#QuartineBrew No.3 – SMASH, using the last of my supplies; ale malt, Southern Promise, bread yeast.
Doing just a single step mash today. Put to bed at 64.5C in the awesome @WonderbagSA, which does an incredible job of holding temps. This time the mash is in there for 75 mins, so let's see how it holds…
75 mins later and the mash lost just shy of 2 (10L pot, 3L Volume).
Meanwhile, the sparge water was brought to temp, and the lauter tun ist at the ready…
Recirculating the first of the mash runoff. 1.5L in and it's not much clearer, but that'll do. Chopstick in the spout creates a silky smooth run, which means no annoying splatter patterns everywhere.
It helps that the height of the table to bench to floor is just about perfect for my bucket setup. The sparge of the grain went swimmingly.
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Pre-boil gravity is 1.030 for 8L of wort collected. Should have been 6.5L at 1.034 🤔 to the boil we go…
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Now, need to reduce this volume by half. The air in Cape Town is as thirsty for a drink as everyone else, so will greedily gulp at the evaporation even before the rolling boil.
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8g locally grown Southern Promise hops adds 40 IBUs of bitterness. Not a fan of this hops, and it being well past its prime won't help either. But its what is left in the fridge, so we work with what we have.
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Rolling boil achieved, and the first of the hops go in for a 60 min boil. The hops go in a hopsock; hop pellets completely disintegrate and is otherwise impossible to separate from the brew (with my limited equipment)
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Awaken the yeast! Left-over from Quarantine Brew 1 (IPA'ish) which I bottled last weekend. Took it out of the fridge when I started earlier, and it's waking up as it approaches room temp. Just bread yeast, but it does the job.
Clean all the things!!! The 4.5L fermenter post bottling of Quartine Brew 2. Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, made quite the mess, but nothing a 2 day soak (and a bottle brush) won't solve.
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Cleaned all the things? Now sterilise all the things!!! Iodophor, no rinse sanitiser. It contains iodine so undiluted will stain stuff yellow, but you need like a cap-full in 10L of water.
Right, boil's done. Tap water is 21C. After the 1st bath wort is at 58C, then dropped to 38c, and after the 3rd it was at 32C. That'll do for bread yeast, although for brewers yeast it's best to get it to low 20's. Pouring it into the fermenter will waste a few more
Hmpf, missed the target. Wanted 1.050, but ended on 1.047, so it means lower ABV after fermentation , which will already be shorter than usual. Beer needs drinking 😏
A vigorous pour into the fermenter to give the yeasties some air.
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That looks like a smidge under 4L. On the plus side, more room for the fermentation, so maybe it won't make as much of a mess of the airlock this time. Yeast to the right there, waiting to be pitched.
Yeast pitched and air-locked, ready for the fermentation to start. And that's it for Quarantine Brew No 3, until bottling day….
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Eager yeasties doing their thing.
After the yeast started going, it didn't let up, and bubbled away like this the whole night. Next day it slowed down considerably, and today it's pretty much done. To the bottles!
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Thought I was bottling it too soon, turns out it was bang on time. FG 1.010, on track for 5% abv. Smells fruity, tastes refreshing. I think the bread yeast loved that party.
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A modest 3 litres (plus an annoying 200ml [top right] that's now a dilusion experiment).
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The bread yeast is proving to be quite impressive. Saving it again for the next brew to see how the 3rd generation manages.
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Ok, only 24 hours in the bottle is way too short, but for comparison sake… there she is, #QuarantineBrew Batch 3, Single Malt and Single Hop, refreshing and (perhaps just a tad too) effervescent. Tjorts!
Originally tweeted by CraftBru.com (@CraftBru) on 25 Apr 2020.