Today was my first run on the new system. I decided to do a simple cream ale. The reasoning behind that was, if I really screw it up, I won't be out a whole lot. The recipe was pretty simple:
5lbs 2-row
1lb flaked corn
8oz flaked rice
0.5oz tettnanger (60)
1oz tettnanger (5)
I started out by getting my water up to strike temperature. My plan was to mash at around 150, so I heated up my water to 154 and added the grain to the mash tun. I had a rough idea of water to start with - I ended up putting 9.5 gallons of water for striking. I knew I needed to keep at least 2 gallons in the boil kettle to be above the element. The rest of the liquid ideally would be in the mash tun giving the grains enough liquid to convert. One issue with the new setup I found out pretty quickly is that the bag I use for mashing likes to get sucked up into my pickup tube. This slows the wort movement between kettles to a crawl and caused me to almost dry fire the element a couple times during the mash. The consistency of the temperature of the mash worked out pretty well. I was floating between 149.5 and 150.5 most of the 90 minutes in the mash. I then transferred the wort over to the boil kettle. I ended up with 8.5 gallons of wort - more than I needed so I went for a 90 minute boil to get closer to a five gallon batch.
The boil was fairly uneventful. The hop additions went smoothly and all went to plan. My new counterflow chiller is awesome. In about 10 minutes I got my kettle down to 72 and then filled up my carboys. It was slick and simple to do. I measured my gravity and got a 1.044 - 90+% efficiency. My plan is to let it ferment for a week, add a couple teaspoons of yeast nutrient and let it sit for a couple more days and keg. Hopefully we'll be ringing in the new year with this ready to go! Happy brewing!
5lbs 2-row
1lb flaked corn
8oz flaked rice
0.5oz tettnanger (60)
1oz tettnanger (5)
I started out by getting my water up to strike temperature. My plan was to mash at around 150, so I heated up my water to 154 and added the grain to the mash tun. I had a rough idea of water to start with - I ended up putting 9.5 gallons of water for striking. I knew I needed to keep at least 2 gallons in the boil kettle to be above the element. The rest of the liquid ideally would be in the mash tun giving the grains enough liquid to convert. One issue with the new setup I found out pretty quickly is that the bag I use for mashing likes to get sucked up into my pickup tube. This slows the wort movement between kettles to a crawl and caused me to almost dry fire the element a couple times during the mash. The consistency of the temperature of the mash worked out pretty well. I was floating between 149.5 and 150.5 most of the 90 minutes in the mash. I then transferred the wort over to the boil kettle. I ended up with 8.5 gallons of wort - more than I needed so I went for a 90 minute boil to get closer to a five gallon batch.
The boil was fairly uneventful. The hop additions went smoothly and all went to plan. My new counterflow chiller is awesome. In about 10 minutes I got my kettle down to 72 and then filled up my carboys. It was slick and simple to do. I measured my gravity and got a 1.044 - 90+% efficiency. My plan is to let it ferment for a week, add a couple teaspoons of yeast nutrient and let it sit for a couple more days and keg. Hopefully we'll be ringing in the new year with this ready to go! Happy brewing!