It's Sposborth time, Chez Spaeth style. Tonight I'm making a yeast starter - basically means I am making an un-hopped, scaled down (by volume) replica of tomorrow's batch and pitching yeast to it to produce a large and happy yeast population. The first picture shows the cooler, also known as the mash tun, where some grains are allowing their fermentables dissolve into water. I had heated the water to about 150 F on the stove before adding it to the grains. The grain bill consists of 2-row pale malt and a little bit of 15 L crystal malt.The mash requires about an hour.
The second picture shows the now boiled krausen (?) cooling in a water bath in the sink so that I can pitch the yeast.I'm looking forward to brewing this batch - the main step will be done tomorrow night - because it's a new process for me for a few reasons. One, this will be an all grain batch from start to finish. Secondly this will be only 2 gallons small, which means that all the water can be filtered and boiled, chilling will be easier, etc. And third I'm making an IPA and adding oak chips, which I've not done before. Probably cleaning up will be much easier. The dry-hopping of IPA is now standard operating procedure here at Sposborth Brewing Co.
Come to State College and I'll pour you a bottle!
4 comments:
Pete.....looks and sounds delicious. I got a gift cert to Wine and Hop, so I'm making a decision on my next batch. Suggestions? Maybe a big brown? I'm also considering swing top bottles.
Quintupple Imperial IPA...something with a nice, balanced flavor and roughly 48% ABV, 392 IBU's. The challenge has been laid down.
Pete......we should hold on to a few IPA's and have a get together where we try all our beers. I like it!
I concur.
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