• Bottling

Five-gallon beer - Saison - SMASH

Recipe is from the July issue of the Brew magazine.

Single malt and single hop.

This was our first attempt at brewing a five-gallon batch at home. It went a little rugged. It's an adventure. It took over five hours to complete.

Scribbled notes from my notebook:

• 4:02 p.m - 3.25 gal, 13 qts water on the burner

• 4:22 p.m. - water at 165 degrees

• 4:28 p.m. - finished adding 2-row, the only grain. begin mash. water temp going in was 170 degrees. after grain added, water temp was a little over 150 degrees.

• 5:23 p.m. - finally started to warm sparge water.

• 6:12 p.m. - sparge water at 170 degrees.

• 7:20 p.m. - done sparging. sparged for ~42 min.

• 7:28 p.m. - boil started.

• 9:23 p.m. - blow-off tube added at 9:23 p.m.

huge fireworks exploded around neighborhood during the late afternoon and evening hours. of course, we brewed outside. so the experience was miserable with the annoyingly loud noise.

after brewing, I took Barney for a two-hour drive to calm him and me down. We drove south of Findlay, turned round at the Ada / Ohio Northern University exit, stopped for a burger at McDonald's north of Findlay, and then came home.

Bottling

We bottled in the evening of Wed, Jul 23, 2014.

We filled only 43 bottles. We must not have added enough water or something during some part of brew day. We're a gallon off.

We tasted a small amount of leftover beer, and we liked it.

For the priming or bottling sugar, we used orange blossom honey that we bought this evening at the Fresh Market.

In a small pot on the stovetop, I warmed one cup of honey with approx a half cup of water.

We added the honey to an empty, sanitized bucket.

We siphoned the beer from the fermenter to the bucket with the honey.

After the move, I stirred the mixture slowly for a bit.

Then we bottled and capped.

#home - #beer