Transfers

Moved my Red and 5 gallons of cider into kegs yesterday. Expect to see an update on the taste of the beer next week. The cider will sit for a while. I still have close to 2.5 gallons on tap and 5 gallons sitting upstairs. I plan to start another 5 gallons of cider this weekend and hopefully brew a Belgian Blonde (Lefse Blonde from Northern Brewer).

Red Ale

So by request I am brewing a red ale. I ran to the homebrew shop on Saturday to pick up a kit. I went with a Brewer's Best kit for expedience as the shop was kind of busy. The kit came with a small can of extract, 2 lbs of light DME, 2 oz of Willamette hops and a sealed back of specialty grains, black patent and some crystal. I steeped the grains in a gallon and a half on the stove while I heated up 4 and a half gallons in the fryer. Once the steep was complete, I dumped the run off into the kettle. In no time I was boiling and added the malts. A few minutes later came the first 1 oz hop addition for 55 minutes. The last 5 minutes saw another hop addition along with a wirfloc tab. This was the first time I was using my new chilling system. I ran the IC with tap water until the temp was under 150 then I hooked the IC to a sump pump in a bucket of ice water. I ran the pump and returned the runnings back into the ice water. The result was 85 degree wort in about 15 minutes. Next time I'll use 4 gallons of ice and I should be able to get the wort down to below 80. I pitched 2 packs of hydrated Mutton's dry yeast. This worked real well on my sweet stout and I think that the higher cell count will help attenuate my beer better. I pitched at around 83 degrees. A bit warm but frankly cooler than I have ever done it and 8 hours earlier.