Hot, Quick and Thick

Beerwise, I mean. Finally got my priorities straight and purchased one homebrewing starter kit, which I felt equals slipping into a painted-window adult-shop on the trenchcoat factor. I made it out of the store with double the price of the kit in fermentables, including a healthy selection of grain.

Anyway, this evening I put down my second extract brew in what would be at least as many years, an American brown ale. The malt included the lager tin that came with my homebrew kit, 500g of dry malt extract, 500g of sugar, 200g of Thomas Fawcett chocolate malt and 200g of Weyermann caramunich II. Hops were 2005 Simcoe pellets, vacuum sealed right up into now. 11% alpha, the lowest I have seen Simcoe. They smelled quite piney when I added 20g for boiling along with the steeped remains of the specialty malt plus 6-7 litres of water. An additional 30g were supposed to be added when I stopped boiling but I forgot them until I was partway through topping up the fermenter with cold water.

The steeping itself was a haphazard affair with a new garments bag with somewhat too-big a weave. To be fair, it would be unlikely to surrender my fictional girlfriend’s brassiere to the nefarious claws of the laundry tub but it was definitely too coarse for crushed grain. Lacking a real sieve, the residual particulate matter had to be scooped out of the pot with the miniature sieve from a very fancy teapot.

Following that, it was determined that the only way the electric stovetop would achieve a boil on its current setting was with at least some of the lid on. Unfortunately, my new ten-dollar nine-litre pot has that special kind of lid that likes to slide home when you turn your back, so I also had my first boilover (oops). Once that was sorted, the boil was underway. I approximated 20 IBU for the prehopped extract tin and roughly 20 more for the short-boil (15 min) hops. All the extract was added at the end of the boil. Unfortunately, around that time I realised that I have no can-opener to speak of, so extracting the extract from the extract can involved a little punishing with a kitchen knife.

Once all the extract was dissolved in the pot, the contents were poured into my new and thoroughly sanitised fermenter (HSA, anyone?). It was then topped up with tapwater via a 3 litre saucepan to the 21 litre mark, for an original gravity of approximately 1.045. I should stress approximately, because those abominable measuring cylinders that are provided with the hydrometer love to have their bottom fall out of them and I was more concerned with holding in the arse-end than waiting for a good clear reading. Right now the wort is cooling from 30°C in my laundry tub, when it is to a temperature of my liking I will throw in a sachet of S-04. Raw, I’m living on the wild side tonight.

Salut!