So THIS is how it’s supposed to work!

The second partial mash batch is in the fermenter! And this one went pretty well.

The receipe calls for two grains, chocolate malt and crystal malt. Both of these grains can be steeped, but I decided I would go through the process of a partial mash again. I forgot until just now that those two grains don’t have enzymes, so doing a partial mash was just an exercise in doing the process apparently…but what the hell, it went well anyway!

I started by crushing the grains with a rolling pin. I think I wouldn’t want to do many pounds that way, but for a couple of pounds it worked just fine. I think the crush was ok too because I got a really good color from it, and the wort flowed through it without any tendency to pack up and puddle.
The wort is BLACK! It is going to be a very dark beer I think. This may be partly due to the fact that the recipe called for about .9#’s of both grains but for ease I upped it to a pound.

I’m real curious about the taste. It’s modeled after Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale, but it will be darker. It should have about the same bitterness because of the length of time I boiled the different hops. The boil hop was Cascade. If I had left it in for the full one hour boil it would have yielded an IBU rating of 30, but I shortened the time to 1/2 hour, which according to Promash software will result in an IBU rating of 15, which is the same as Old Brown Dog. The flavor and aroma hops were Willamette, with a time of 15 minutes and 1 minute in the boil.

I need a wort chiller! The boil volume was less than 3 gallons after one hour. It took several minutes with a sink full of snow and constant movement of the brewpot to get the temperature down to 80. When the top off water (3 gallons) was added the final temp was 70…just right!

I rehydrated and proofed the yeast again. I like this step… it lets you see that the yeast is alive and well. According to the web article I read it also helps the reproducing ability of the yeast and it’s resistence to outside influences such as wild yeast strains and infections. It is also very easy. The one thing I forgot in this brew today was to add wort to the yeast a spoonful at a time spaced about 5 minutes apart to accilmate the yeast to the wort temperature. I think they were very close anyway, so I’m not worried about having killed my yeast or anything else bad.

So, now there’s 10 gallons of beer and 4 liters of cola soda fermenting merrily away! Not bad for a few hours of work on a holiday weekend!

Don’t ask about the kitchen cleaning afterward though!