Yeast:
I mixed up a starter for a vial of White Labs San Diego Super Yeast. The vial is a little old, packaged in August, but with the starter it shouldn't be a problem. I will be using this for the rye ale as well, so I made a big starter, 1.2 gal, and split it 60% and 40%.
I didn't end up brewing the next weekend as planned ... or the weekend after that ... or the weekend after that. The starters are now 4 weeks old, and taste a little sour. This isn't ideal, but I'm crossing my fingers that since it's getting kegged it won't be a big deal.
Brewday 12/7/14:

The rye ale went smoothly. After weeks of sub-freezing temperatures things have warmed up significantly, which is great for my personal comfort, but really dragged out the cooling time. Without a brew kettle to drain into, I had to extend my mash to 2 hours. That shouldn't make a difference though, after a 90 min mash, an additional 30 min shouldn't make much difference to either extraction or conversion.

Fermentation:
45 sec 02, yeast pitched at 63F, temperature set to 65F.
4 Days: Temperature set to 68F. Everything seems fine.
6 Days: Fermentation looks complete, added dry hops.
12 Days: Racked to keg, SG down to 1.011. First off, this is super bitter. I hope as the polyphenols drop this settles down a bit. I'm worried I used too much black patent malt as well. Oh well, two more weeks til we find out for sure. Placed in cold room at 37F (no gas).
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