American Brown Ale Stage 1
After a Bavarian Hefeweizen and a Black Ale, I thought it would be nice to work in a Brown Ale batch. It has been nice to see the color range that these batches take throughout the different stages of brewing and what better color than a nice brown ale to add to the list. The ingredients for this batch are:
- 1/2 lb. Crystal 60L Grains
- 1/4 lb. Chocolate Grains
- 2 1/2 lb. 2-Row Grains
- 1 oz. black Patent Grains
- 5 lb. Extra Pale Malt Extract
- 2 oz. Athanum
- White Labs East Coast Ale 008
After cleaning and sanitizing all of the equipment, I brought 2 1/2 gal. purified water ton 160 degree F. I also boiled about 1/2 a gallon of tap water for 10 minutes to provide a supply of sanitized water for any parts of the batch that needed sanitized water (like the airlock).
I turned off the heat to the 2 1/2 gallons in the stockpot, and started soaking the grains for the mini-mash. This batch caught me off guard since all previous batches only had a mini-mash time of 15 minutes, while this batch had a 45 minute mini-mash time with additional steps. So I set the grain bag in the stockpot to soak and walked away for 45 minutes.
After letting the grains mini-mash for 45 minutes, I came back and dipped the grain bag in and out like a teabag. I then had to pour roughly 1.5 to 2 quarts of water over the grain bag at 170 degree F. Well, I knew that would put me dangerously close to the max of my four gallon stockpot, so I decided to use the mini-mash water to use to pour over the grain bag. I used a strainer to hold the grain bag while I used a measuring cup to get water from the stockpot and pour it over the grainbag.
A note of caution: 170 degree F water still feels pretty hot and while it might not burn (or it might, I’m not sure), it’s not fun to hold. You should try and angle the strainer in such a way that the water and the hot metal stays away from your hand while you do this step of the batch. Once I finished pouring the two quarts of water through the grains and let the grains drain, I brought the wort up to a boil, took it off of the heat, and added the malt extract.
I’ve started to scrape the container of malt extract with a soft rubber brush and dip the brush in the wort to get as much of the extract as possible. This technique seems to get as much of the extract as I can hope to get without risking sanitation.
I then brought the wort up to a solid boil, stirring every minute or so to make sure the malted sugar didn’t burn. Once the wort was up to a solid boil I added 1 1/2 oz. Athanum hops as bittering hops.
I get my hops in 1 oz. packages, so I measured out 1 1/2 oz. and kept the rest of the 1/2 oz. for later use in the batch.
I added the hops to the wort, stirred the wort to get the hops fully integrated (and the wort smelling fantastic!), and then walked away to work on something else while the wort boiled for the first 55 minutes of the hour.
I stopped back every 5-7 minutes to give the wort a good stir to keep the sugar from burning until the first 55 minutes were done.
For the last five minutes of the hour of boiling, I added the rest of the hops for aroma.
Once the boiling hour was up, I moved the wort to my sink, where I had a wort chiller ready to cool down the wort to 80 degrees F.
After about seven minutes the wort was down to 80 degrees F. I then sanitized my 6.7 gallon glass carboy primary fermenter. To sanitize my glass carboy, I filled the carboy with sanitizing solution, plugged the carboy with a solid rubber stopper, and laid the carboy on each side for 30 seconds.
Once the carboy was sanitized, I moved the wort to the carboy, and added enough purified water to make 5 1/4 gallons. When I add the purified water, I make sure to swish the first gallon around in the stockpot to make sure that I get all of the wort possible into the carboy.
After filling the carboy up to 5 1/4 gallons, I added the test tube of yeast and aerated the wort. The way that I aerate wort with a glass carboy is that I plug the carboy with a solid rubber stopper, grab it by the top and the bottom, and shake vigorously for about 15 seconds. I then flip the carboy over and do the same thing on the other side.
As you can see, the wort get a nice head on it after aeration.
I then took a sample of the wort with my thief and got an initial gravity for the batch.
The initial gravity was slight more than 1.040, which is close enough to the expected 1.050. I returned the sample to the carboy and prepared the airlock for the carboy, filling the airlock up to around 1/3 of the base.
As you can see, I used the sanitized water that I boiled initially for the airlock.
Once the airlock is ready, I plugged the carboy with a holed rubber stopper and the hole with the airlock and set the batch in the corner of my pantry.
This marks the end of Stage 1.
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