Had everything done and cleaned up well before dinner. OG was 1.068. I could taste a hint of grapefruit in the sample that I pulled. It remains to be seen whether I will taste any when I bottle.

Had everything done and cleaned up well before dinner. OG was 1.068. I could taste a hint of grapefruit in the sample that I pulled. It remains to be seen whether I will taste any when I bottle.

if its anyhting like limoncello, the alcohol will pull a lot of the oils out of the zest as it is produced in the fermenter.

I would drink that...

+1.

Come to me ye wild bugs...

OK.  So I brewed yesterday.  Here's how it went.

 

First I took the yeast out of the fridge.  The yeast came in a packet.  You break an inner nutrient packet and then it said that the packet should swell over a couple of hours time.  That is what happened.

 

Steeping the grains was pretty easy.  I divided them into two muslin bags and soaked them for 30 minutes.  Temperature stayed at a steady 160 degrees during this process.  My wife's thermometer worked pretty well.  The guy at the store said to run some water through the bags when done, but do not squeeze them.  This was pretty easy to accomplish with a colander.

 

I added the extract and brought it to a boil.  I also added the hops (in another muslin bag).  I boiled for an hour.  I used this time to sanitize the fermenting stuff.

 

After the boil I put the pot in an ice bath in the sink.  It took about 30 minutes to cool enough.  I removed the hop bag.

 

I combined the wort and water to 5 gallons, then added the yeast.  Then I had an accident.  As I was putting the airlock on I pressed too hard and pushed the o-ring down into the wort.  I had a hard time fishing to o-ring out, got pissed off, and just stuck my arm in and grabbed it.  So I may have screwed up this batch.  But hey, it got named.  Elbow Deep Dunkelweisen.  The lesson here is to put the airlock on the lid first, then put the lid on the fermenter.  Nothing I can do about it now and I'm not going to worry about it.

 

This morning I looked and did not notice much of any activity in the air lock.  It was pretty cool in the house overnight so I wonder if that is it.  I don't want to keep opening the thing up to check it (yes I will get a carboy).  I think that the yeast was good because the packet expanded as it said it should.  And I don't think that the wort was too hot when I added the yeast.  Any suggestions?

So this coming Saturday marks the 5th anniversary of this, my first batch of beer.  I guess that I am no longer a newb.  Gonna have to drink a homebrew to celebrate.

That beer actually turned out pretty good all things considered.  It was an extract kit and I still have the recipe.  Maybe this year I will convert it to all grain and brew it again to celebrate the 5 years.  Need to wait a few months so I can ferment warm.  Hmmmm.

I know what my next one is.  It's a coffee beer taking ideas from a couple of coffee beers that I have tried recently and really enjoyed.

The first is Carton Regular Coffee.  This is an imperial cream ale (12%) with coffee.  They wanted it to taste like a cup of regular coffee and I'll be damned if it doesn't.  So I will start with a big cream ale (7 - 8%).  What I don't want is the sweetness that the Carton has, so I will mash low in order for this thing to ferment dry.  This is also where the next beer comes in.  Southern Tier 2xPresso.  They added lemon and I really like what that did to the beer.  So I will add some lemon zest with the coffee.  For coffee I will use lighter roast.  Need to go to the roaster and find something.  Should be interesting.