Stars & Bars Brewing Co.: Maple Nut Brown Ale Brew Day, 10-19-2013

Friday, October 25, 2013

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!