Big Brew Day

Before

Today was a first. The first time I've done a double brew day. I needed to kick start the pipeline to get me through the winter. The day started with a trip to the brew store to pick up a box of supplies.

First up was EdWort's Haus Pale Ale. I've made this beer before so it was supposed to be the easy warm up for the day. However, I messed up when writing my list of things to get at the store and I came home with 1 oz too few of hops. Thankfully, I had a half ounce each of Fuggles and Kent Goldings in the fridge that needed a home. I subbed these in to help with the bittering in order to try to keep the aroma coming from the Cascade hops.

After a quick cleaning turnaround I had the water heating up in the brew kettle to steep the grains for my next beer. I am branching out into a new style and doing a holiday spiced beer. I got the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. Jamil's Ol' Yule Loggy recipe is by far the biggest beer I've brewed with an expected original gravity of 1.090.

I had a little boil over with this beer. I looked away for a second before I heard the sound of wort hitting the stove. Thankfully I caught it before it got too bad. Only had a minor clean up to do. It was my first boil over in almost a year. I guess I got a little cocky with that part of my process. The only other thing that could be a problem with this beer is the amount of spice added to the beer. The wort smelled like it had a good amount of spice in it when it was going into the fermentor. It will be interesting to see how that translates into the finished beer.

After

The one issue I still need to figure out is my hydrometer. Both of these beers had an original gravity reading of about 20 points too low. After staring at the fermentors for awhile I am beginning to wonder if i am not getting the wort and additional water mixed together well enough. I think it might be a case of the water sitting on top of the wort. This is something I need to pay attention to in my next brew.