Friday, January 30, 2009

Abbot, Liberation, IC and new a Mash Tun!

Abbot: A title given to the superior of a community of twelve or more monks. The name is derived from abba, the Syriac form of the Hebrew ab, and means "father".

Got the old man racked over to the secondary yesterday, and to my surprise it dropped all the way down to 1.008! Not to my surprise the yeast didn't exactly treat it like I wanted it to. According to "Brew Like a Monk" 1214 Belgian Ale at 75-85 degrees (where it most definitely was after the first 48 hours for about 36 hours) should produce a Clove Bubblegum Banana Alcohol Rose and Fruity flavor profile and though it tastes terribly terribly watered down, stupid efficiency, I DEFINITELY get a tiny bit of clove in the beginning leading into an alcohol followed by a strong old banana. The aroma on the other hand is great. Really fruity with some bubblegum. YUM. The color wasn't quite what I wanted either. I was hoping for something a little darker and red, but it still looks pretty. So, I definitely am going to call a do-over on this one since my efficiency sucked and I screwed the temperature. But I guess when It's done I'll have to try and enjoy it :P

On Sunday I bottled Liberation and as previously noted was scared of infection. I was so scared that I actually threw one into the fridge on Wednesday just to make sure. Well, it was obviously not carbonated, but other than that it was simply wonderful! CRYSTAL clear, like I've never had, with a fantastic aroma and great flavor. I'm going to crack one again on Tuesday to see how it's coming along and then we have a homebrew meeting on Wednesday so I'm hoping she'll be carbed up and ready by then!

Well, to keep my stress level down (an absolute must in homebrewing) I went out and built an Immersion Chiller (IC) today. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get it to connect to my stupid faucet though. The threads on the thing are seriously like 33/54th or something stupid. So I'm thinking what I'm going to do is just get a small yard pond pump and hook it up to there and keep the pump in a sink of water with ice. I think that'll work. And I'm sure I can find one of those pumps for pretty damn cheap.

It was a pretty simple (but not cheap!) construction. Just 20 feet of 1/2 inch copper tubing with some simple tubing. I'm really excited!

Speaking of excited, I just ordered a Mash Tun off of EBay about 20 minutes ago! It's two 15 gallon Igloo coolers. One with the outlet hooked into a hose that goes to the other which connects to a sparging manifold on the other which has a braided tubing at the bottom to act somewhat like a false bottom. The only thing I'm worried about, and since buying have been getting more worried, is that that is a lot more space than I need and will most likely lose a lot of heat during the mash. hmm, hopefully it'll work out.

So with this money getting thrown around I might have to put a small budget cut on actual brewing for a while. But that's ok, I should have enough to get me by.

-Kyle :)

1 comment:

Kevin said...

Give your new beer time! Belgian beers sometimes taste horrible at the end of primary but clean up later. The faucet is 55/64th and don't worry (have a homebrew) about the holding temp of your new mashtun. Those coolers are very stable if you keep a lid on them. The biggest drawback is you can't apply heat. Cheers!