Red Ale

Mix 5 oz of priming sugar with 2.5 cups of water and boil for 10 minutes. Add to bottling bucket, add Red Ale and bottle. I left behind a fair bit of beer in the secondary fermenter to make sure that I did not get too much yeast. As a result I got 3 bottles short of 2 cases.

Red Ale

Rack to secondary fermenter.
T = 68 F
FG = 1.012
Adjusted FG = 1.013

Looks good! The specific gravity is a bit high, the expected value was 1.008 to 1.010. The fermentation did go very quickly, it was really done by Tuesday night, only about 48 hours after pitching. On the other hand, there was no shortage of yeast at the bottom of the primary fermenter. I had it in the back room for the fermentation and the back room is a little cold. As the final temperature indicates it was probably below 70 F throughout the primary fermentation. We'll see.

Red Ale

6:00 am - fermentation well under way.

Brewer's Best - Red Ale

Ok, I'm starting to brew again, using a boxed recipe, Brewer's Best Red Ale.

I'm using a big, 30 qt, brew kettle for this one. Therefore, instead of the usual add the malt to 2 gal for the boil, then add 3 gal to cool, I'm doing all 5 gal in the one brew pot from the start. Also, before I used municipal water so I could assume it was chlorinated, but now I've got well water. All the more reason to boil it all.

So I start with the crushed grains in the bag provided and heat the water from cold for about 30 minutes until at 1:20 the water temperature is 165 F. By 1:35 I notice that the water temperature is over 170, though I tried to control it, so the grains come out. Drained and squeezed the bag. Put the heat back on and let it boil.

2:05 boil starts, add Malt (2 lbs. Munton's light dry, 3.3 lbs Cooper's light liquid)

2:20 boil up again, add bittering hops (Willamette, 1 oz, 4.5% AA).

3:15 Add finishing hops, (Willamette, 1 oz, 4.5% AA).

3:20 Pull brew pot off of flame and start to cool. I don't have an immersion chiller so the brew pot is sitting in a tub of cold water. It's a cold day outside so it should cool down fairly quickly.

4:42 Following the instructions on the Danstar "Nottingham" dry yeast packet I rehydrate the yeast at 86 F.

5:00 Gently stir the rehydrating yeast. Looks good. Nice even dsitribution of yeast throughout the water. Yeast temperature is 86 F, Wort temperature is 90 F, add a little wort to the yeast and wait. Meanwhile the original gravity is 1.040. Corrected O.G. = 1.044

5:11 The thermometer in the yeast still says 86 F and I've added a lot more wort. I think I need to check my thermometers, do they all agree? In any case, pitch the yeast, add the airlock and seal the fermentor.

Note: I started with 6 gallons in the original boil and ended with just 5 gallons in the fermentor.