Aqua Vitae

This is an american pale ale, with the recipe being a clone of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The recipe kit is a Yankee Brewer recipe kit from Beer & Winemaking Supplies in Northampton.

Ingredients:
6 lbs. Light LME
8 oz. Medium US Crystal Malt Grain
8 oz. US Cara-Pils/Dextrin Malt Grain
2 tsp. Gypsum Salts
1.5 oz. Northern Brewer Bittering Hop Pellets
1 oz. US Aromatic Blend Hop Pellets
10-14 grams dry ale yeast

1. Prep: Boiled 2 gallons of water and stored in fridge overnight and cleaned and sanitized all of the brewing equipment. On brew day put together 3 gallons of sanitizing solution and put all brewing equipment in it once again. Also readied 20lbs of ice and 4 frozen water bottle in preparation for cooling the wort.

2. Mash: Heated 2 quarts of water to 170 degrees and poured into a 2 gallon pot containing the crushed grains. Let this steep on top of the stove for 38 minutes (a compromise between the recipe instructions and the guidelines in John Palmer’s How To Brew) between 165 and 150. Meanwhile heated 2 gallons of water on stove to 165. After 38 minutes, pour mash water through strainer into the wort pot, and then poured the sparge water through the mash in 4-cup measures.

3. Wort: Brought wort to a boil and then removed from heat. Added liquid malt extract and gypsum salts and stirred to dissolve. Returned to heat and brought to boil. Quite a big protein head formed, and following Palmer’s guidelines again I waited until the hot break before adding the first dose of hops. This took about 10 minutes. After that added 1/2 of the bittering hops, and 30 minutes later added the remaining bittering hops. After 60 minutes removed from heat and added the aroma hops.

4. Cooling: Immediately after adding the aroma hops, I transferred the wort pot to the kitchen sink which was filled with cold water and ice. Began slowly stirring the wort (slowly! so as not to aerate the hot wort which could cause oxidation) and monitoring the temperature as it gradually dropped. Ended up using all 20lbs of ice to bring the temperature down. Successfully managed to bring the temperature down to 70 degrees within 30 minutes!

5. Transfer: While wort was cooling I poured the 2 gallons of cold water (that had sat overnight) into the fermenter. When wort hit 70 degrees it was poured into the fermenter. I then proceeded to pour the combined wort back and forth between the wort pot and the fermenter several times until it was very frothy (did this to sufficiently aerate the wort for fermentation). Then tested the original gravity (OG) which was a little bit higher than target (1.050), and so added some water to reduce it slightly. Ended up reducing more than I wanted, and the final OG was 1.042 (1.0425 when corrected).

6. Pitching: The temperature of the wort was now down to 63 degrees, and so I activated the dry yeast by adding it to 1 cup of 70 degree water. After ~10 minutes this was pitched into the wort and stirred vigorously to both incorporate the yeast and further aerate the wort. Once it appeared dissolved, I put the lid and the airlock (which was 1/2 filled with boiled water) on and tucked the fermenting bucket away in a corner to await…fermentation!

7. Fermentation - Day 1: First checked the fermenting bucket after it had been sitting for a little under 12 hours. There are clear signs of the fermentation getting role. An air bubble every 15 seconds or so, and the water has risen about an inch in the airlock. Will check again after the fermentation has been going for about 20 hours and see how things look.

8. Fermentation - Day 2: 24 hours into fermentation the pace had clearly picked up. 36 hours the pace has quickened further, and fermentation seems to be rolling along.

Fermentation Note: The recommended fermentation temperature for primary fermentation is 62-68, and the house is currently hovering around 70, a degree above or below depending on the time of day. I’m mildly concerned about the high temperatures. But since primary fermentation is expected to last 3-4 days (again according to the recipe), and we’re now almost halfway through that, I’m inclined to let the fermentation continue at the house’s ambient temperature. But, I am strongly considering conducting a colder secondary fermentation, using the methods described here. The two advantages I see with this are a) a nice cool slower moving fermentation to give time the yeast to settle and the flavors to develop, b) after the day I expect to transfer to the secondary I’m leaving for California 8 days. Doing a colder secondary fermentation will allow the fermentation to run along until I return from California, 2 weeks after having transferred to the secondary. I’m thinking that if I can keep things around 55-60 that’d be swell.

Fermentation Note 2: I’m also considering dry-hopping when I transfer to the secondary, using 1 oz. of Cascade hops. The recipe doesn’t call for this, but I’m inclined to do it in search of adding a bit more character to the beer. Chances are good right now that I’ll do that.

9. Fermentation - Day 3: I picked up a tape-on thermometer last night for the fermenting bucket, which promptly revealed that fermentation was chugging along at 73. Kind of amazing when you consider that fermentation began at 63. With the ambient temperature having hovered around 70, it’s safe to say that at least 1/3 of the temperature rise was due to the fermentation activity itself. Pretty exciting!

Anyhow, a temperature of 73 was higher than I had hoped for. So I moved the fermenter into a water bath, and added two frozen bottles of ice to it. After 2-3 hours the temperature had dropped to 68 - higher than what I was hoping for. Fermentation activity appeared to have slowed slightly, but not much. Overnight the temperature rose 2 degrees to 70, still ok. The goal will be to try and maintain a temperature of 66-70 until fermentation activity has slowed to the point where it’s time to transfer to the secondary fermenter.

10. Transferring to Secondary Fermentation: Five days after primary fermentation began, the beer was transferred to the secondary fermenter. The process went smooth, with just under 5 gallons getting transferred, and a little bit siphoned off into the hydrometer tube and a bit more into 2 other glasses. Couldn’t help but sample a bit.

The gravity of the beer at this stage was 1.013, which means that there was about 70% attenuation, and that the beer is just over 4% abv. A nice cidery color, with a fruity nose, slightly sweet with a little bite of hops on the palate. The nose may be overly fruity, which I wonder if it’s the result of the primary fermentation being too warm. It’s reassuring that the sweetness is not so present on the palate.

The beer will undergo secondary fermentation for 14-15 days. The goal will be to keep the fermentation cooler than primary - 64-66 degrees is the target.

11. Bottling Prep: Two days before bottling, I cleaned enough bottles for the batch. The day before, I sterilized the bottles and the bottling bucket and siphon hose.

12. Bottling: Transferred the beer to the bottling bucket and added the priming solution. Then siphoned the beer into bottles (33 12 oz., 7 22 oz.) using a bottle filler. That made it very easy. All in all, bottling was a breeze.