Brewer's Log - 8.7.2010: Brew Day, C'z IPA

My friend Eric during some downtime. I supplied the beer;
he supplied lunch. He was a big help throughout the day.

WHAT I DID

- I brewed a 5-gallon, all-grain batch of C'z IPA with friend Eric K.

WHAT I LEARNED

- For the summer months, investigate using a pre-chiller (either sending the tap water first through another chiller immersed in an ice bucket before hitting the main chiller in the wort, or at least coiling the garden hose in some ice water) to help get the wort temp lower.
- After trying this batch with no hop bag (in other words, simply tossing the loose whole hops and pellets into the boil) and later having difficulty with the wort transfer as a result, I may return to hop bags in my next batch.
- Having a friend around to assist you really does make the brew day go faster.

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

- Getting a consistent temp reading of my mash before I close it up still seems to be a challenge. Despite a lot of stirring to mix the mash and break up dough balls, the temperature readings vary considerably depending on where I place the thermometer within the mash.

PERSONAL BESTS ACHIEVED

- This is the first IPA I've brewed.
- With seven ingredients, this is the most varied grain bill I've used to date.
- I (we) finished this all-grain batch in a record time of just over 6 hours.

DETAILS

Finding time to brew in 2010 has been a struggle for me. With a busy 3-year-old son, freelance copyediting work and a long list of home projects, I almost feel guilty dedicating six or seven hours of a day toward an all-grain batch. In fact, I've had ingredients for several beers on hand for a few months now—so long that two vials of White Labs yeast I purchased have expired!

Well, at last, the stars finally aligned on Saturday, August 7, when my friend Eric came over to brew an IPA with me. My very first IPA brew, in fact.

I got this "C'z IPA" recipe from my friend Ozzy Nelson after tasting his batch on a brew day at his home last winter. (Ozzy is currently in the process of starting his own brewery, Mayday Brewery, in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Keep track of his progress via his blog.) The thing I remember most when tasting that beer at Ozzy's was the amazing pine aroma. It's called "C'z IPA" because it utilizes only "C" hops (Chinook, Columbus and Crystal) in the boil and Zeus for dry-hopping. (My homebrew supply shop doesn't stock Zeus or was out of it when I ordered ingredients, so I'm substituting Bravo at the shop's recommendation.)

This recipe had the most grain varieties of any single recipe I've brewed to date. Eric, God bless him, worked up a sweat hand-cranking the Barley Crusher mill as I measured out the malted grains--2-row, Cara-pils, rye, crystal, honey, Vienna and wheat.

After brewing a few solo batches it was nice to have company. It also helped the brew day go faster: It was just over six hours from the first grain measurement to transferring the wort to the fermenting bucket, which is a personal best. Thanks again, Eric.

The day wasn't without its hiccups, though. First, with an air temp in the mid-90s, we could only chill the wort so much using my immersion chiller and water from the outside tap. Once we got the wort temp down to 89 degrees we shut off the water. For the amount of water it was going to take to chill it further, I decided we were better off siphoning the wort to the fermenter, putting a lid and an airlock on it and letting it chill in my kegerator.

The second issue came while transferring (or "racking," in brewer's lingo) the wort from the brew kettle to the fermenter. Before doing so I initiated a whirlpool to collect all the hop particles (no hop bags were used) and trub toward the center of the brew kettle. After allowing the kettle to sit for 15 minutes to let the whirlpool do its work, I began the transfer using an autosiphon at the outer edge of the kettle floor. I was hoping to get 5.25 gallons into the fermenter but thanks to all the hops, my autosiphon pretty much shut down at 4.25 gallons. That was really disappointing, though it doesn't mean the beer is bad... just less of it.

The final issue came when I took the hydrometer reading to determine the beer's original specific gravity. The recipe (using BeerSmith software) said I should expect an original gravity of 1.080. In reality the original gravity turned out to be 1.073. The most frustrating part is I'm not exactly sure where we went wrong. My suspicion is the mash temp may have been a little too high. The target was 153 degrees and we were a little high on that going into the 60-minute mash. (Remember that higher mash temps typically equate to more mouthfeel in your beer while lower mash temps--around the low 140s--typically mean more fermentable sugars and a higher alcohol-by-volume percentage.) Since the temp was high I did not cover the mash tun with a blanket as I typically do. The temp when we opened the mash tun after 60 minutes was 152 so I figured it might have averaged around the target, but maybe not.

The good news is the beer is currently fermenting away happily in my basement and will be ready to move to a new vessel for secondary fermentation and dry hopping any day now. If this turns out anything like Ozzy's, my plans for opening my own brewery will be set into motion. (Kidding. Sort of.)