Is this where we talk about homebrewing? I hope so, because here I go. A friend of mine and I are getting into the hobby, starting with a dark ale with a hint of Christmas spice. (We don’t believe in starting easy, although we did at least use malt extract instead of going all-grain.)
Specialty malts in the brew kettle. A little bit of black patent malt for color, and a larger quantity of crystal malt for some sweetness.
On the boil. Pre-boil gravity of about 1.077; it’s a pretty hefty wort.
Our cooling solution. Pour water over icepacks on one side of the kettle, siphon water from tub on the other side of the kettle. It took about an hour and a half to get down to 75 degrees. We’ll probably build an immersion chiller for next time.
Siphoning into the carboy and fermentation-in-progress. (We’ll replace the blowout tube with a standard S-bend airlock in a few days. We had the standard airlock on at first, but it let yeast foam out last night, so we switched.) Gravity after boil was about 1.090, and we’re expecting about 9% ABV at the end.
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