Saturday brew

Given the sorry state of the kegerator these days, it was time to brew up a quickly servable batch. I decided to go with something along the lines of a British bitter, but considering that I was using almost exclusively American ingredients, I'll call this an American Bitter. The details:

9 lbs Briess Organic two-row
.5 lb Briess Special Roast
.25 lb Muntons crystal
.25 lb Muntons dark crystal

Mashed in at a 1.2 quart:1 lb l:g ratio to 140˚ - this was way low. I was shooting for 150˚, but this is homebrewing, so somehow I missed. Go figure. I was able to add some more boiling water to get up to 146˚, and that was just going to have to do. After a one hour mash, added some more boiling water to mash up to 158˚. This sat for a few minutes before I started recirculating until the wort was clear, and then began the sparge. Colltected 6.75 gallons at 1.036 OG and began my boil. Hop charge as follows:

60 minute hops: 1 oz Brewer's Gold pellets at 7.46% AA
20 minute hops: 5 grams American grown whole Goldings at 4.2% AA
15 minute hops: 5 grams Willamette whole hops at 4.5% AA
10 minute hops: 5 grams Goldings
5 minute hops: 5 grams Willamette
Flameout hops: 5 grams Goldings and 5 grams Willamette

Added whirlfloc tab at 15 minutes short of flameout. Final kettle volume 5.25 gallons at 1.048 OG. Chilled to 70˚ and pitched my zillionth generation Cal Ale slurry and shook the heck out of the carboy since my O2 bottle ran out. 24 hours later I've got high krausen at 66˚.

I also began growing up my yeast from the other day, so there will be another post on that hopefully tomorrow.