Today I’m abandoning the pre-hopped kits and getting back to some better brewing. I’ll also be using a larger brewpot to create a full 5 gallon batch and will be cooling the worth with my one-of-a-kind immersion chiller. I’m brewing this American Brown Ale on Labor day, and of course I can’t ignore the fact that my wife might go into in labor any time now, so I’ll name this “Hard Labor Ale“.
Recipe:
7 lb. United Canadian amber liquid malt extract (LME)
- 1/4 lb. Crystal 120L.
- 3/4 lb. Crystal 60L.
- 1.5 oz. Centennial Hops 9.5% alpha acid (Bittering)
- 0.5 oz. Centennial Hops 9.5% alpha acid (Finishing)
- 11 g (1 packet) Danstar Nottingham ale yeast
- 5 gal. purified drinking water
2.5 gallons of water went into the brewpot along with the crystal malt. I turned on the burner and began to heat the water, pulling out the grainbag and crystal malt at 175 F.
I killed the heat and added the LME (which had spent the last 10 minutes in warm water to soften it) and stirred to dissolve. (Note that having the burner off while you add and disolve liquid malt extract will greatly reduce the chance you will scorch or burn it.)

I fired up the heat again and brought to a vigorous boil (as vigorous as you can get at 5200 feet above sea level). Added the bittering hops and boiled for 55 minutes.

With 5 minutes left in the 60 minute boil, I put the wort chiller in to sanitize and added the finishing hops, boiling for 5 more minutes. You can clearly see the accumulated scum from the pellet hops. I’ll definitely be using leaf hops next time if possible!
I covered the pot with some aluminum foil, hooked the chiller up to the sink and turned on a fairly low flow of cold water. There is a thermometer embedded in the exit tube of the chiller which allows me to monitor the temperature of the water coming out. This gives me a good idea of when the wort is cool. In this case I moved it to the primary carboy when the exit thermometer read 85F.
I moved the wort to the carboy which already contained 2.5 gallons of refrigerated purified water. The funnel has a straining insert which you can see in the photo. During the transfer of the wort this strainer became nearly 100% clogged with hops scum. Another reason to use leaf hops next batch.
After adding the cooled wort the resulting “green beer” was a nice 70F. I pitched the yeast, sloshed everything around for a couple of minutes to oxygenate, and sealed with an airlock.
Now the beer is sitting in the pantry at 71F and we wait for those yeast to do their jobs!
Technorati Tags: homebrew, beer, American, brown ale, LME, malt extract, Albuquerque
Filed under: 0703 - Hard Labor Ale on September 3rd, 2007 | No Comments »