Brew Day: All-Grain Russian River Pliny the Elder clone

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Inspired by 757Hokie83's brew day thread.

The pictures are of nearly every step from my brew day on 8/23 over several hours. It also includes transferring another beer to the secondary and filling some bottles from a keg and all of my brew day mistakes (it's rare that I have no mistakes).

It may take me awhile to get all of the pictures up, but I'll post them as I get to them.

This beer has won best craft beer in America 5 or 6 times straight. I can't get my hands on one, so decided to brew it.

Recipe is from Zymurgy magazine July/Aug 2014 page 33. Most of it is in the below screenshot.

 

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Ingredients

 

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pictures too big? Not sure how to resize easily.

 

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Figured it out. Please delete my prior two posts. Won't let me do it.


Ingredients

 

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Most of the equipment and tools

 

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That copper coil is a massive (too large) 1/2" 50 foot immersion chiller.

 

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Brew house. Please try and ignore that ugly electric lawnmower... it will be in nearly every picture.

The gunk on the floor is all from brewing. The occasional boil over.

 

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Step 1 is to clean and assemble the mashtun with false bottom. I use a 10 gallon igloo cooler, and the false bottom kit is from adventures in homebrewing (Homebrewing, Beer Brewing, Wine Making, and Home Brewing Supplies). I use some cheap oxygen based cleaner for all cleaning on brew day.

Green scrubby

After rinsing, assemble false bottom

I add hot water to keep the mashtun temperature higher prior to adding strike water

 

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Filling up aluminium turkey fryer to heat up the strike water. Some nice old stains in there... hasn't been used to fry a turkey for at least 4 years, so there is no oil deposits. It just looks ugly.

Heating up the strike water. yes, you see propane in-doors (garage). I keep it as well ventilated as possible, but it's always too windy outside to keep a flame going.

 

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Software I used to calculate the water needed. I did something wrong though.. error will be seen later.

 

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Sanitizer time. When ever I need to be very clean, I dip all tools and my hands in this bucket of sanitizer. Star San is rinse-free. Any time I need to touch the yeast or post boil wort, it's time to use the sanitizer.

 

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I have some down time while the strike water is heating up. Now it's time to transfer a Saison I brewed a few weeks ago into the secondary.

The yeast I used ferments at a high temperature. It was in my laundry room to stay warm. The rubber stopper wouldn't stay in, so I had to duct tape it to the carboy.

Moved it two floors down to the basement which is where I will condition it. Also set the basement thermostat to the temperature I intend to ferment the beer I'm making on 8/23.

brrr

That's my last post for now. Have to run to the airport.

 

[NCChiFan]

Nice, keep it up, I'm fascinated to see how Home Brewing works, and too lazy to youtube it.

 

[Cobrabit]

Nice setup and pictures so far. I'll be following along closely. Your and 757's thread for all-grain and my thread from several months back on extract should show those that are looking to get involved with home brewing what it involves and see what point they'd like to get started at.

 

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Nice setup and pictures so far. I'll be following along closely. Your and 757's thread for all-grain and my thread from several months back on extract should show those that are looking to get involved with home brewing what it involves and see what point they'd like to get started at.

Actually it was yours i was thinking of. I forgot we already had an all-grain here.

 

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Back to the brewing part.

First mistake: While I was away moving things around, I overshot my strikewater temperature. Target was 164F.

It's an easy fix though... just let it cool down.



Drain out that hot water I added to prepare for strike water

I milled the 15.2 lbs of grain at the homebrew store.

 

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I dumped the strike water into the mashtun, let it cool, then added in all of the grain. Some say to stir while you add, but I never do. Just stir very well after all of its in there to ensure it's all wetted well. I target 1.25 to 1.33 water/grain ratio.

Target mash temperature is 152F for 60 minutes. Nailed it! Higher temps give you sweeter beer and lower temps give you dryer beer.

Started my timers. 60 minutes for the mash and mix every 15 minutes.

 

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Stir bar and aluminum foil in sanitizer bucket while I boil some water for the yeast rehydration. Forgot to take a picture of the measuring cup, but it's 2 cup capacity and sits in a plastic container with ice to cool it down after the boil.

 

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Missed this picture of me getting the strike water temperature set before adding grains. Sorry about this being out of order, but I don't have permission to edit prior posts.

 

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Weighing out the hops. It's a 10 dollar battery operated scale. Well worth the small investment.

This recipe calls out for 3 hops (5 oz of Simcoe, 6 oz of Columbus, and 2 oz of Centennial) added at various times during and after the boil. Below are those just going in the boil. The remainder are used for dryhopping later.

Also weighed out some corn sugar called for in the recipe.