Brew the 3rd, Scottish 80/

Another kit form Great Fermentations.  I’m getting better at deciphering their instructions into the real instructions.  They only have 10 steps from start to finish and for me it’s closer to 40 steps.  There is a lot of assumed knowledge that I’m sure is just rote for the more experience brewer, but I still have to make an expanded checklist.

The brewing itself went just fine.  I was very happy for the sunny morning and relatively low wind.  This batch was in done in the driveway again after the hop smell almost drove Julie out of the house last time.  One nice thing about the cooler temps is it makes chilling the wort go much more quickly.

Today was my first time using a dry malt extract instead of the liquid or syrup version.  I think I actually like it better.  It’s hard adding a powder to hot liquid, it always clumps.  However, it clumps on the top instead of settling to the bottom like the denser liquid extract.  I like this because it’s much less likely to scorch on the bottom of the pot.  Depending on the final result, I may switch to dry extract for future batches because it was that much easier for me to use.  I also suspect that it is more viable in long term storage which would allow me to stock up if I ever found a sale.

I had one minor misstep today.  I must have hit the stop/start button on the timer twice when I started my boil.  I looked up after a little reading in my book to see how much time was left and I saw the timer wasn’t running. At that point I just had to guess how much time had passed and hope I wasn’t too far off.  There shouldn’t be too much difference even if I was off by as much as ten minutes. 

Sanitation and cleanup went fairly well.  I’m getting more comfortable with my processes and workspaces.  By using the washer and dryer as a table top and the deep sink as my sanitation station I can do most of my work without messing up the kitchen and wrecking the house with my projects.

Everything looked and smelled great as it went into the fermenter.   Ben gave me a tip that I can actually get my yeast started a day or two ahead.  I’m going to have to remember that because it was a big help to me today.  I was getting carbon dioxide bubbles out of the fermenter less than 8 hours after I put the yeast in. 

The temperature in the part of the basement that I have set aside for the project seems to be sitting right around 68 degrees. It just so happens the thermostat for the house is set to 68 and it seems to be pretty consistent.  At least that new furnace is good for something.

Pictures of my fancy outdoor brewing station ;-)

Original Gravity - 1.050
Expected final Gravity - 1.014
Est ABV, 4.8%
Est IBU, 19.8