For our second brew we chose a Red Ale. We again used an ingredient kit by True Brew.
Also again, our documentation wasn't that great, seeing as we were merely following the insructions provided to us with the kit itself. From memory:
Ingredients
3.3 lbs. (1 can) Hopped Light Liquid Malt Extract
3.3 lbs. (1 can) Unhopped Light LME
4 oz. Melanoidin Malt Grain (2o Lovibond)
1 oz. Mt. Hood Hop Pellets
1 packet Munton's Dried Ale Yeast
5 oz. Dextrose (priming sugar)
Brew Method
July 27th, 2007
Placed the cans of LME in a hot water bath to soften the extract, kept in water until time of use.
Boiled 1.5 gallons of tap water.
After coming to a boil, the heat was turned off, and the grains were steeped aggressively for 30 minutes.
Removed grains, returned heat to boil again. Once boiled, heat was turned off again.
Added both cans of LME, stirred until dissolved. Returned to boil.
Mixture foamed, reduced heat. Foam subsided. Restored heat, foamed again. Reduced heat, foam subsided. Repeated for a total of four times to achieve hot break.
Turned off heat again, added 0.5 oz. of hops.
Boiled/stirred for 30 minutes before adding remainder of hops for two more minutes of boiling.
Turned off heat, placed boil pot directly into ice bath to achieve cold break.
After wort had cooled, violently poured wort into fermenter to aerate well. Held off on pouring the hot break, cold break, and hop remnants into the fermenter. Washed boil pot, rinsed, and poured the wort back in, and then back again into the fermenter to really aerate it.
Filled the fermenter to five gallons with tap water.
Hydrometer reading was 1.040, but as with the pale ale, we neglected to take temperature into account. Temp was probably around 90o F, making it possibly about 1.044.
Yeast was rehydrated earlier than the pale ale, given lots of time to do its thing. Temperature at time of pitch was again unknown.
Fermentation
Sat in Mike's basement for three weeks undisturbed.
Fermentation began within 8 hours of pitching and died down after three days. However, it appears that temperature fluctuations caused fermentation to pick up again at some points. Even on bottling day there were bubbles coming out of the airlock.
Bottling
August 17th, 2007
Mixed 5 oz. dextrose priming sugar into 1 cup of boiling water. Dissolved, cooled.
Final gravity reading was 1.020. Predicted per ingredient kit is 1.012 - 1.014. ABV = 3.1%.
Upon opening the fermenter, we were greeted again with the acetaldehyde smells. This was a seriousWTF?? moment. However it was much much less than with the pale ale. There is hope...
Began racking into the bottling bucket, and poured priming sugar solution in. This might have been a bad idea, as it splashed in the beer, which could introduce more oxygen and potentially oxidize the beer in the bottles. Ideally we want no disturbance when racking.
The siphon got clogged with trub toward the last few bottles. We got it unclogged but needed to restart the siphon. Potential contamination?
Successfully bottled 23 x 22 oz. Bottles.
Stored in Mike's basement.
Tasting
September 1st, 2007
Tried a bottle. It appeared crystal clear in the bottle, but poured to extreme haze. Tasted gross, just like the Pale Ale, though not as bad. Still a dump. Thinking maybe it's pitching the yeast too warm.
September 5th, 2007
The extreme haze in the previous tasting was chill haze, due to improper straining of cold break when transferring to the fermenter. We tried this bottle uncooled. Being 22oz bottles, they pour to two glasses. The first glass was crystal clear, with a decent two-finger head. The second glass.... not so good. Very opaque, seems stuff got kicked up between pours. The aroma was very bad. Hint of apple with what can only be described as bad dog breath. However, the taste wasn't terrible. It didn't taste like shit, so much as shitty beer. Which is kinda good, cuz it still tasted like beer. See how it fares in subsequent tastings...
Notes
Get a goddamn thermometer.
Get a strainer.
Be more meticulous with note-taking.
No more plain tap water. Pre-boil any and all water going into the fermenter.
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