First Brew Day on New Brew Scuplture

Today was the day to fire up the Monster Brew Sculpture from More Beer. I have been brewing with the same basic steps but without a structure to hold the pots. Now with the new Monster I have three burners which should lead to a more efficient brew day. I started with rousting up a yeast slurry that I collected from a batch bottled up a couple of weeks ago. Re-pitching yeast is one of the greatest things that I know of in order to make great beer.

I split the slurry into two 1000 ml Erlenmeyer flasks with a bit of fresh wort in them. After a couple hours on some new wort to roust the yeast the little buggers took off like a ….. bat out of hell? Yes, it took off too quick so I had to let it sit and add additional fresh wort to the yeast two hours before I planned to pitch it to the new batch. Now that it is sitting on the beer in the carboy’s they are very happy.

My plan for the day was to brew up a somewhat simple American Pale Ale recipe from “Brewing Classic Styles” by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer of Brew Strong fame.  On the new system plans don’t always go the way it use to.  Maybe that’s the point of keeping it simple ….. trying to get an expected result.  Well, it did not go perfectly and that is what I expected.

The Mash was perfect holding 152 degrees with a recirculation through the Hot Liquor tank heat exchanger.  The Sparge was a little long at 90 minutes.  I have been using a refractometer to check “the numbers” during the brewing process.  Calibration of the instrument was the first thing I did this morning with distilled water.  The Brix scale number that the Refractometer reading gave me after 30 minutes of boiling was 16 which equates out to about 1.066 on the hydrometer.  My target was more like 1.050 after 30 minutes of boiling so I knew I was heading into IPA territory.  No problem just add more hops, right?  My American Pale Ale had turned into a bigger beer.  Most likely the 90 minute Sparge and the fine crush of the grain was at fault.  Next time I will take this into consideration.  More later.