Saturday, January 29, 2011
It's alive!!
Lol yes. Finally, I think the yeast freezing worked. Washed Safale US-05 yeast from the India Mud Ale yeast cake, filled up to 40ml mark on the Falcon tube, then topped up another 5ml of glycerin. This time, the contents froze solid, rather than remaining gooey in the freezer. Took it out after 1 day and added malt extract to proof it, and it's alive! So yes. I added too much glycerin the last time. There's hope for cost savings after all!
In a bid to de-muddify (what a word .. I made it up) the India Mud Ale, I crash cooled the entire secondary fermenter to less than 10C in a tub of ice and added 2 teaspoons of gelatin in a cup of water. Waited for one day, then added 10.3g of Polyclar VT (polyvinylpolypyrrolidone). It's looking clearer now, but even then I have reservations about the thinness of the taste.
Anyway, I'm gearing up to do the last brew of the month today. It'll be a orange honey hefeweizen, made from scratch (extract only, no kits). The bill:
| Brewer: | - | Email: | - |
| Beer: | Orange honey wheat | Style: | Weizen/Weissbier |
| Type: | Extract | Size: | 18 liters |
| Color: |
| 3 HCU (~3 SRM) |
|  |
| Bitterness: | 11 IBU |
| OG: | 1.052 | FG: | 1.010 |
| Alcohol: | 5.4% v/v (4.3% w/w) |
| Boil: | minutes | SG 1.049 | 19 liters |
500g Pilsner extract
1kg 800g Wheat extract
500g Honey
50g Light dry malt extract |
| Hops: | 20g Hallertauer (5.5% AA, 30 min.) |
Yeast used will be Wyeast 3944. I have a small grouse about this ultra-expensive liquid yeast. It came in a 'Smack Pack', where there is a smaller packet housed inside which I'm supposed to 'smack' with my hands, so as to release the nutrients/sugar and get the yeast going. What I didn't know was that there are TWO smaller packets inside - one with malt, the other with nutrients. And I think the Smack Pack was made for huge Caucasian hands, because I only managed to smack open the darned nutrient pack. I only found out because the outer pack didn't bloat up as it was supposed to, and when I opened the outer pack to use the yeast, I found the stupid malt inner pack still intact!!
Anyway, I made up a 2L starter using 100g dried malt and c. 150g wheat malt, and the yeast still revived ok. Phew. Also made 2 agar slants using the leftovers, but I'll talk about this next time. The starter is happily bubbling now. I'll probably use only 1.5L or less to innoculate the batch, so as to encourage more phenol production.
I have a dried and preserved mandarin (from the wedding .. one of those chinese customary thingies) which I'll chop up and add to the boil for 5 mins. Hope this turns out decent enough!
Wenky
7:40 AM
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