Not really 6 months in the making, it’s just been that long since I’ve brewed.
I’m dead broke. So, one day a friend approaches me with an offer: He’ll buy the ingredients, I brew the beer, he takes a portion as payoff for his investment. Sounds good to me!
So, I scoured my Joy of Home Brewing book, and came across a recipe that I wanted to try. Good Life Pale Ale. Papazian says he brews it 3 to 4 times a year to guarantee the good life. If he loves it that much, it must be good.
So, first thing I do is figure out what hops I’m substituting, as the recipe calls for Fuggles and Kent Goldings (neither of which I have, nor do I want to buy any, given I have almost 3 lbs of hops in my freezer.) So, I chose Hallertauer for the Fuggles replacement (bittering hops) and Willamette for the Goldings (30 minutes into it, plus aroma hops.)
My first problem is that I don’t have a brew pot big enough. I have a 3 gallon pot and a 4 gallon pot. So, what I did is did the protien rest in the 4 gallon and a standard generic 1 gallon pot, then used the 3 gallon to boil water for stage two.
Once I reached stage two I had a problem. I needed to add 5 quarts of boiling water to the 4 gallon pot. It was full. I needed to add 2 quarts of water to the 1 gallon pot. It was full. So, what I did was dumped the boiling water in a plastic bucket and use my 3 gallon pot in conjunction with the 4 gallon to do the conversion. I added 3 quarts of boiling water to each (a bit more than called for, but what the heck.) The temperature steadied around 150, a little lower than what Papazian recommends, but everyone else at the beer store recommends doing your conversion at 148, so what the heck, I thought I’d give it a shot.
45 minutes later and conversion is done. I upped the temp on both to 158 for 20 minutes, then to 168, then time to sparge. During the whole conversion, I was taking the gallon pot, boiling water in it, and adding it to my plastic bucket. That way I had over 6 gallons of water at high temperatures, which made it far easier to get it up to my sparging temp of 170.
I dumped the grains into my zap-a-pap lauder tun, and began to sparge. My first attempt I didn’t look at the levels of the water, and I had actually put too much in. It spilled out the back. After draining the water I had to clean up my mess and keep sparging.
Now, I decided to follow my friend Jared’s advice: sparge till the water starts looking clear. Unfortunately, after doing this, I had over 9 gallons of wort.
I began reducing it down at 12 noon. At about 4PM I was able to empty the extra bucket of wort into the other two buckets. By 8PM it was reduced enough to begin the boil.
I added 2oz of Hallertauer hops to the boil and let it go for 1/2 hour. Then I added 1oz of Willamette hops. When it had 3 minutes left I added another ounce of Willamette hops into the wort. Once said and done I had a little less than 4 gallons of wort. I poured it into my fermentation bucket (which was soaking in sanitizer solution during the entire boil) and topped it off to 6 gallons.
Tomorrow I’ll pitch the yeast, next week I’ll bottle, and in two weeks I’ll be enjoying the good life!
Batch 13 is ready to brew as well. I have some wild hops I got for free, so I’m planning on making a beer with 10 lbs of 2 row and 1 lb of crystal malt and adding the wild hops to see what I get. Should be interesting.
1 comment
It taste yummy! I actually like it.