Monday, July 24, 2006
Another weekend gone...
Friday night's meeting at HDYB went very well, and many thanks to Joe and
Marlana Gallo for being so hospitable once again. We had a good turnout of
ten to twelve folks, if I remember correctly, including two newcomers. Lots
of good beers to be had, including Hank's debut of "Cheap-@$$ Porter", which
I really enjoyed. My raspberry wheat had more takers than I was expecting,
and Marty liked it enough that he said he'd like to see the recipe... a much
better reaction than my Peated Scottish ale in March. Joe brought out a
peach brandy that tasted like white lightning – took your breath away and
burned all the way down. I cut out around 9:15pm so I could get home and
spend some time with my wife and to make sure I didn't get too carried away,
but I think everyone had fun.
Yesterday I brewed 10 gallons of beefed-up Amarillo Pale... OK, more like 9
gallons plus a gallon of trub... I may end up adjusting with some make-up
water in the secondary fermenters. This batch was slightly higher gravity
with about 33% more hops (11oz for 10gal). I tried to keep the calculated
IBUs the same, but moved the hop loading around – 1.5oz of first wort hops,
heavy late additions, and double the amount of dry hops. It was fermenting
away this morning when I checked, so I think all is well.
The new fittings on my pump skid and water filter worked beautifully! No
leaking, spraying, or trouble to be found... until a piece of ice got sucked
up into the pump inlet hose.
Story time! Many months (12+) ago when I was cleaning and rebuilding these
pumps, I knocked one of the impeller assemblies off the workbench and it hit
the concrete floor with an unceremonious thud... and snapped off one of the
4 impeller spokes. I ended up super-gluing it back on, and with some
trepidation placed it in my water recirc pump knowing that it would be
lighter duty than the wort pump AND I didn't need to worry about any of the
glue chemicals getting into something that would end up in someone's body...
And for the past year or so it has behaved beautifully. Well let me tell you
- when that ice chunk got sucked into the pump and hit the weaker impeller
spoke... SNAP! The pump started making all kinds of hellish noise. Long
story short, I managed to nurse the pump through it and got the job done,
cooling my 10 gallons of wort down to 72 degrees in about 35 minutes... (20
minutes of hose, 15 minutes of ice water recirc). Not too bad considering
our ground water temperature is 80 degrees at the moment.
Now the question becomes what to do with my water pump? Do I try to
superglue it back on, or do I leave it out and let the other 3 spokes just
do their thing? That will put the impeller off balance, but so could a big
old glob of glue... Not sure what I'm going to do.
We peeled, pureed, and froze the 7 mangos Donna got at the farmer's market
in preparation for Wednesday's brew – a mango wit. I'll thaw and pour the
puree into the secondary and rack the wit ontop of it. Donna's pretty
excited about this one – I'm definitely curious to see how it'll turn out.
She even designed the somewhat risque tap handle label - entitled "Mango
Mama Wit". You all will have to come to my house to see this one once it's
ready...
Marlana Gallo for being so hospitable once again. We had a good turnout of
ten to twelve folks, if I remember correctly, including two newcomers. Lots
of good beers to be had, including Hank's debut of "Cheap-@$$ Porter", which
I really enjoyed. My raspberry wheat had more takers than I was expecting,
and Marty liked it enough that he said he'd like to see the recipe... a much
better reaction than my Peated Scottish ale in March. Joe brought out a
peach brandy that tasted like white lightning – took your breath away and
burned all the way down. I cut out around 9:15pm so I could get home and
spend some time with my wife and to make sure I didn't get too carried away,
but I think everyone had fun.
Yesterday I brewed 10 gallons of beefed-up Amarillo Pale... OK, more like 9
gallons plus a gallon of trub... I may end up adjusting with some make-up
water in the secondary fermenters. This batch was slightly higher gravity
with about 33% more hops (11oz for 10gal). I tried to keep the calculated
IBUs the same, but moved the hop loading around – 1.5oz of first wort hops,
heavy late additions, and double the amount of dry hops. It was fermenting
away this morning when I checked, so I think all is well.
The new fittings on my pump skid and water filter worked beautifully! No
leaking, spraying, or trouble to be found... until a piece of ice got sucked
up into the pump inlet hose.
Story time! Many months (12+) ago when I was cleaning and rebuilding these
pumps, I knocked one of the impeller assemblies off the workbench and it hit
the concrete floor with an unceremonious thud... and snapped off one of the
4 impeller spokes. I ended up super-gluing it back on, and with some
trepidation placed it in my water recirc pump knowing that it would be
lighter duty than the wort pump AND I didn't need to worry about any of the
glue chemicals getting into something that would end up in someone's body...
And for the past year or so it has behaved beautifully. Well let me tell you
- when that ice chunk got sucked into the pump and hit the weaker impeller
spoke... SNAP! The pump started making all kinds of hellish noise. Long
story short, I managed to nurse the pump through it and got the job done,
cooling my 10 gallons of wort down to 72 degrees in about 35 minutes... (20
minutes of hose, 15 minutes of ice water recirc). Not too bad considering
our ground water temperature is 80 degrees at the moment.
Now the question becomes what to do with my water pump? Do I try to
superglue it back on, or do I leave it out and let the other 3 spokes just
do their thing? That will put the impeller off balance, but so could a big
old glob of glue... Not sure what I'm going to do.
We peeled, pureed, and froze the 7 mangos Donna got at the farmer's market
in preparation for Wednesday's brew – a mango wit. I'll thaw and pour the
puree into the secondary and rack the wit ontop of it. Donna's pretty
excited about this one – I'm definitely curious to see how it'll turn out.
She even designed the somewhat risque tap handle label - entitled "Mango
Mama Wit". You all will have to come to my house to see this one once it's
ready...
Comments:
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Not sure what straining method you will be using for the mango pulp but it is quite a formidable task. I've just brewed with mangoes once; something like 8 lbs. of pulp for 5 gallons which caused me to leave 1 & 1/2 gallons of slurry mush behind. I tried a few methods before giving up as the mangoes were quite fibrous and unfortunately stayed in suspension of the bottom 1/3 or so of the fermenter. Also they fermented out fairly completely imparting little flavor. I concluded it might be better adding mango chunks. Or perhaps juice to a pasteurized carbonated malt beverage (ala Smirnoffs- shudder). Anyway, good luck and I hope to taste your effort sometime. Louis Glick
# posted by 
: 11:10 PM
: 11:10 PM
It occurred to me that maybe you were planning on using a fine mesh bag(s) for the mangoes. I'd recommend it though if you use a carboy or other narrow necked fermenter you'd have to funnel it into the bag(s) and then tie them off. Use some string if in a carboy as this'll facilitate untieing the bag to be able to remove it. It couldn't hurt. Good Brewing. Louis
# posted by : 10:16 AM
: 10:16 AM
Actually, I was thinking that since it is a wit and is going to be intentionally cloudy anyways, some extra mango cloudiness wouldn't hurt. I also planned on the secondary being a 6.5 gallon carboy and the tertiary a 5 gallon... And compensated for some wort losses by collecting ~5.2 gallons instead of just 5...
Mangoes can vary but it was more than cloudy. It was fibrous. Of course it's important to have fiber in your diet just not sure what kind of mouth feel mango fiber would have imparted... Regular drinking of irregular beer can make you regular. Louis
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# posted by : 9:43 AM
: 9:43 AM << Home
