Swamp Ale - Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Robobrew

I need an elbow for the mash hose to get it to circulate properly. Thunder storm in the middle of my boil. I had no idea there was a storm coming. I did read a possibility of a storm yesterday, but they can't predict their next bowel movement, so predicting the weather? Sure... Robobrew tripped but came back with no ill effects that I saw, so brew on Chris.

Ingredients

11 lbs. CMC

14 ozs. Victory

6 ozs. Crystal 40

4 ozs. Acid Malt

21 g Chinook at 60 min.

45 g Chinook at 10 min.

100 g Chinook at 0 min.

US-05 - ( noticed no more 15 g sachets, so since they are kind of old, tossing in 45 g )

75% RO water

25% Well water

O.G. - 1.048

F.G. -

% -

SRM - 6.4

BU - 40

                                                                     BREW NOTES

Good brew day even though Elsie is home and cleaning everything. Hard to carry stuff outside all the while keeping where I walk clean. Next brew using either systems will be brewed in the garage. Someday it will get warmer and dry. Getting low on Chinook hops so I need to buy a lb. of something. No hop bulk buys coming soon. Will brew one more of this style on the big system but not a lot of brew sessions if I have to buy hops by the lb. 1 lb. will not do 2 brews, no bloody way. I have a lb. of Chinook left and will use it up then see where I am at. I am not paying like near $30 for a lb. of C hops that won't last 2 brews. I will brew lagers and do the step up with lager yeast.

Friday, April 30 - Going good now. 66 F. Set fridge at 66 F. This controler needs calibration as well as

                             the other one too. I compensate with temp strips.

Sat, May 1st - Same, turned it up to 19 C. Not sure where it really is half the time, but strip says 66 F.

Wed May 5 -   64 F. Keezer off. Keg next week. 

Sampled on Friday, May 7. Okay for now. I can taste the Victory/C40 though. Not a bad thing, but will

know more after filtering and carbing up. Not making this again until I can sample the finished product.

                                                  FILTERED ON SUNDAY, MAY 16

Best one yet, like in 8 years. I did every water profile I could look up and they all sucked. I tried 100% well water, it sucked. 50/50 RO/Well and it sucked. This was my last kick at the can and it seems to be okay so far. I realize if I oxidized it by splashing around in the keg, filtering it too can make this taste like a spent tea bag. Nothing yet, but give this a couple of days and hopefully it will remain good. The colour is exactly where I like this style of beer to be.  The Victory/C-40 taste ( grainy taste ) is gone and I am left with a nice tasting beer. Maybe I will be glad I ordered 7.5 lbs. of Citra hops after all.

                                                       UPDATE - MAY 20

Not as good as I thought. The citrus/grapefruit taste is quite strong, but the overall beer taste seems to be changing and not for the better. I am going to try a few pilot brews with brewing salts. Start at 150/50 and go from there. This beer is astrigent again. I need to find out why since I bought 7.5 lbs. of Citra hops and do not want any of the resulting beer to be bad. Changed my hop schedule and going back to brewing salts.