Sunday, January 11, 2009

Once more, with feeling

Yup... That last batch went down the drain. I was nothing but brownish-red hoppy water.

So upward and onward!

Or... Bash my head against that wall one more time!

I prefer to be optimistic. I started a new all-grain batch on New Year's Day. This is an Irish Red Ale; this one again, but all-grain instead.

More later.

OK... It's later. (i.e. 24 is over.)

This time I was a lot pickier about the OG of the wort before I sealed things up in the fermenter. The last all-grain attempt gave my an OG of only 1.036 or so. A nice finishing gravity, perhaps, but not a good place to start! This time I was still a little light, but 1.045ish isn't bad. I just racked to the secondary and the SG was 1.008ish. The finishing gravity should have been 1.011 or so, but this should be fine. A little light, but still drinkable. A nice "session" beer.

(Of course, the question really is: Why aren't I getting more efficiency? I think that I'm simply not using enough grain and not giving it enough time in the tun. Easy problems to fix.)