Wow it has been some time since I have been brewing. I ended up getting a new job and coming on spring and my daughter graduating just haven’t had the time but when I saw HomeBrewHappyHour.com have this kit I had to try it out. The day before I got all the water together so I can start first thing in the morning. I go the grains all milled and the salts in the water.
@06:01 I started the mashing by adding in the grains and starting the timer. Hooked up my pump to circulate as I’m doing a minimal mash on this one. Also added in 10ml of the acid before adding the grains. Took a PH of 4.1 which I can’t calibrate my meter and think its way off. About 15 minutes into the mash I gave it a good stir since we are doing a quick mash. At the end of the boil I turned the Anvil up to 168F(75.5C) to Mash out. @06:43 hit the 168F(75.5C) and waited a few minutes before pulling the grains. Pulled the grains and allowed to drain and after the draining slowed down I put the basket at an angle and start to give the bag a good squeeze to get out all those sugars as this is a bigger beer and want to make sure I keep the numbers close to the instructions. Pull the grain basket and cleaned up and pulled a wort sample of 1.057SG with 6.4 Gallons of wort.
@ about 07:25 i started the boil and added in the first hop addition, had to prepare all the hops as there was a bunch on this one. had a 15 min addition and that is when I added in the sugar as well. At the end of the boil I pulled a wort sample and chilled down to about 180F(82C) before tossing in the hops. Sample came in at 1.068SG. After about 10 minutes sitting at 180F(82C) I continued to cool down the wort to as cold as I can get it. @08:55 hit 72F(22C) and transfered over to my fermentor and pitched the yeast hooked up my air lock and let it go. I don’t have a refrigerator any more for my fermentor as my refrigerator is dead. Its cold in my basement so should be good.
@16:45 on 4-30-26 I added in the dry hops which was a lot so I ended up bagging them up very loosely in multi bags as I was afraid that I would clog the transfer as this was a lot of dry hopping.
@08:20 on 5-3-26 I transferred over to a keg to carbonate up. Performed a low O2 transfer into the keg with using CO2 to push from the fermentor into the keg that was full of CO2 as well. Took a gravity sample of 1.009. Can’t wait to taste this one. Came in at 7.78%
