Brew Day arrived and it was jam-packed with prepping, brewing and ye olde faithful, cleaning. As mentioned yesterday I had 2 beers planned: a Pumpkin Dubbel and a Chocolate Maple Porter. I decided to start with the porter, given that I had to roast the pie pumpkin in the oven for 1 hour.
While the porter malted in my spunky 10-gallon cooler, I prepped the pumpkin. If you would also like to make a pumpkin beer, may I advise you to not cut your finger. My hatred for cutting up pumpkin is reciprocal to how much I like eating pumpkin-flavored food. My finger is still very much attached, but it could have been nasty had I not hit my nail with the knife. I still got 2 gashes (if you've ever tried to make a stone skip on water, then picture a knife doing that on your finger).
One hour later, the porter's mash was done (i.e. steeping the grains in hot water) and it was time to take a gravity reading to see if I was on target. The specific gravity of a liquid, or relative density, is largely dependent on and thus an indication of the amount of sugars. Based on the grains and other ingredients used one can estimate what the gravity should be under ideal circumstances. There are many factors influencing this, such as the milling of the grains, temperature, mashing times, etc... I always compare my pre-boil gravity (wort coming out of the mash tun), the original gravity (OG) after the boil and before adding the yeast and then what is known as the final gravity (FG; when the sugar content is no longer dropping - it stabilizes). The difference between FG and OG gives us the alcohol contents by volume.
Anyway, using my refractometer the pre-boil gravity measured around 1.029, which I then compared to the theoretical value as calculated by BeerSmith. According to the sheet I printed it was 1.056. Taking a closer look I noticed that the final gravity was something like ... 1.225. Most high gravity beers such as trappists and rye wines for instance don't go much higher than 1.11. The final ABV of this porter would have been more than 25% if 1.225 was correct! I think not. I'm still not sure what BeerSmith did, but a quick reset of the program brought everything back to normal and the estimated gravity was now also 1.029. Spot on!
Anyway, using my refractometer the pre-boil gravity measured around 1.029, which I then compared to the theoretical value as calculated by BeerSmith. According to the sheet I printed it was 1.056. Taking a closer look I noticed that the final gravity was something like ... 1.225. Most high gravity beers such as trappists and rye wines for instance don't go much higher than 1.11. The final ABV of this porter would have been more than 25% if 1.225 was correct! I think not. I'm still not sure what BeerSmith did, but a quick reset of the program brought everything back to normal and the estimated gravity was now also 1.029. Spot on!
The color is absolutely fantastic: a thick coffee-like liquid. The boil went smoothly and thanks to (very) vigorous stirring during the cooling phase, I was able to get the temperature down to 73 F in 4 minutes (faster is better!).
After cleanup and lunch it was time to tackle the pumpkin dubbel. While it was mashing I bottled the ginger beer for the kiddies. I once again hit all the right numbers and about 2.5 hours later it was final clean up time. Now we're going to have to wait 1 month before we can actually taste any of it, but the pumpkin ale made the house smell wonderfully!
After cleanup and lunch it was time to tackle the pumpkin dubbel. While it was mashing I bottled the ginger beer for the kiddies. I once again hit all the right numbers and about 2.5 hours later it was final clean up time. Now we're going to have to wait 1 month before we can actually taste any of it, but the pumpkin ale made the house smell wonderfully!
The tradition amongst homebrewers is to have a homebrew while brewing, but I don't particularly like drinking beer at 8:00 in the morning, so I waited until dinner. My wife made an excellent Mexican dish, which you can see here being accompanied by a JalapeƱo Saison.