Sunday, June 25, 2017

May 1st, 2016 Brew Day;

Today I took a Padiwan Brewing learner under my wing. To teach him the art of brewing fine beer. It has been a while since my last post, and hope it wont be too long before the next one.

We brewed up 2 batches today. Jeff, my learner, wanted to do a German Blonde Ale, and I was looking for a Grolsch clone. We got the recipe and ingredients from the Southern Brewing and Wine-making store in Tampa.

Sunday, bright and early at 7:30 am, we started his brew in my converted keg/boil kettle. We were going to use the Ice method to chill the wort, so we filled the kettle with 5 gallons of water, and heated to 165 to begin steeping the grains for the partial extract. After an hour of steeping the grains, we removed the grain bag, and brought the wort temperature up to boiling. Once the wort was boiling we added 2lbs of extra light dried malt extract, and 1oz of Pearle hops, and set the timer for 60 min.
After 60 minutes we added the last 3lbs of extra light DME, and 1oz of Saaz hops, and set the timer for 15 minutes. At the end of the 15 minutes we turned off the burner and poured the hot wort into an 8 gallon food grade plastic bucket, which will serve as our primary fermenter, along with one 10lb bag of ice. This dropped the temperature of the wort significantly however it was still too warm to pitch the yeast, so we placed the lidded bucket in a bathtub full of cool water as we began my Grolsch clone.

The Grolsch clone was a double batch (12 Gallons) which I always do if I am going to lager beer. So we put in 10 gallons of spring water into the brew kettle and turned on the burner to get the water to boiling temperature. I did not have any specialty grains for this brew, so we could cut the time down by an hour.