Finally got around to my
Caribou Slobber brew day!
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| Boil underway |
This beer holds a special place in my heart. It was the third batch of my homebrewing career (May 2012). It was also the first batch where I used any sort of temperature control for fermentation. The beer won 2nd place in a small competition, and it was a favorite of friends and neighbors.
The session went about as planned, though I ended up with a little more volume (3.182 gallons rather than 3.0) and consequently a little less concentrated fermentable sugars (4 specific gravity points, to be exact), so the beer should be about 5.0% abv rather than 5.5%. Meh.
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Chilled to 107F in 4 minutes.
Not bad! 47 degrees to go. |
After chilling, into the
new fermentation chamber it went. Until this batch, I've been fermenting most of my beers in the neighborhood of 67 or 68F. That's a good range for the yeast I normally use (Safale US-05), and it's also been relatively easy to keep a water bath at that temp in a hot Kansas City summer.
I'm using a different yeast on the Slobber (Danstar Windsor Ale). Some people love it, some people hate it, and even the people who love it hate it when it ferments above about 64F. It can produce way too many fruity esters that get in the way of the rest of the beer. So, after chilling the wort after the boil to 60F, I rehydrated the dry yeast and pitched, then into the fermentation chamber set for 62F. That should give me the right level of fruity esters from this English style yeast and accentuate the maltiness in this otherwise American style brown ale.
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| Fermentation chamber doubles as storage for empty fermentors |
I expect fermentation to be done within the next few days, then I'll slowly raise the temperature about a degree each day for the first week or so to let the yeast clean up after themselves (they can get a little messy). In the meanwhile, the 1-gallon Vienna/Northern Brewer SMaSH from a couple weeks ago is hanging out in the chamber with the Slobber. I'll likely bottle the SMaSH next weekend.
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The airlock on the Caribou Slobber
sporting a new 'do |
