Pros

The new false bottom for the kettle worked pretty well, all told.  Brewing ten gallons with twelve ounces of hops, including a half-pound of pellets, I got all but a quart of wort out before the pump just couldn’t pull any more out.  The underlet space was jammed with pellet particles.

Also, the time I spent the night before thinking about what I was going to be doing paid off in fewer trips up and down the stairs, and more time off my feet.  This left me a lot less worn out than on previous days.

Cons

My efficiency was terrible (65%.)  I think my crush was not all that great, but even worse is that I suspect that I had dry spots throughout the mash.  My tun volume is small compared to the amount of grain I was mashing, and I did a fairly stiff mash to boot.  These conspired to make stirring difficult.

My burner is wimpy.  It takes too long to get mash water heated, and to get the wort to a boil after the sparge.

Chilling took too long, although part of that was due to low flow rate at first — I wanted to catch some hot water for cleaning.

It took me from around 9:00 AM till 4:00 PM to make this batch of beer.  A plate chiller would probably knock half an hour off that, and a higher-output burner would probably knock another half hour off.  When I get the bucket heater on a timer, I will be waking up to a Gott cooler full of mash water on brew day, which will probably shorten my brew day by an hour.

22.00 lb Brewers Malt 2-Row (Briess) (1.8 SRM)
2.00 lb Caramel Malt – 20L (Briess) (20.0 SRM)
2.00 oz Magnum (US) [12.28 %] (60 min) (First Wort Hop)
2.00 oz Cascade [4.05 %] (30 min)
2.00 oz Cascade [4.05 %] (15 min)
1.00 oz Williamette [3.44 %] (15 min)
1.00 oz Sterling [6.43 %] (15 min)
1.00 oz Williamette [3.44 %] (2 min)
1.00 oz Sterling [6.43 %] (2 min)
2.00 oz Cascade [4.05 %] (2 min)
0.55 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)
2 Pkgs SafBrew Ale (DCL Yeast #S-33)

Beer Profile
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.060 SG (1.056-1.075 SG)
Estimated Color: 5.8 SRM (6.0-15.0 SRM) Color [Color]
Bitterness: 68.4 IBU (40.0-70.0 IBU)

Mash as a stiff single infusion at 154 F.

UPDATE: Measured specific gravity was 1.052!

 The crossbar is 10 feet long, and around 12 feet high.  The poles are driven three feet beneath the ground to avoid frost heave.

I’ve trained a couple of bines up from each plant, and pruned the others.   You can sort of see them in the photo, but the light isn’t all that great.  I’ll have more photos as the bines grow.

Brewed 3/22/2008

11 gallons

9 lb Dry extract,Pilsner Light (Briess)
2.00 lb Caramel Malt – 80L (Briess)
1.00 oz Magnum (US) (old 2) [12.5 %] (60 min)
2.00 oz US Goldings [4.65 %] (15 min)
2.00 oz US Goldings [4.65 %] (2 min)

Fermentis US-05 yeast /Nottingham Ale yeast (split batch)

Measured Original Gravity: 1.050 SG
Est Bitterness: 31.8 IBU
Est Color: 10.7 SRM

I used a hop bag for the hops this time, which helped immensely in getting the wort into fermenters this time.  I hope it won’t lower the utilization too much.

Estimated OG: 1.126

It’s bubbling away with none of the sulfurous notes noted in the pyment-cyser last year, which seems to indicate that the bread yeast makes a good nutrient.

Note that the poles in these photos are about 6 1/2 feet high.

I bought from Hops Direct last year, and was mostly pleased. The experience was a bit rocky due to the shortage-induced chaos, but they made things right rather quickly once the problem was noticed.

I ordered a half-dozen hop rhizomes from The Thyme Garden but, due to the strange weather this Spring, waited until April 19 to put them in the ground.

Some of them took longer than others, but they’re all up and doing pretty well. The varieties I planted, and photos, below the break:

Cascade

Centennial

Magnum

Oh, wait…

Mount Hood

Sterling

And the undisputed champeen of the growth competition, Willamette

They’re doing about as well as I expected, mostly. I’m a bit surprised to see the Sterling outpacing, well, anything, as it was the runt of the litter, and the Magnum looked like it was going to take off a little better than it did. Otherwise, the state of the bines is roughly reflective of the state of the rhizomes as they went into the ground.

Note that the rod in all these photos is around a half inch in diameter.

This post brought to you by my assistants:

Still, they’ve done nothing to disabuse me of my idea that the brewmasters at AB, Miller (okay, SABMiller) and Coors (okay, Molson Coors) are real pros, and if the marketing and accounting let them off the leash, they could make a world class Bud (Coors, Miller) Stout.

Apparently Anheuser-Busch has filed for label approval of Bud Ale, due out in October. The label mentions Cascade hops and that it’s brewed “with barley from America’s Heartland,” although it’s not clear whether this will be an all-malt beer.

I’ll probably pick up a sixer when it rolls around in October, to see how it turns out. I’m not expecting too much, but maybe, just maybe, this time the brewmasters are getting to run a little freer.

Thanks to Seen Through a Glass.

EDIT: Read the last paragraph of this.  Like I say, these guys are good — it’s just that making insipid beer is their job.