It's our first all-grain brew! Also our first time brewing in my new 10-gallon BrewBuilt pot, which I asked for from Xenia for my birthday. The pot was prepped according to instructions and the starter was made the night before. We're ready to go, and showing our friend Noel how to brew some beer. All in all, it was a fun afternoon, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the beer turns out.

With a few modifications, this is largely based on the Belgian dubbel recipe in Brewing Classic Styles (oh, and it's our first brew from Brewing Classic Styles, too!). Since we started off with a comparatively light-colored brew (because our LHBS was out of the requisite variety of Belgian candi sugar) and then oaked it after primary fermentation finished, we're going to call this batch Ewe in that Oak Tree, after a Monty Python skit that commemorates the belief in transformations.

BeerXML for this recipe, generated by BrewTarget.

Ingredients in this batch

@drkappitan's #helpfulboyfriend is watching the temperature on our first all-grain brew.

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  • A yeast starter, prepared the night before (13 May), consisting of:
    • no hops at all
    • ½ c. Briess CBW® Traditional Dark LME
    • approx. ½ gallon distilled water
  • 10.6 lb.continental Pilsner Malt
  • 1.00 lb. Munich Malt
  • 8 oz. Aromatic Malt (20° Lovibond)
  • 8 oz. Caramunich Malt
  • 8 oz. Special B Malt
  • 8 oz. Cane Sugar
  • 8 oz. Candi Sugar, Dark
  • 2.5 oz. Tettnang hops (2.4% A.A.) at 60 min.
  • 2 gal. distilled water
  • 5 gal. spring water
  • 1 pouch White Labs WLP540 - Abbey IV Ale Yeast
  • 1.75 oz. American oak cubes, approx 1 cm./side, added 10 June 2017
  • 1.65 oz. Bourbon barrel oak chips, added 10 June 2017
  • 0.55 oz. French oak chips, added 10 June 2017
  • 3.2 oz. corn sugar, for priming, mixed in filtered tap water to 2 cups, added at bottling on 26 June 2017

Procedure

Making a starter

Boiled the liquid malt extract in about half a gallon of water for ten minutes. (Was there yeast energizer and nutrient in there? I don't believe so, but writing this up nearly a week later.) Let it cool to room temperature, then poured it into a sanitzed half-gallon beer growler, agitated for five minutes, and pitched the yeast, which had been allowed to come up to room temperature for several hours.

There was some carbon dioxide production the next day, though not as much as I'd like. Pitched the starter anyway.

Brew Day

Brought seven gallons of water to a boil, steeping the grains for 90 minutes at or about 149℉ (temperature never climbed above 158℉). Removed the grain bag. Brought to a boil, which went for 90 minutes. Pitched in the hops at 60 minutes. Chilled with the wort chiller (wow, that takes a lot longer when we need to chill it nearly all the way to yeast-pitching temperature: there's no leeway granted by the anticipation of combining refrigerated water). Drained from the pot into a sanitized brewing bucket, and put the bucket in a plastic storage bin. Filled the bin with water, put ice in it (note that this is of course outside the sanitized bucket). Popped a lid on the bucket and put an airlock and stopper in the lid, then pulled an old T-shirt over the bucket, letting it wick water up over the bucket. Set up a fan pointing at the bucket in such a way that the fan is highly unlikely to fall into the water.

(Note, five days later: This is doing a surprisingly effective job of keeping the temperature about 10℉ below the ambient temperature of the room, even without ice in the storage bin.)

Waited for the temperature in the bucket to fall to 66℉ (about six hours), then pitched in the starter.

On 12 June, added 4 oz. assorted oak chips and cubes, as detailed above.

Bottled on 26 June, priming with corn sugar.

Brew day: 13 May 2017
Original gravity: 1.071
Bottling day: 26 June 2017
Final gravity: 1.026
Estimated ABV: 6%

Yield:

  • 4 x 500 mL beer bottles
  • 4 x 22 oz. beer bottles
  • 26 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 1 x 750 mL beer bottle
  • 1 hydrometer tube's worth of beer

Total: Approx. 498 fl. oz., or 3.9 gal.

Observations

  • 2017-05-14T12:26: No carbon dioxide discharge from the bucket yet.
  • 2017-05-15T16:41: There's bubbling in the airlock.
  • 2017-05-18T20:11: Added the 8 oz. of sugar that should have been added to the boil.
  • 2017-06-01T23:11: Took a sample after coming back from traveling. Gravity is 1.021 (after temperature correction); carboy temperature is 68℉.
  • 2017-06-04T18:21: Pulled the carboy out of the water bath to make room for batch 068.
  • 2017-06-10T22:35: Racked to a new sanitized bucket to get the beer off of the spent yeast. Sanitized 4 oz. oak chips by soaking in very very hot tapwater for ninety minutes, then drained the water and put the chips and cubes into a brewing bag and the brewing bag into a bucket. Harvested 2 small Mason jars of spent yeast for rinsing and storage.
  • 2017-06-18T21:17: Tasted. The oak is doing a good job of adding backbone, even after just a week and a half. I think I'll want to bottle this in the next few days ... or at least take the oak out, if that's not possible.
  • 2017-06-26: Bottled, yielding almost 4 gallons at approx. 6% ABV.