Maggie Blonde Ale - Thursday, December 28, 2023
Escarpment Labs dry yeast has a sachet inside a sachet, interesting...
MASHED TOO LOW AGAIN, GO BACK TO F INSTEAD OF C.
Ingredients
11 lbs. German Pilsner
8 ozs. Crystal 40
56.7 g Hallertauer at 60 min.
Escarpment Labs House Ale dry yeast
Package says good for only 5 gallons so that is what I am going to do.
Water Profile - Yellow Balanced
CA - 50
MG - 9
S04 - 75
CI - 61
PH - 5.35
O.G. - 1.046 - 79% efficiency
F.G. - 1.005
% - 5.4
SRM - 5
BU - 21 ( too high in my opinion. 15 is where I used to be )
Mash
Gyp - 1.4 g
CI - 1.9 g
Eps - 1.9 g
Lactic Acid - 1.7 ml
Boil
Gyp - 1.3 g
CI - 1.8 g
Eps - 1.8 g
Sparge - .2 ml
Mash Water - 5.5 gallons
Sparge Water - 5 gallons
BREW DAY NOTES
No issues yet. Everything on schedule so far. Boil started around 6:45. 8 hours later and I am completely cleaned up. I could of easily knocked off 2 hours if Mr. Robobrew was 240 v instead of 110.
Yeast Pitched at 10:40 am.
That night -
Day 1 - Going okay. Kind of a slow start. 64F. I realize it is that temp, but they say it ferments at 64F. They also said fast, which was not the case.
However, I am not in a hurry and I did fill the fermenter slightly
higher than I wanted to. They said 5 gallons of 1.065 wort. Hmm,
this is at 1.045 so I think it should be ripping through it. I don't have
the fridge on yet. I will if it gets to 66F.
Day 2 - Going real good. Trying to get a steady temp. 70F, then 64F, I want
66F. Other than that, all kinds of trub running around in the carboy,
and that is a good thing.
Day 3 - Still going good. 64F. Turned it to .5F warmer. Even at 64F it is
going quite well. I had to turn on the wall heater and close the door.
It was leaning toward 62F. It is not even cold yet. I realize it is a
fast fermenting yeast, or supposedly one, so I don't want it to quit
early. Leaving the house to go to Kerrs so I have to do something.
Day 4 - Almost done, yea it either quit early or is actually near done. Will
let it sit for another week or longer, most likely longer. I no longer
rush fermentation thanks to shit lagers. Keg it around Jan. 12, no
earlier. That will be at or around the 2 week mark. If you set up for
the next beer ahead of time, all you have to do is keg this, clean the
carboy and brew shortly after.
KEGGED THURS JAN. 11
Taste on kegging day. If this tastes funny or odd then there is a bug in my brew house. Tastes fine for a Blonde Ale. No gelatin and no filtering this. It will clear by itself in a week or so. Carb up when cold later tonight.
SAMPLE UPDATE
There seems to be a similar taste to my lagers and this Blonde Ale. The after taste is almost the same. It has that over the top hoppy taste. I didn't over hop this. I used to hop Blonde ales at around 15, and this one is 21. Not a lot of difference. Is my scale wrong? Not sure. The water profile was not close enough though, this was way higher. I will know more after I brew my Pilsner. I have 2 lbs. of Hallertau hops and if this keeps up I won't want to brew with them if this is what I get. Yup, starting to get that weedy taste I got in my last 2 lagers. I am at a cross roads of why this is happening? I have no idea. Doing the same thing I have always done, no changes. I am really concerned about this. Definitely brewing Bitters until I figure out what is going wrong. My Stout beers are fine. I didn't sparge too high. I didn't over sparge, at least I don't think. My mash ratio is high, 1.90 qts. water/lb of grain. I don't need a lot of sparge water to get a volume of around 7.5 gallons in the kettle.
Tossing this out soon. I just can't stand the after taste.
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