Over Hopping, Shmover Shmopping.

We made a good looking beer tonight. The more I brew the more of a system I am getting down to keep me from spilling sanitizer all over myself in the bath tub. We developed the recipe around using the hops we had in the freezer, and since we had 6 ounces in there this is going to be a very hoppy red ale, appropriately name Red Riding Hop.

Grain Bill:

3 LBS of Light DME

3.3 LBS of Liquid Pilsen Malt Extract

.5 LBs of Dark Caramunich 120L

.5 Carapils

3 Oz of Red Wheat

4 Oz of Crystal 40L

Hop Schedule:

1 Oz of Goldings 5.7%AA continuously hopped between 60-30 minutes

1 Oz of Fuggles 6% AA continuously hopped between 30-0 minutes

1 Oz of Northern Brewer 9.9%AA at 5 minutes

1 Oz of Northern Brewer 9.9%AA into primary fermenter along with yeast

1 Oz of Northern Brewer 9.9%AA into (either primary, secondary or keg haven't decided yet.

We started with:

Smack the yeast pack

Heating 2 gallons of water up to 160 F and removing from heat

When you add grains to water this temperature it will bring the water down to the desired temperature which is 150F.

Add in the specialty grains inside the muslin bag and let sit for 25-30 minutes at 150F

Heat 1/2 gallon of water to 175 F in a separate kettle

THE COMMAND CENTER

Once the timer goes off for the grains in the main kettle raise them out of the kettle and pour the water from the second kettle on them, sparging the grains

Compost Grains somehow, or throw them away if you do not like the environment

Add the bag of DME

Bring to a boil and then add the container of Liquid Malt Extract

Bring to a boil again and start cleaning and sanitizing the primary fermentor, bottling bucket, big funnel, strainer, large 1 inch tube for blow off, small 1/4 inch tube for transferring, and the copper coil wort chiller.

Start adding the hops a pinch at a time, I decided to do this the entire boil to see what kind of effect I get. We started with Goldings for the first thirty minutes and ended with Fuggles for the last thirty minutes. Once there are five minutes to the end of the boil add 1 ounce of Northern Brewer.

RELAX DON'T WORRY HAVE A HOMEBREW

When boil is over, strain the two gallons of wort into the bottling bucket using the strainer, pour cold water on top of the hops in the strainer until you reach 5 gallons.

Chill with chiller some how that does not require a lot of towels.

Transfer to primary using large funnel. Place 1 ounce of Norther Brewer into the funnel and strain wort through them and push the hops into the fermentor as well. I know that CO2 has a "scrubbing" effect on the aroma of the hops. So usually you will put the hops in the fermentor either into secondary or four days after addition of the yeast when CO2 production has reduced a bit. If you put the hops to far after fermentation has ceased you risk oxidizing your beer later down the road especially if you use whole leaf hops because they contain a certain amount of air. So since there is a certain amount of air in the whole leaf hops, and you want to aerate you wort as much as possible before addition of yeast, i figured if you add the whole leaf hops along with the yeast then they will get more air into the fermentor.

Add Yeast, and blow off tube.

Put somewhere covered and around 64 F.

We got the wort down to temperature in less than 15 minutes. Which is great! I did not get a proper gravity reading because the concentration was too thick and read 1.2. Not sure this is right because I was shooting for 1.06 and 1.2 is dangerously high.

The next day, today, saturday the 11th we woke up to the sweet sound of fermentation.

So now we are planning on either adding another ounce of Northern Brewer into the primary in four days, or into the secondary or into the keg itself.

LIFES AN EXPERIMENT

DRINK UP

CHEERS TO BEERS