BrewBrain Sports Investing

I had quite a long (meaning good) weekend of brewing.  I managed to brew two new beers, bottled one and racked another from primary to secondary.  It is quite a production line at this point.  Thoughts and experiences:

1)  Bottling blows goats.  I hate it and I’m done with it.  Today, I’ll be ordering a storage shed for the back yard so I can empty out half of the garage.  That space will be used for brewing stuff, including a keezer, which I will get started on as soon as I can clear the space.

I’ll need a freezer to turn into a keggerator for sure.  I’m going for four or five taps so I can always have my standard beers on tap.  There is every chance this may be overkill as I don’t really drink tons of beer.  I’m sort of a one beer a night sort of guy.  Five full kegs would last approximately a lifetime.  Worst case scenario is I end up with fewer taps going and use the extra space for bottle storage, freeing space in the spare refrigerator for family groceries.  Lord knows it gets used for that anyway.  Second scenario is I end up buying a two-tap keggerator and reconverting the freezer back to a deep freeze for family groceries.  Lord knows we could use that functionality as well.  Either way, nothing bad happens.  I hope to keg some of the beers I currently have in production.

 2) I brewed a stout recipe that got horrible efficiency numbers.  I’ve always just accepted the crushed grains I get from my LHBS and have been getting somewhat consistent numbers.  This one was quite a bit lower, to the point I was worried I screwed something up.  I think I’ve settled on an explanation.  I used 6 pounds of base malt and 6.75 pounds of specialty malts.  I wanted a nice thick mouth feel, so I mashed quite hot - about 158 degrees, and reduced the mash time from an hour to 45 minutes per instructions from my Beersmith software.  I managed to have the mash too hot to start with - about 162 or so.  I stirred it down over 5 or 10 minutes, but the temp problem may have  been a factor.  Also, I think I should have mashed longer since fewer enzymes than normal were converting more starches than normal.  Well, normal for my recipes.  Anyway, I think I’ll hold off on new stout recipes until I start drinking this one.  This will be my first real frame of reference for my target stout.

3) I put together my first honest educated shot at an Amber Ale.  I’m hoping for the best.  Efficience again was low, though, so I started wondering about the crush.  I hit all my numbers right on the dot with this recipe and still came in a bit low.  I’m toying with the idea of buying a barley crusher just to make sure I get a consistent crush with every recipe.  I can then buy bulk quantities of uncrushed base malt and run already crushed grains through as well, just to be safe.  It would cost under $200 shipped.  It may be worth it.  I don’t need to have the crush be a moving variable when I’m trying to dial in recipes.  My efficiency stats should not vary much from batch to batch.

4) I bottled my first stout recipe last night.  It is a miserable process.  I felt like just dumping the beer since I know I won’t love it.

5) I racked my latest pale ale to secondary.  The sample I drew smelled and tasted like a dream!  This may end up being the official Raccoon Trail Pale Ale recipe.  I’ve said that before at this stage of development.  We’ll see how it does under carbonation in about six weeks.  If I weren’t hoping to keg this one, I’d probably speed up the process.  It does not need two weeks in secondary.