Finally getting back around to homebrewing again was a very rewarding experience. I made a pact with myself to try and brew 12 beers in 2009, one every month. So far I’ve only brewed in January and April, and I’m considering brewing again this upcoming weekend to make up for February, and maybe doing two in May. We’ll see how all that goes. I purchased some equipment to make my brewing operation more self contained, including a grain mill and a Turkey Fryer burner for outdoor boiling. Both have proved to be very helpful in shortening my brew day — no more driving to a friend’s place to use his grinder, and no more waiting 90+ minutes for 6.5 gallons of wort to boil on my very weak kitchen stovetop.
I was able to get my hands on a pure Fantome Yeast Culture from a friend and I have been looking forward to using it as the Primary yeast strain on a blonde beer, which I finally got around to doing several months later. I spent a long time stepping this Yeast up in a starter, using some of it for secondary on another beer, and the yeast seemed quite viable when I pitched it. I took the grain bill from the “Wild Brews” book, which gives a recipe suggested to use when fermenting with 100% Brettanomyces yeast, and adjusted it slightly for what I had laying around Hop and Grain-wise. I ended up with:
13# Maris Otter / 1# Acid Malt / 2# Wheat
1 oz Centennial at 90 mins / 1 oz Cascade at 10 mins
90 Minute Mash @ 148 degrees / 90 Minute Boil
Pitched 750ml of Brett slurry at 70 degrees
Very smooth brew day in all, came it at around 5.25 hours including a longer mash and boil than I usually do. Vigorous fermentation with high Krausen at 24 hours, lots of gas being kicked out of this already. Fermenting nicely in my kitchen next to my Mead that’s been going for about a month.
As usual I’ll try to post results as they come in. I plan on primarying this for 2 weeks at room temp and then conditioning it a bit colder for 2 more weeks before bottling it with priming sugar and letting it age for a while. I’m still trying to figure out what to brew next – I’m thinking of working on my first Lager.
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