Collage of ingredients. Here's the rundown (butter not included):
6.6 lbs. of Muntons Old Ale Kit (that's a hopped extract)
3.3 lbs. of Muntons Light Ale Extract
0.5 lbs. of Black Patent Malt
0.5 lbs. of Roasted Barley (un-malted)
3 tsp. of gypsum (has to do with the water chemistry)
2 oz. of Columbus hops (boiling, 12.5% alpha acid)
1 oz. of Cascade hops (aroma, 6.3% alpha acid)
2 pkg. of Danstar's Nottingham Ale Yeast (dry, not pictured)
The grains steep for 30 min. at 150F-160F, then the extracts, gypsum, and boiling hops get boiled for 60 min. The aroma hops are thrown in for the last minute of the boil.
Here the grains are being steeped while the cans of extract are sitting in simmering water so that they are easier to pour later. I cannot wait to have a decent oven/stove. I would really like a nice big gas range, especially one that has a digital thermometer built into each burner so that you can set the probe in your pot and set the burner to stay at a certain temperature. Trying to keep a pot with 1.5 gallons of water in the 150F-160F range for 30 minutes on a small electric range is frustrating, to say the least. The oven should also have a cylon eye and talk like KITT from Knight Rider. But I digress.
Again, I had issues with separating the hops and break (the proteins that clump together because of the boiling and cooling) from the wort. I used a larger stainless steel strainer which let me work a little faster, but it isn't really an option when brewing by one's self. Luckily, Greg was nice enough to come over again and help me brew so I had an extra pair of hands to hold the strainer and funnel. I think on my next brew I will try the decanting method described here. (It's worth noting that that website, www.howtobrew.com, is an excellent resource for the beginning homebrewer.) He doesn't say what the scrubby pad is for, but I guess it goes on the bottom of the siphon so that the gunk doesn't get up in the siphon and you can just scrape it off the pad.
This beer is said to have an OG of 1.070-1.075. My OG actually measured 1.082 (yowzers!). Assuming it reaches the expected FG of 1.018-1.025, it should have an ABV around 8-9% (wowzers!). I used two packages of the Nottingham yeast because even though that particular strain has a pretty high attenuation, I wanted to make sure I have a large enough yeast population to finish the job.
Not only will this beer be pretty dry, but it's (allegedly) going to be fairly bitter as well. I believe the final bitterness should land somewhere around 100 IBU. I'm calculating something much higher (due to the hopped extract), but I don't think it will get nearly that high. Of course, 100 is the technical limit for IBUs so it doesn't really matter anyway.
(Sorry for the dark picture, I'm using Allison's old camera and I can't seem to get the flash to work.) I plan on letting this beer sit in the carboy for two weeks before bottling even though the bulk of the fermentation should take place over 4 days. I mainly just want to see if letting it condition in the fermentor makes any detectable differences in the beer. (Of course, if I wanted to be really scientific about it I would get another carboy and do two exact brews in parallel, bottle one after the primary fermentation is done and let the other condition in the fermentor for a week or so before bottling. But I don't really feel like doing that.)
Not much activity going on yet, but I will be sure to post again when things start happening.
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