beneficial. So the next batch of PDA has been shelved for now. I also don't want the beer to sit in the keg for another 3 weeks while I ferment the PDA. I want to get as much of those hops as I can! Now it's just the waiting game, a couple of weeks and I will be able to tell if the brewing salts have had any effect on my hop profile.

That will be it for now, Thank you for reading about my brew day, drama and all. Below you will find my Homebrew Wednesday with a few clips of my brew day.

Churs!