Christmas Brew Recap
Last Friday, December 9th, the schedule was clear, the house was unpacked, and the brewery was set up. It was time to brew for the first time since moving back from Colorado. It was also the first time that I’d have some help (besides Moose) in the brewery. My buddy Chad wanted to give it a shot and I was more than happy to have him join.
To keep it simple and shake the rust off, I decided to go with a kit from Northern Brewer. Specifically, I went with the Superior Christmas Ale All Grain kit for $54.99 which is definitely on the steeper side of what they typically offer but this kit included:
Cinnamon
Ginger
Honey
The hopes of a 7.6% (clap your hands) ABV beer
I also splurged and went with the Imperial Yest A01 Ale House so yea… I’m a sucker for an upsell. With all of that in mind, I decided to give it a shot. Although I haven’t tried it yet, I can say without a doubt that it was the best smelling brew day I’ve had since switching to all grain.
The day started a little later than planned. My star san didn’t make it through the move so I had to wait for a local homebrew shop to open up. Everything had been cleaned and prepped the night before. Once I got back from the store, I just had to sanitize the necessary equipment.
This was the first time I had a TV set up for brew day. The World Cup and Army Navy Game made for some nice entertainment while brewing. This was also the first time I preheated some of the water for the mash. Typically it can take my Spike Solo 30 minutes to get to mash temp (that is a rough estimate). This time around, I filled just enough to cover the heating element so we could turn it on. While that warmed up, I warmed up a 2 gallon pot of water on the stove. This cut the wait time by about 15 minutes.
The first brew attracted a lot of neighbors which was awesome! We love the neighborhood we are in and everyone has been so welcoming. While getting to know everyone, I may have lost focus on the brew. During the vorlauf, I wasn’t stirring the grains as much as I should have. The pump recirculated the water to the top of the solo basket and not much was getting through. The water level dropped just enough to scorch the heating element. We immediately smelled it, killed power, investigated, and fixed the issue. Maybe this wasn’t the smartest idea but the wort itself smelled fine, the element was still functioning, and everything else was running smooth, so we continued with the brew day (we will see how it turns out). Post brew day, I ended up ordering a new element out of an abundance of caution.
The rest of the brew went smooth. The additions were easy with most of it coming at the 60 min mark and one at the 15 min mark. The honey was added after the boil. All that was left after that was the cool down, transfer, and pitch. After 24 hours the yeast appears to be doing its thing. The efficiency came in at 75% which is one of my better days on the solo (that is more a shot at me rather than the solo).
We are hoping to keg a week or two after Christmas. If the schedule doesn’t get too crazy, we will work some names and labels. And as far as these recaps blogs go, I will try to make them more like a timeline and less like a stream of conscious-word vomit-text message.
