Homebrewing Beer for My Friends
Yeast Starter for Witbier.
Smell that malted grain!. This was for our scottish spiced holiday ale. It's mostly Simpson's Golden Promise, which is a Scottish malt usually reserved for whiskey.
Me mashing in my combination mash tun / brewing kettle. I love mashing in a kettle, I can make very presise adjustments to temperature without changing my grain/water ratio, and it gives me the ability to stir the mash frequently without losing heat like in a cooler converted mash tun.
The secret is the stainless steel false bottom. Its basically a sturdy mesh that separates the "grain soup" from the spigot at the bottom. This allows me to collect the runoff with minimal clogging or. It's also critical to heating the mash tun, because it provides a buffer space so that nothing gets scorched from the flames.
We zested a dozen orages, tangerines and grapefruits for the witbier. I also used black pepper, coriander and chamomile flowers to give this Belgian ale its signature flavor.
This step is called sparging. basically, you splash 180F water onto the slightly cooler grain bed, while simultaneously running off the sweet wort at the spigot at the bottom of the kettle. You need to collect 6.5 gallons of wort (unfermented malt sugars), while never allowing the grainbed to dry. This requires matching the sparge water spashing rate with the runoff rate. You're feeling sleepy just reading this arent you? I'll stop.
We nailed the gravity on this scottish ale, this is preboil, and would indicate approximately 80% efficiency! yay!, After a 90 minute boil I think we were at 1.057 Original Gravity.
Three carboys, loaded up. From left to right: Wit in primary, Russian Imperial Milk Stout in secondary, Spiced Holiday Ale.