Andy's Blog

Last friday in addition to bottling my IPA I brewed an oatmeal stout. Excepting the sparge which had a small hiccup, this batch went a lot smoother. In the sparge, I couldn't get a good filter bed setup and my sparge got totally clogged. In trying to unclog it I dislodged the hose from the false bottom and all hope was lost. However, as they say, "necessity is the mother of invention." I dumped my grain back into the mash pot and worked on the false bottom I was using in my sparge container (a 5 gallon cooler with a rubber "bung" installed where the spigot used to be). Basically, I cut a rubber hose length-wise and fitted that around the perimeter of the false bottom. Then I cut another length of hose and made a circle of hosing. I placed that circle under the false bottom and hooked it all up again. Here's some lame ASCII art that is a profile of the setup...

  |            |
  |            |
  |            |
  |            |
  |            | 5 gallon cooler
  |            |
  |            |
  |            |
  |            |
  |      |-----0-------- hose through rubber
  |{----------}|<-       bung and into false bottom
  |  |   ^   | |  \
   ------------    false bottom with hose around it
     ^       ^
   circle of hose

This setup worked like a charm. I just dumped the mash in and let it sit occassionally adding hot water. Basically the hose around the false bottom made a better seal with the sides of the cooler, and the extra hose on the bottom blocked out and remaining grain that may have slipped passed the false bottom; it also gave a little extra space that allowed better wort flow.

After the initial sparge challenge, I ended up with TOO MUCH wort. I had almost 7.5 gallons in my 8gallon kettle so I started to boil over, and had to dump out half a gallon. After that, I boiled down to 5 gallons and pitched the yeast after cooling the yeast (a chiller is a FINE thing... took only 20 minutes). Fermentation got going really strong after about 12 hours, and wrapped up within 4 days. I just racked it the first time tonight.

Bittering Hops:
1 oz Willamette
1 oz Chinook

Finishing Hops:
1 oz Willamette

OG: 1.072
FG: 1.031

So, that should me ABV of 5.371. Not bad, and the initial taste test is promising.

Lots of people complain about the hard work involved in brewing and how it's just so easy to buy microbrews. I kinda like it. For now at least.

I couldn't wait any longer. I bottled my first batch of beer (an IPA) last Friday, and today I decided to have my first bottle. It was EXCELLENT. Maybe not the best IPA I've ever had, but IMHO probably top ten. It was (understandably) light on carbonation which should get better as it ages, but it was fully-bodied nicely hoppy, all around delicious. I've got to pass some along to the robots; 43 things helped me get there.