New and old

What a crazy few days. Saturday I tried a different brew supply place: Paradise Brewing Supplies. It was a bit of a haul for me, but it was nearly all Interstate. The place is much smaller than Listermann's, but they do have a charm all their own. They have a better selection of equipment and a much better selection of bulk extracts, though they, like Listermann, do not know the SRM for any of them. I was there to get the supplies I needed for my next endeavor. I converted to 8 lbs of a light Pilsen liquid extract. I also picked up a wort chiller. It is the immersion type and worked great. With the cold on a slow trickle, it brought my wort down to pitching temperature in about 10 minutes.

The place has a feel of a real hobbist shop. Along one windowed wall are plastic garbage bags of various grains. In the back there seems to be a TV repair shop. On one shelf there was a hard cider in secondary and mead was also being conditioned. The staff was quite knowledgeable and personable. They were incredulous for how far I drove and I would like to thank the homebrewer I met at the last tasting who told me about the place.

Once home and brewing, I made a few modifications, mostly out of necessity. The first is that I neglected the half pound of 60L Crystal malt. Oooppss. The second was that we had light brown sugar, not dark. No worries. I also added about a cup of some dark honey we've had sitting around for months. It is from a local beekeeper on Blue Rock road. I need to get more. The ingredients were so:

• 8 lbs light malt extract (liquid)
• 1.5 lbs Munich malt (5L)
• 2 ounces Chocolate malt (350L)
• 2 lbs light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon gypsum
• 1 teaspoon Irish Moss
  
• 1 oz Kent Goldings (4.5%)
• 1 oz Hallertau (3.7%)
• Wyeast 3864 Can/Belg

Hops boiled as per recipe. The Munich and Chocolate malt I did old school by placing in a gallon of water, bring to a boil, drain through a metal colander over the boil pot and 1 gallon of 150 degree water sparged through. I added the brown sugar at the same time as the extract, though I added the honey just after the Irish Moss. The color was on target and it was a bit sweet when going into the fermentor. The OG was a bit high at 1.080. We shall see if the yeast can handle it.

My brother was over Sunday and after dealing with the pool, I asked if he wanted to help me bottle the Cluster-Fuggles Ale. The final gravity was 1.012 giving 5.2% ABV. It smelled very good and had a nice dark brown color. Bottles are capped, labeled and put away. I will visit it in a week.

I also tried the Oatmeal Stout, version 2, again today. It is getting MUCH better, but still needs to age a bit more. I have given a few of these out and I'd really like to know what others think. In a week or two, I need to take a bottle by Listermann's and get some more opinions.

Until next time, the kitchen is closed.