Birra di Primizie

This is a simple batch I whipped up to celebrate my first year of brewing and the hops I got. This is my 13th batch of beer...woohoo!

Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 12 lb organic 2-row

  • 1 lb brown malt

Hops:

  • 1 oz Cascade (5%) @ 75 minutes
  • 0.5 oz home grown Cascades @ 15 minutes

Yeast:

  • Windsor

Brew Day

October 24, 2009: This was the first time I used a cooler for mashing; I didn't have a manifold, so I went with the curtain-in-the-cooler trick, which worked surprisingly well. I went with 5 gallons at 168F, which settled nicely to 156F right through the end of the (hour-long) mash. Sparged with 2.5 gallons at 175F. Forgot to vorlauf...doh!

I didn't have volumes marked in my kettle, so I'm not completely sure...but I think the volume should have been 6 gallons. Mash was at 156F.

OG at boil time was 1.058, which would imply a nice 75% efficiency. Woot! After the boil, gravity was 1.063 -- this is going to be a stronger beer. Final yield is probably about 4 gallons; there was a lot of trub and protein in here. Looks like egg drop soup.

20 minutes after adding the yeast, it's already at 28 C...ambient temp right now is 21 C. I'm tempted to leave this outside tonight, as it's bound to be cold out there.

Bottling day

November 29, 2009: It was going to be last week, but I didn't have enough bottles...shock horror! This weekend I made a trip to Dan's and got a capper (plus a bag of Gambrinus ESB...). Final volume was 3.75 gallons; about 14 litres in the bottles.

Gravity was 1.020 (though it took a few times to make sure...there was one reading that was at 1.034. Not sure what was going on there), so that puts it at 5% ABV. The aroma was not noticeable to me, but the flavour was sweet and malty, with a creamy mouthfeel. Nice tan colour. I'll be quite interested to see how this turns out.

Tasting

December 6, 2009: Couldn't wait. And it's nice! Very malty, more than is usually to my taste, but it's good. Deep orange colour.

January 2010: My father-in-law likes this best of all my beers so far. Co-workers are kind. I like it lots.

February 26, 2010: Calculated IBUs for fun. (Tinseth, How To Brew) Assuming 5% for the Cascades, that works out to about 20 IBUs.

November 2011: Can't remember the date, but we had the last bottle of this a year after brewing. It was surprisingly good -- very malty, very sweet, and practically no bitterness left.