Alright, so we haven't posted the recipe yet, but I thought I'd add an update on the IPA brewed most recently.
We split the batch between two 6.5 gallon fermenters, and took that as an opportunity to experiment - one was pitched with White Labs California Ale Yeast 001, the other with White Labs California V Ale Yeast 051. 051 is supposed to be fruitier than 001, so it will be interesting to see what we prefer. I topped up each with some drinking water to bring them to a full 5 gallons, and they are humming along nicely (at the left).
Things we learned:
The heat sticks are working great, and keep a better rolling boil in 10gal than we used to see on the stove in 5.
The kettle is only 12.5gal - maybe we need to upgrade to a full half-barrel kettle in the near term, and use the old one as an HLT?
The mash tun worked perfectly, but we need to control PH and mineral content better to improve our efficiency. Temperature came in as expected, and held steady for the duration of the mash. Fly sparging went well - thanks Bob.
The immersion chiller actually works very well (miraculously), and brought 10 gallons to 70 degrees in about a half hour, using around 15 gallons of water from the tap. This is perfect, since we'll recycle that water for the next brew session.
Unfortunately, filling first one carboy and then the other resulted in one having significantly more trub, though on the whole we managed to leave quite a bit of the cold break and other crap behind in the kettle. Perhaps a better way to split between two carboys in the future? Or maybe upgrade to 15 gallon fermenters? (Bung-style kegs?)
Anything I missed?
2 comments:
Totally buying one 15gallon SS keg we can use as a fermenter - a guy in Petaluma was going to use it as a dune buggy gas tank twenty years ago, but never did. His loss is our gain. The moral of the story is: keep your eyes out on craigslist. Having four or five of those would be pretty sweet for fermenting, and its only 20 bucks.
Nice find. How big is the opening at the top? I'm thinking that it might be to hard to empty out the trub if we use it as a primary. 20 bucks is too good a deal to pass up though.
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