Advanced Extract Brewing

So Jeremy and I had a couple of extract recipes we'd planned on brewing indoors, but the weather here in Chicago has been so unseasonably warm that we ended up being able to brew them outside this past weekend with our all-grain gear.

After doing exclusively all grain last summer and then dicking around in my kitchen with a couple of extract batches this winter, brewing an extract kit literally felt like cheating. (The extract recipe out of Brewing Classic Styles was only slightly less so.) It felt like last summer was really about dialing in our process and getting acclimated to the new equipment we inherited, bought or built along the way. With the exception of adding a whirlpool return to the immersion chiller, everything else that we use in brewing is familiar at this point.

Jeremy had a "Dead Ringer" kit from Northern Brewer which didn't get brewed last summer and we'd gone in on the ingredients to brew an extract version of Janet's Brown. (The hops and yeast from the original kit were tossed and replaced. Buying cascade and centennial by the pound makes it a far less painful decision to consciously throw away 6 ounces of hops after opening a bag and getting some of that barely present cheesy aroma.)

But back to the process - getting starters ripping 24 hours in advance and being able to use our gear outside made cranking these batches out wickedly efficient. From starting setup to having pitched the yeast and getting the carboys situated with blowoff tubes in the chest freezer was about four and a half hours. (And we probably lost about 30 minutes troubleshooting the propane burner putting out low heat.) The actual process of starting the water, crushing the specialty grains, steeping them, getting to boil, adding hops and extract per a schedule, and then chilling back down just flies by.

Not to mention the fact that the only variable which affects whether you hit your numbers in this process is if your evaporation rate in your software is correct or not. OG was dead on in both beers.

So after a largely painless brewday, I'm excited for the summer. We've got an ambitious plan for some awesome all grain batches. And I'm excited to taste the end product of these batches, bring it to club night, and enter it into competition in a couple of months. If these taste good to Jeremy, me, the club and fare well in competition, it'll be a great sign that we're starting to actually understand the inputs which matter to making great beer.