Homebrew Batch 003

Last Saturday I brewed my 1st partial mash which was an Oktoberfest with guest brewer Gaylord Fokker. It was also my 1st attempt to move the brew process outside. For those of you who don’t live in the Northeast, this time of year gets quite cold at times. Conditions where 30 degrees F, 15mph winds with light snow.
Ingredients

• German Munich Malt
• German Pilsner Malt
• German Vienna Malt
• German Caramunich Malt
• Belgian Aromatice Malt
• 1 pkg Light Dried Malt Extract
• 3.3 lbs Malt Extract
• 2 ounces Hallertau Hops
• 1 Oktoberfest Smack Pack Yeast

We started around 11am by getting the 5 gallons of water to 170 degrees, our mash temps needed to stay between 150-155 degrees, we did this in a make shift double boiler. My dad cooks chowder a few times a year and has a nice 16 gallon kettle, but I thought by using the double boiler method that this would help regulate the heat a little easier. I was wrong. We where able to maintain our mash temps for the entire 60 minutes, but the next issue was bringing the wort up to a boil. Which wasn’t happening!

We ended up taking the burner from the chowder kettle and moved it directly underneath the brew pot, removing it from the dual boiler, this helped considerably except that the wind was now a factor but at least we got a boil. Once we added all the extracts we struggled to maintain a boil and had to make a few decisions on the length of boil time as we missed a good 20 minutes worth and needed to extend our boil to compensate for lose of time. This recipe was estimated around 3.5 hours of labor, but it took us about 5 hours total and that included transferring the wort into the 6.5 gallon carboy.

Yes I said carboy.. No more plastic fermenters for me. In fact this batch I am using a 6 gallon carboy for the secondary fermentation. 48 hours later this batch is very active, a lot more active than my 1st 2 homebrews. Seeing this is an Oktoberfest, I am allowing ample time for this batch to ferment, so we will not be tasting this one for a couple months.