William the Bastard – Brew Day 1

Brew Day 1 – December 27, 2010

This beer is being made using the Cream Ale kit from The Brewhouse and “hacking” it by creating a mini batch of wort and adding it to the kit.

Other than what is different from the mini wort batch we have modified the kit by discarding the dry yeast and using Wyeast 1098 Brit Ale.

To hack this kit we have purchased 1/2 lb of dark crystal malt and 1/4 lb of chocolate malt. The first thing we did was measure out the malt and add it in approximately 4 ounce batches to a heavy plastic freezer bag. We then used a standard rolling-pin to crush the malt within the bag. You don’t want this to make the malt powdered at all – just enough to break the husk.

We then added all the malts to grain bags and tied them off to prepare them to be added to the heated water. These were set aside.

All equipment being used in the days efforts was then thoroughly cleaned and sanitized using Diversol. This was done while we had 4 liters of water being heated on the stove.

Once the temperature was at 160 F (71 C) we submerged the grain bags in the water. Heat on the element was adjusted to maintain this temperature for 30 minutes.

We stirred the mixture lightly every 10 minutes.

At the 30 minute mark we removed the grain bags from the water and placed them aside for cleanup. The pot of heated wort was then taken outside (it is winter and cold here) and placed in the snow. This is to bring the temperature down to room temperature (approximately 21 C) and is known as “cold crashing”.

Once the temperature was about 21 C the mixture was brought back in the house to the “brewing area”.

Next we added the pH buffer to the primary before pouring the remaining 4 liters of water into the primary. We then added the wort from the beer kit. We were sure to pour this fairly aggressive to adequately aerate the wort. The more oxygen in the mixture the better the yeast will ferment the beer.

The last thing to add to the mixture is the liquid yeast package. We had “smacked the pack” about 4 hours earlier to break the nutrient pack and release it into the dormant yeast. This starts activating the yeast. We poured the yeast over the top of the wort. You do not stir the yeast at this point because you don’t want to fast track it to the bottom of the bucket.

The lid was then placed loosely on top of the primary and we hoisted it up on to an elevated surface so that when we go to rack the beer to the secondary we don’t need to move the primary and disturb the sediment that will have accumulated at the bottom. We covered the whole thing with a blanket and there it will sit until Brew Day 2 where we rack it to the secondary (i.e. glass carboy).

Brew Day 2 should occur in approximately 3-5 days or whenever the initial fermentation has settled down from the “aggressive” stage.

Data recorded:

Datecode on kit: 20101116
Datecode on yeast: 20101116
Original gravity (OG): 1.054
Temperature: 16 C (61 F)
Temp adjusted OG : 1.054

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