Saturday's brewing session went pretty good. One thing I have to now take into consideration is that just because I have a 15 gallon keg to boil in doesn't mean I have to boil the ever loving heck out of the wort. I ended up boiling off way too much and had to add water in at the end. Forgot to take a gravity reading too. Oh well.
Even though I didn't think I'd have time, I went ahead and made a yeast starter. Turned out to be a good move as the yeast was extremely active and I had activity in the airlock within 3 hours after pitching.
The grain bill smelled absolutely delicious. It was the best smelling batch I've done yet. I can't say if it's going to taste anything like Chimay, but if it tastes anything like it smelled like, it's going to be one hell of a beer.
Since I now have a temperature controlled freezer, I set it to 68° so I could keep the fermentation at the perfect temp. I put the carboy in and in the morning checked on it. Full krausening and a very, very active airlock told me things were going well, but as usual, I had to take an airlock-sniff to make sure I didn't detect any off odors.
Know what happens inside a sealed container when you put in a CO2 generating vessel? The entire thing fills up with CO2 and displaces all the oxygen. Which is very disconcerting when you lean in and take a big whiff.
I've got pictures, although not many and nothing very interesting. They're still on the camera and I've not pulled them off yet. I'll post them when I get off my duff.
rolled out on
Monday, January 15, 2007 10:04 AM