Yesterday marked the 2nd brew of 2019. This time it was a deliberate 1/2 batch of a black IPA.
This brew also marked the second time I went for a recipe from the Camra's essential Home Brewing book, however this time I thought to take not of the recipe tip add Carafe 3 into the malt bill to make Eight Arch Brewing's Corbel into a black IPA. The hop scheduled remained the same as the book, which uses Ahtanum, chinook, cascade and mosaic hops.
This still made the first runnings come out like a dripping tap, however 2 rounds of batch sparging with 7 L each time made up the pre-boil volume and pre-boil gravity was spot on.
What hassle I did have during the mash was with the rubber washers of the SS Brewtech kettle, when I opened the value they started to seep the strike water..... literally not an easy thing to handle. In the end I was able to transfer the 70/80 degree (c) water into a spare brewing bucket and re jig the washers & all was fine for the rest of the day. Does anyone else have this problem?
My pre-boil volume was just over 15l, apart from a small dose of magnum for the First wort hops, all the hops were towards the very end, I had a clear target I needed to reach (which was 12L). This 12l was so that when I transfer out of the fermenter I will end up with a full 9.5l keg (so he thinks!).
To get it down to my target volume I did have to boil it down for an extra 15mins before I added the
rest of the hop schedule.
This could have been to the boil vigor, as I setup a very sophisticated ventilation system.....fan blowing with garage door open. So the boil was isolated towards the centre of the kettle.
With it being cold outside/in the garage and also with the fan blowing the side of the kettle, after a 20 minute hop stand at the end of the boil when I transferred it to my keg to chill the temperature was 40 degrees (c).
It only took a few more hours in the fridge to get to pitching temp.
So I actually was able to pitch yesterday night, all I needed to do this morning was clean the keg were some hop sludge was left in the bottom.
10 hours later (this morning) I also noticed some activity, granted the airlock wont show crazy activity as its only 1/2 way up inside the fermenter but its popping away nicely and my tilt hydrometer is showing theres activity.
Fingers crossed that the future for The Dark Panda is bright.
Until next time......happy brewing
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