L's aunt is turning 50 this year and they're having a week-long celebration over the Fourth of July. Now, I was a college student for about 7 years and I've known so pretty professional drinkers but that's nothing compared to the Mackey's. The last time I drank with them was at Little Man's first birthday and I failed miserably to keep up. It was pretty embarrassing. Anyways. The point is, we'd need to bring A LOT of beer for the 1/2 week we'll be joining the festivities. They also don't drink crap beer, so we would need a lot of good beer which equals a lot of money. Instead, we decided to buy a new keg from Wilmington Homebrew and the necessary attachments to run it without a keggerator. We also got a kit for an American Amber Ale because its a good tasting but not too hoppy beer that most folks will enjoy.
We steeped .5lb Crystal 70, .25lb Munich, and .25lb Biscuit for an hour in 6 gallons of water. Like the Nut Brown, it was pretty dark after just steeping. Then, we added 6.6lb Golden Light LME and 1lb Sparkling Amber DME. During the boil, we added 1 oz each of Magnum (60), Northern Brewer (20), and Hallertau Hersbrucher (0) hops.
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| After Steeping. |
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| The LME is easier to get out if its warm. |
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| The Queen keeping an eye on things. |
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| Original Gravity |
This was our second time using liquid yeast and we were much more successful and didn't potentially contaminate the batch. This was probably our smoothest brewing session yet. Our Original Gravity was 1.055 which should give us a decently strong beer when the yeasties are done eating!
Also, for future reference, these grains made AWESOME bread!! See the Spent Grain II Post for the recipe.
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