First AG brew in Houston!

[Jon]

Well, it's been WAY too long since I've brewed an AG batch, and I'm excited to brew my first AG batch here in Houston.

The water here sucks compared to NYC (yes, I was spoiled), but for this batch, I'm trying minimal modifications--I'm just neutralizing the chloramines with a camden tab (1/2 tab in the sparge water, 1/2 tab in the mash water), and I miiiight add a tiny amount of lactic acid to the sparge water, just to be safe (I'm not actually measuring pH or anything, though).

The recipe is a made-up on the fly one, to give me a nice, sessionable English Brown ale.

5 lbs Pale malt
1 lb Pale Chocolate Malt
1 lb C-120

Mash at 160* in about 4 gallons of water for 60' (in the Grainfather), sparge with about 4 gallons of water.

Boil 60 minutes with 1 oz 5-6% AA hops (I'll toss in something english-y, maybe Styrian Goldings).

Cool (my CFC will probably only get it down to 80* or so, but hey...I'll put it in the wine fridge at 45* and it should bring it down overnight), and pitch two recently expired packs of S-04 (expired in January--oops! But they've been fridged the whole time, so it should be fine). I'd really like to use 1968 on this, but I don't have any, so S-04 it is!

Ferment around 68* for a couple of weeks, then keg, carb and serve!

The high mash temp should make for a nice body and mouthfeel in a nice, sessionable beer, given the small grain bill and the way S-04 tends to attenuate like crazy.

I'm looking forward to how this one turns out!

Of course, that means that during its fermentation, I need to clean my kegerator and order the upgrades I promised myself I'd get when we moved (stainless taps and shanks, and new tubing--since I was due for it anyway).

I'm going to see if I can't keep a nice pipeline going from here on out...though I might have to cheat and supplement it with a lot of stupid easy ciders if time gets tight.

[Beer-lord]

Sometimes it's just like starting over again. Well, except for the temperatures in the south which are already at or near 90 every day.
Hope you bought lots of deodorant for the summer.

[Inkleg]

Welcome to Southern brewing! Glad you're back at it. Update on how it turns out please.

[BlackDuck]

Sweet Jelly Roll Brotha!! Bet it feels good to brew again!!

[The_Professor]

Good luck Jon. I'm on deck to do my first brew in a while next weekend.

[Jon]

So, as usually happens, a couple of things happened to make this brew day interesting.

One of my friends and his partner went for a bike ride, and their route was going to bring them right past our place, so he texted me to see what my wife and I were doing...my grains had been mashing for probably about 45 minutes at this point. at 160*, they had probably already had full conversion, and we were just getting ready to walk our dog.

So we finished getting ready to walk the pup, I reset the temp of the grainfather to 168* for a mash-out, and off we went...for what ended up being about 2 hours, rather than the 30 or so minutes I was sort of expecting.

I'm now back, the grains have been sparged (and I've got some drying in the oven for the pup) and have started the boil.

For hops, I went with an ounce of Sterling @ FWH. Looks like I might have a little more wort than I intended, pre boil, so I'm contemplating doing a 90' boil instead of the standard 60' one.

Right now, I really only have one full-sized fermentor (a bucket), and it had a batch of stupid easy cider in it--I purged a keg and kegged the cider (without backsweetening, as I don't have my kegerator back in service yet), so it'll get some more time to age, which will only help it (since I did add about 2 lbs of sugar to this batch while it was fermenting).

So it's starting to look like I'm going to have the start of a nice pipeline going, just as soon as I get around to getting my kegerator back in service.

I've gotta say, I'm really liking the grainfather. It's really easy, even if it's not really automated, and it's super-nice if you're space limited.

After this batch, I may decide to have my water analyzed and start worrying about water additions and pH--but I might also just start mashing with camden-treated tap and sparging with RO, unless I'm going for something special.

[MadBrewer]

Hope it turns out well for ya. Sounds like a good beer for Houston.

[RayF]

Glad to see you are getting back at it! Seems to be contagious!

[Jon]

Thanks for all the well-wishes, and YES, IT FEELS GREAT TO BREW AGAIN!!!!!

But ugh, 80* cold tap water...yikes. I miss my damn-near RO water from the catskills that even in the height of summer was in the 60s! Waaaah! But some tubing, some hose clamps and I should be able to convert my immersion chiller into a pre-chiller, no problem. That should let me get down to pitching temps MUCH faster.

My only question is if it'll be better to start with just cold water and add ice after the temp drops some, or if I should start with ice water and maybe add more ice as it melts.

This should be a nice, sessionable beer. I pitched last night before bed (didn't rehydrate) when the wort was FINALLY sub 80*, and this morning it was down to 60*, so I kicked the temp of the wine fridge back up to 65*, which should let it hit 68-70* for some nice english character.

I'm probably going to have to invest in another fermentor (apparently only one managed to get packed and make the trip?), so I can brew on a weekly basis when I need to build my pipeline up--which also means I'll probably have to start brewing up some Belgians/Hefes as well (I know, how terrible!), since the wine fridge will only hold one fermentor at a time!

[Whamolagan]

The water in houston is good for porters, stouts and reds. Glad to see you are back to some AG brewing.

[Jon]

The water in houston is good for porters, stouts and reds. Glad to see you are back to some AG brewing.

Yeah, I looked through some people's water reports that they've posted various places online--and with all the alkalinity, calcium and magnesium, I figured that 1 lb of pale chocolate and 1 lb of C-120 should provide some decent buffering, and make the beer turn out ok.

I did add a little bit of lactic acid to the sparge water...just in case.

But this should be a nice, sessionable brown ale, with some decent english character and hopefully still some body, given the high mash temp. It's fermenting away at 70* in 65* ambient, so everything seems to be on track for this to get kegged up in a couple of weeks...just as soon as I clean out the kegerator and order parts for it (which I'll probably do this weekend...need to make sure I make a good list and don't leave anything out).

I'll probably try to brew again not this weekend, but next weekend. Maybe drop a big cream ale onto the S-04 yeast cake from this one.