So I had purchased a bunch of grain from morebeer.com to get brewing for the next few weekends. I have a bunch of empty kegs. 8) WIth that I decided to brew my favorite of them all the Harrison Lager. Not sure what I like about it but I do like it. Ill will be doing a review on this beer as I’m using a yeast starter I pulled from a sample back in December. Here is the link to the post on the yeast.

Pulled and weighted out the grain and grind ed them up while I was collecting my RO water needed for the brew. After collecting about 5 gallons of water I had stopped for the night. I ended up adding 1 g of Calcium chloride and 3 grams of Gypsum just to ensure there is something in the water. I have heard its bad to leave straight RO water in stainless. Here is the recipe.

Next morning woke up, topped off the water to 7 gallons and added in the rest of the brewing salts. I set the Anvil to 150F(~65C) and went to the store. By the time I got back I was ready to dough in. Added the grains and started in on the 60 minute mash. About 30 minutes into the mash, I stopped the pump and gave the grain bed a stir. I have never tested if it helps but it doesn’t harm so I continue to do it. 8)

With about 10 minutes left in the mash I started to crank up the Anvil to 168F(~75C) 100%. to mash out. Pulled the basket after it hit the 168F(~75c) for a few minutes and started the draining. Cranked the Anvil up to 212F(100C) 100% while I let the grain bag drain. After it stopped dripping I pulled the basket and put at an angle to help drain off more wort. Gave the bag a good squeeze after a little time of the basket tilted and pulled the basket. When the wort got to about 200F(93C) I pulled the hot break off about 2 cups worth and waited for the boil. Pulled a gravity sample of 1.040 SF, only one point off from my expected.

Once boil started I added in the hops per the recipe. Something I do that I typically don’t note, during the boil process Ill give the hops a swirl in the hop basket to ensure I get good oil transfer. You do see the oil build up in the hop basket. Once I see that I give the wort a easy swirl around which pulls the oil out of the basket. About 15 minutes left in the boil I added in the wort chiller and got everything setup to chill the wort. After the boil I pulled a wort sample and I quickly cooled the wort down to 68F(20C). OG came in at 1.045 SF. After the wort was cooled I transferred over to my fermentor and pitched the yeast. As I was transferring the beer I had my air pump with HEPA filter pushing air into the brew. I did decant the yeast starter and tasted the decanted beer, tasted good, so should be good there. Placed the fermentor in my chamber and set at 52F(~11C).