Monday, December 26, 2011

Extract Process (Revisited)

Faced with a Chicago winter (albeit an unseasonably warm and dry one - knock on wood) I've moved my brewing inside for the winter and switched back to extract as an experiment. Having developed a solid all-grain process, I'm going to try to incorporate what I've learned into a better extract / stovetop process. If you're just starting out, this should provide a good outline for a regular brew day. Just ignore the steps you don't know anything about or don't have equipment before.

So without further explanation, here's a first crack at it:
  1. [24 hours ahead of brew day] Prepare my yeast starter
  2. [24 hours ahead of brew day] Freeze the chill stick (I work in the restaurant industry at my day job...)
  3. Get all of my ingredients and necessary equipment together
  4. Fill the fermentor with sanitizer and sanitize the transfer hose, airlock, carboy bung, and oxygenation rig
  5. Get my instruction sheet out (seriously)
  6. Fire up the ten gallon kettle with a spigot and fill with 6.5 gallons of distilled or reverse osmosis water
  7. Treat with Gypsum or Calcium Chloride only to accentuate bitterness or malt flavor, not to adjust pH. (Extract removes the need to worry about this.)
  8. Steep the specialty grains while heating the brewing water up to a boil. (140F for 10-20 minutes. Although exact time and temp don't matter that much from what I understand.)
  9. Ramp up to boil with my weak-ass gas range (It take two of the burners to get the ten gallon pot rolling.)
  10. Add fermcap
  11. Add the extract and hops per my recipe, making sure to add whirlfloc at 15 minutes
  12. Kill the heat and whirlpool with the chill stick for about 15 minutes
  13. Take a gravity reading and adjust for wort temperature
  14. Transfer 5.5 gallons to the fermentor
  15. Add more fermcap
  16. Oxygenate for 15-30s, depending on the gravity of the beer
  17. Pitch the starter once the wort has cooled to roughly 64F
  18. Seal it up and drop it in the fermentation fridge, racking a small sample into a test jar with a hydrometer in it for watching the gravity.
  19. Keep the temperature steady for the first 72 hours and then ramp up the temperature up 4-6 degrees F during the last 25% of fermentation. If the recipe calls for dry hopping, this is the time to do it.
  20. Once fermentation is complete, let the beer sit for a few days at the final temperature, then cold crash in the fermentor to 34F. 
  21. Let the beer sit for another 1-2 weeks on the yeast to let them do some further diacetyl cleanup and the other good work they do.
  22. Rack 5 gallons of "bright" beer to a corny keg and force carbonate with CO2 to get to an appropriate level for the style.

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