Brew Day: EPF!

Brew day, a very charged afternoon of sterilizing, boiling, cooling, and cleaning. It had been a little while since our last brew day, in fact, since February. We started off a little rusty and we had some cob webs to shake off the equipment. We always seem to forget the steps after a couple months of not brewing, only normal though. On this brew day we are going to brew an American Pale Ale, dry hopped in secondary with helga - for more info check out Hops.com.au. This will be an all grain batch, only our fifth to date. Let us begin!

DIY equipment

Mash/Lauter Tun; Copper Immersion wort chiller; and 8 gallon aluminum brewpot.

 

Ingredients

 

Foreground, L - R: Helga hops, Wheat flakes, and East Coast Ale yeast

Background, L - R: Crystal malt 20L and Pale malt (two-row)

Mashing & Lautering

Mashing 14lbs of grain @150F for 60min, 1.5 quarts/lbs; vorlauf i.e. clarifying the wort before transfer; transfer to brewpot (Batch Sparge); and pre-boil specific gravity of 1.038.

 

Boiling

7gallons of Wort reaches a boil; three hop additions: 20g @60min, 20g @30min, 10g @10min; Wort with hop bag and brew spoon.
 

Cooling

Immersion chiller cools 5.5 gallons of Wort to 78F in ~30min; post-boil Specific Gravity1.050.

 

Pitching Yeast

Pitched yeast w/o starter @78F; Blow-out tube and bottle, and carboy cover (protect against light damage).

And that is the story, in photos, of our fifth all-grain batch. I hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading.

Stay tuned for our post on Secondary & Bottling.

Cheers!

- Jean