Cascadian Juniper Ale

New Brew Set-up!!

Old Brew Set-up!!

We made more beer! This time I borrowed a friends 5 gallon pot, overfilled it and then had to split the batch up; 3 gallons in the 5 gallon pot and then 1.5 gallons in my two gallon pot. It was a hassle having to split up the ingredients and the boil so I got inspired to go and get myself a new kettle. I purchased a new keggle from a guy how makes them in town. It was a very good price for what I got and it has never been used before. It is a 1/2 BBL kettle with hop screen/false bottom attached to a 1/2 inch spigot about 3 inches above the bottom.

This will help facilitate in removing the hop particles as well as the hotbreak and some of the cold break too since I will be chilling in my kettle when it all said and done. There is also I nice thermometer attached the side in the middle of the kettle. This this is perfect for my cause. I also bought a 58,000 BTU propane burner and stand to get the job done. I can efficiently make a 10 gallon batch now.

To upgrade to a complete AG system I need to purchase a Mash Tun and Hot Liqour Tank. That can be done with getting two 10 gallon round Igloo coolers. I have seen people using rectangular coolers but I must disagree with using these as a mash-tun because when you stir your grains you are going to risk damaging the hulls as well as aerating the extract within if there are angles inside the vessel. You also want there to be a homogenous creation of a grain bed and a homogenous surface area for your filter. That is why false bottoms are circular and take up the entire bottom of the grain bed in commercial breweries.

So on to the recipe:

6.6 Lbs of Liquid Dark Malt Extract

3 Lbs of Dried Dark Malt Extract

(added after boil)

.25 Lb of chocolate Malt

.25 Lb of caraffa

.5 Lb of crystal 120 L

(steeped at 150 for 20 minutes, brought up to 165 and removed)

Hop/adjunct Schedule:

2 oz of domestic cluster pellets (6.9% AA) at 60 minutes

2 oz of cascade 2010 whole leaf (8.6% AA) at 15 minutes

1 tsp of Irish moss at 15 minutes

.5 oz of crushed juniper at 15 minutes

2 oz amarillo 2010 whole leaf (11.2% AA) into funnel and then the kettle was drained on top of this hop filter and into the fermenter where it was chilled. I got it down to pitching temp in 25 minutes and I had a 4 gallon boil. There was snow outside though so that helped.

I used Northwest ale yeast and pitched at 60 deg F which is a little lower than I would have liked. Also I do not feel as if I aerated enough before pitching due to a long Lag phase with in the first two days of fermentation. The lag phase is where the yeast are getting used to their environment and are using up the rest of the Oxygen present to respire and grow in their new environment. If there is not much O2 present (8 ppm is optimum) then there is going to be a longer growth phase in order to get the yeast to the proper amount for fermentation. In homebrewing this is something good to remember:

It will take 30 flips of the fermenter in order to get the proper amount of dissolved Oxygen in your wort. What this means is that if you take your glass carboy and flip it upside down 30 times, the headspace inside the fermenter will give you the amount of oxygen in your wort that you need. This is not possible so the alternative is to splash the wort into the fermenter vigoursly and then to stir for about 5 minutes.

Point being.........aeration is very important in the fermentation process.

Ahh Nature