8:39 I printed out the recipe for markup during the brew day. I weighed out and ground my grains and measured out my hops and my mash and boil salts last night. Setting up brewery.
8:54 Collecting sparge water in hot liquor tank to use to preheat the mash tun.
9:01 Flame on under sparge water. Collecting mash water.
9:20 Boil kettle sight glass measures accurately for two and four gallon measured volumes.
9:25 Mash water collected and heating.
9:33 Adding sparge water to mash tun to preheat.
9:47 Transfer sparge water back to hot liquor tank. Transfer mash water into mash tun. Add grains and mash salts. Mix. Rest ten minutes.
10:03 Mash stabilized at 150 °F. Boiling water to adjust.
10:14 Mash stabilized at 156 °F. Mashing until 11:00. The mash occupied about 6.75 gallons in the mash tun. The recipe expected 5.7. It sounds like I have a calculation wrong on my spreadsheet somewhere.
10:48 Heating sparge water.
10:59 Vorlauf. Lauter. Sparge. First runnings were 3.75 gallons. The recipe expected 3.5. Heating first runnings while sparging.
11:15 Sparge complete. Boil volume is 6.5 gallons. Recipe expected 7 gallons. Going to do a second sparge with another half-gallon of water.
11:19 Boil salts are in. There are some grain chunks in the boil kettle.
11:31 Ended up with about 7-1/8 gallons of boil volume. Took pre-boil gravity sample.
11:52 Boiling. Hot break. Adding 60-minute hops to hop bag and starting 60 minute timer.
12:21 Pre-boil gravity is 1.052 SG. Recipe expected 1.050 SG.
12:38 Adding 15-minute hops. Placing immersion chiller in kettle to sanitize. Retrieving yeast from refrigerator and smacking. According to the Mr. Malty Yeast Pitching Rate Calculator, yeast manufactured on 2/1/2011 has a viability of 85% on 2/18/2011. Since each pack starts with 100 billion cells, 85 billion of them are viable. I have three packs, so I have 255 billion. The recipe calls for 225, so I have enough.
12:53 Added 0-minute hops and turned off flame. Letting hops steep for 20-minutes. Taking original gravity sample. End-of-boil volume was slightly less than 6 gallons.
1:14 My 20-minute hop steep is complete. The wort temperature has dropped to about 180 °F, as expected. Lifting hop bag out of wort to drain and beginning wort chilling.
1:38 Wort has cooled to 68 °F. Removing chiller, starting final whirlpool and allowing trub cone to settle for 20 minutes prior to draining. Original gravity is 1.059 which is what the recipe expected.
1:59 Draining wort from boil kettle to carboy fermenter.
2:17 Drained to carboy. Aerated. Going to pitch yeast and adjust fermentation chamber controls to 62 °F.
Saturday, March 5th Kegged. Final gravity was 1.012 (expected 1.015). That gives an apparent attenuation of 78.8% (expected 75%), and 6.2% ABV (expected 6.0%). I’m guessing the wort was more fermentable than I expected because I was low on initial mash temperature (150 °F instead of 156 °F) and it took a while to get it up to temperature (15–20 minutes). I expect if mashed properly, the beer would have more body than this one will.
