We had a pretty outstanding AHA Big Brew day at MoreBeer, with about 15 Sudzers in attendance at various times during the day, a group of about 25 Stanford grad students who joined us to learn about the brewing process, and a number of others who stopped by to talk about brewing and the Sudzers club. We were part of a nationwide event that featured over 4500 participants brewing over 9000 gallons of beer at 383 different sites on May 4! A full set of photos (thanks to Linda, Ron, and Derek) is posted on the Sudzers Flickr page.
The beer came in just above the target gravity, and the hop extracts worked their magic. Brewmaster Jim gets full credit for the recipe development (recipe and process notes available here) and the vast majority of the brewing labor. Thanks to everyone who came by and participated in the brewing process and/or brought snacks to share. Thanks to Tyler, Mike, Jim, Santiago, Charles, and Chris bringing beers to serve. Thanks also to Chris & Linda for showing up super early to help out, and to Professor Chris for giving the group of about 25 Stanford grad students who came for the day a nice introductory lecture on the homebrewing process. Thanks to the Stanford crew for buying 16 pizzas to feed the hungry masses, and to Robin for baking delicious brownies and mini chocolate chip cakes for dessert. As always, thanks to Gary & MoreBeer for ingredients and the opportunity to promote the store, the homebrewing hobby, and the club. And thanks to Nick for bringing some brews to share with Jim & Gary & Derek after everything was cleaned up and put away.
A report from Brewmaster Jim: Before yesterday I was a virgin to brewing with HERMS system, but Morebeer’s sophisticated 1100 all digital brew stand changed all that. I’ll probably look back years from now and remember my first time 😉 Fortunately, there were many people that helped avoid more difficulties that might have otherwise overshadowed the day. Of course there was the ever guiding Derek, but also Chris who instinctually understand how to set the stand up and get off to a good start. And also, there was Charles, who knew just when to stop sparging to avoid an otherwise messy cleanup of the spent grain bed. The one thing that I wished we had captured on film, oops – old school, I mean digital, was the endless stream of young ladies that came by to have their picture taken stirring the mash. Perhaps next year. And most importantly to any tired and hot brewer at the end of a long brew day, A HUGE round of thanks to all that did an excellent job of helping clean up, including Rich, Derek, Nick, and Gary.
The yeasts are happily turning our efforts into an awesome beer, sitting comfortably at 64 degrees for the first three days of fermentation. The FG was higher than expected. Not knowing the expected mash efficiency, I planned for 70%. As it turned out, the efficiency was closer 76%. Consequently, rather than a FG of 1.089, the FG will come in around 1.097, after accounting for the second sugar addition at the end of fermentation. So, perhaps the brew should be called Pliny the Younger Stud. Regarding water treatment, Mountain View has really soft water and with the adjustments, the wort PH was 5.4 going into boil and Chloride:Sulfate ratio projected at .38, which should provide that definitive PTY hoppiness. One bit of concern however, was the thermo-shock the yeasts experienced. By the time the beer made it to the fermentation chamber, it had warmed up to about 83 degrees. In any case, a healthy krausen developed within six hours and I added the second O2 dose early this morning. I’ll bring the finished (completed NOT consumed), keg to the June club meeting. So, bring your growler and take some home to enjoy…