I got some free hops off of Craigslist, so I thought what better way to test them out than to make a batch of beer!
I wanted it to be generic and inexpensive ale so I can really see what these hops characteristics are. So, I picked up 10 lbs of two row and 1 lb of crystal malt for the brew. I had to do the same method I used with batch 12 to do the grains, which is do the protien rest in 2 pots, boiled water in my 3 gallon pot for later sparging, and once the protien rest was done to dump the water in a bucket and split the grains between my 4 and 3 gallon brew pots for the mash.
Once the mash was done, I sparged the grains, this time getting around 8 gallons of wort, which I began to reduce down. 6 hours later I was ready to brew. I brought the wort up to boil, threw in about an ounce and a half of hops, and boiled for 50 minutes. Then I threw another 1/2 ounce of the hops in for the last 10 minutes. I then hand strained the hops out, poured the wort into my fermentation bucket, and let it cool. Initial gravity was 1.025 on this.
Silly me, I forgot to pitch the yeast the next morning, so I ended up coming home for lunch to pitch the yeast, and say “Hi” to my wonderful wife.
So, fermentation has begun, now time to wait and see what this batch does.
And for future note, I’m probably going back to doing a min-mash in the future: I’m not a huge fan of getting poor extraction from my grains, and I don’t like reducing stuff down for hours and hours.
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