Maple Nut Brown Ale Update

Glenn, Dad and I racked the Maple Nut Brown Ale to the secondary fermenter on Sunday. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of the Grade A Dark maple syrup, boiled in two cups of water for 10 minutes. Then cool it down and the mixture to the fermenter with the beer. We decided to up it to 1 full cup of maple syrup. It won't make a huge difference, but we will know its there. Good news is that the yeast starter did its job and made beer. The biggest surprise was that it did more than we expected. The SG was 1.042 instead of 1.056 like the recipe showed. The FG ended up being 1.002. That's a .040 drop like the recipe said it should be. That means the beer is 5.2% which was the target ABV on the recipe. Perfect! So now the beer will sit in secondary until Sunday, then it will be kegged and carbonated for a week. We will tap the keg shortly after. Until then, cheers!

Terrible photo of Mike racking the beer to the secondary fermenter

Another photo of Mike's arm racking the beer to the secondary fermenter

Beer looks and smell awesome

Maple Nut Brown Ale Brew Day, 10-19-2013

Saturday, October 19th was our brew day for a Maple Nut Brown Ale. This should make for a great seasonal Fall beer. There is even CT Grade A Dark Maple Syrup as one of the ingredients. We also used the 3 ounces of our own, homegrown Galena hops. 

This is the second time we used our 3 tier brew stand. The new burners and gas manifold worked flawlessly. We did not hit our target original specific gravity. We came in at 1.040 instead of our target of 1.056. After retracing our steps, I was able to figure out what went wrong.  Firstly, I broke Brewer Rule # 1. I, as the head brewer, started drinking before the yeast was pitched. Big no-no. It will not happen again. Two, we were low on the strike water temperature. I didn't account for the MLT temperature as well as the temp of the grains. This dropped the temperature under the goal of 152° and we were not able to correct it. That did not allow the enzymes to convert the starches to a fermentable sugar and dropped the OG. And lastly, I sparged too quickly. I read recently, that the sparge should take almost a hour. We were done in half that time at most. This will also drop the available sugars in the wort because there was not sufficient time to rinse the sugars into the wort. 

My hope is that the kick ass starter I made will go ape shit on the wort and bring the ABV up. It will still be a decent, drinkable beer, just not the target 5.3% ABV on the recipe. I'm OK with chalking this up to a learning experience. And I'm happy that I was able to figure out my errors and figure out exactly what I did wrong. That's all for now. Please enjoy the video and pics below. Cheers!

Our yeast starter spinning away

Starting the sparge

Sparge arm dripping away

Glenn checking out the progress

Mark and Dave hanging out, enjoying a beer

First wort hopping with 3 ounces of our own Galena hops

3 ounces of homegrown hops

A hand delivered gift from Ray. AWESOME beer!!!

Boiling away

Hoppy, hoppy, hoppy goodness post brew

Post brew day bonfire in the backyard. Nice end to a good brew day. 

Brew Stand Completed?

Glenn and I attached the two new burners to the brew stand and I ran the hoses after testing the burners. These things are serious. It sounds like a launch pad for the space shuttle with them lit. The original parts mistakenly had a 0.5 psi regulator supplying the manifold. Oh no no. That was painfully pathetic. Luckily, Big Dan was able to swap it out for a 10 psi regulator. Holy crap Batman! Much better. All three burners run without any noticeable flow issues. I can't wait to brew in a few weeks. I think the only thing we need to add now is a transfer pump, so we can move wort or water around safely, especially to the top tier. Lifting 5 or more gallons of hot water almost over your head is probably a bad idea.  Here's a few pics. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by. 

The completed stand

Close up of the control manifold 

Another view of the manifold and hoses