Continuing my ‘c-hop’ obsession I came up with a recipe using all C-hops in an American Pale Ale. I started with the Little Creatures Pale Ale recipe from Beer and Brewer magazine, and modified the grain bill quantity to end up with a beer that is about 5% ABV, plus change the hops around to use all C-Hops.
I was going by feel with this one really, as I needed a recipe to brew for my daughters 3rd birthday coming up in 2.5 weeks. Cutting it fine a little bit, but should have enough time to get a decent beer on tap for the party.
Anyway, the recipe is:
BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com Recipe: C-BOMB APA American Pale Ale Brewer: Me Asst Brewer: Style: American Pale Ale TYPE: All Grain Taste: (30.0) Recipe Specifications -------------------------- Boil Size: 32.05 l Post Boil Volume: 30.16 l Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l Bottling Volume: 22.50 l Estimated OG: 1.052 SG Estimated Color: 12.5 EBC Estimated IBU: 36.1 IBUs Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 % Est Mash Efficiency: 90.8 % Boil Time: 60 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ Amt Name Type # %/IBU 4.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 75.5 % 0.50 kg Munich I (Weyermann) (14.0 EBC) Grain 2 9.4 % 0.50 kg Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (3.9 EBC) Grain 3 9.4 % 0.30 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC) Grain 4 5.7 % 25.00 g Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 22.3 IBUs 1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 6 - 20.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 7 4.9 IBUs 20.00 g Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 8 8.9 IBUs 1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 15.0 mins) Other 9 - 30.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 10 0.0 IBUs 30.00 g Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 11 0.0 IBUs 1.2 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 Yeast 12 - Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge Total Grain Weight: 5.30 kg ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temperat Step Time Mash In Add 16.82 l of water at 70.5 C 64.4 C 75 min Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun, , 23.54l) of 75.6 C water Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Milling:
I measured and milled the grain for this last night, to save time today. It worked fine, it was one less thing to do today. I was in no rush of course.
Mashing:
Today I plumbed in the March pump and let it recirculate for nearly the entire mash, to try and clean up the wort going into the kettle a bit. It sure did work well!
Here’s a video at the start of the mash, I turned on the pump after letting the mash rest for 15 mins for conversion (not really required I guess). Note how cloudy the wort is at this point. Quite murky and messy.
I was mashing low-ish (ended up a few degrees high) which called for a 75min mash. I let the pump run for a full hour, and near the end of the hour, the wort was noticeably clearer:
Whoops, stirred the mashbed up a little there when I moved the return out of the wort! I did end up using my mash return bowl as well, it was just sitting in the mash so I need to fix it into a better position next time.
I was doing a single infusion mash with batch sparge, and because I was draining the mashtun prior to the second batch sparge, I noticed that there was some channeling down the side of the grain bed. According to BeerSmith the mash efficiency was still just above 78% which is nothing to be unhappy about – but something I’ll need to keep an eye on next time. Hopefully there won’t be a next time, hopefully i’ll be fly-sparging!
Aside from that, everything went well. No issues to speak of, certainly nothing that will affect the beer too much! The wort was super malty and tasty going into the kettle, and a lot clearer than it has been in the past!
I was wary of recirculating too fast, so it was at a relative trickle the entire time it was recirculating, there was no stuck mash or anything to be worried about. No rice gulls used at all, and even used some wheat in the mash (though only a relative small amount).
Pumps:
Of note, the covers I have for my march pumps cause the pump to run quite hot. I’ll have to investigate some other options such as PVC pipe or some Stainless.
My March pumps were 815PL from Tesuco in the USA (covered elsewhere) with the base, so I simply sat them on the base with the input and output horizontal. I had no real problem priming, I would open all valves to let air out, and wort would run into the pump. Switch the pump on once, and it was done. Wort was flowing. In one instance, the return of the mashtun was under the level of the wort, so naturally air would not flow out, so of course wort would not flow in. I lifted the return out of the wort to let the air out, and the wort ran into the pump. In another instance, a quick ‘pulse’ of the pump cleared the air.
Boil:
No real issues, again. I used the pump this time to underlet the wort into the kettle, just because I could! It was all OK, and it allowed the wort to run into the kettle faster than before. Wort was beautiful, almost clear, golden colour into the kettle.
As this was normally a work day (I’m home with my missus looking after my daughter this week who had her tonsils out last Friday – she’s well enough that I could brew today before going back to work tomorrow) my phone was on silent all day; I run a brew timer app on my phone, but because it was on silent, I missed the 15 min addition. No biggie, added it with 5 mins to go, and extended the boil 10 mins. Won’t hurt, might mean a touch extra bitterness, but I only used a fairly small amount of bittering hops anyway.
I didn’t whirlpool with the pump though as my test yesterday showed that it wouldn’t have worked very well in this case. I did a whirlpool by hand, but again I guess I didn’t leave it long enough to settle. Had a bit of a blockage.
Chilling:
Not bad, wasted a hell of a lot of water again though as we still don’t have rainwater tanks here. At the end of the chill there was a bit of a hop blockage, so I needed to get the last few litres out with the auto-siphon.
Prior to filling the kettle with wort, I raised up the pickup from the bottom of the kettle to hopefully prevent a blockage and allow the wort to run out pretty quickly, and this was OK, except boil volumes were down (again). I pushed the pickup back into place once the wort level was low, but this was where I then quickly needed to use the auto-siphon.
Yeast Starter:
Followed my normal Yeast Starter regimen, I had 100mL of solid yeast in the fridge (I have lab-grade bottles with graduations, it was actually 100mL when settled out!) of Wyeast 1056 from a previous starter, so I used it in this beer. I made a 1.5L starter on Monday morning, but my Tuesday morning typically it had gone nuts and overflowed with good high-krausen yeast. So much of it! Anyway, I let it run and put it in the fridge last night to settle. This morning, decanted and tasted the spent wort – all OK. Pulled a couple of litre from the kettle today prior to the boil, boiled it on the stove for 15 min, then chilled in the sink. Added the yeast.
About half hour ago, it looked like this, nice krausen happening again:
Nearly ready to pitch! Just don’t want to forget the 02 in this one, as I’m short on time!
Edit: Well, I just went to check on the temp of the wort – and it was down around 24c, so decided to pitch. The 5L flask was full of yeast-krausen foam! Gave it a stir, added 60 seconds of oxygen to the main Wort, and pitched the yeast. The pitching rate is high, there would have been a good 3bn cells in 21L of wort, where only 2.2bn are required. Should be going nuts inside 24 hrs 
Improvements:
Mashed in at 11am, clean up done by 4pm. So, 5hrs total. The pumps saved me time, probably half hour or more as they were doing a continuous vorlauf and meant the fluid transfer into the kettle was nice and fast.
So, the pumps are a fantastic addition, worth every cent. I need to get my electric HLT and brew-stand going, so I can do things like put it on timer – it certainly would be awesome to fill the HLT at night, then have it switch on and heat the water to the exact temp – keep it there, ready to fill the MLT. Fill the MLT, and mash-in before breakfast Eat breakfast and shower while mashing, and then fill the kettle soon after. That sure would be nice 
Today with all the messing around I didn’t mash-in until 11am, even though there wasn’t that much to do.
Fair brew-day.
