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Time for Round Two of expanding Sterr Bros to 3 brothers. Using a Brooklyn Homebrew recipe for American (or Red Hop) Amber Ale, we had to substitute for the hops, since the original ones had long since expired. They were over a year old. Because of this, there were some interesting hop substitutions, based on what was available at the brewstore when I went.
Process:
4/7/12
Put on a gallon and a half of water, heated to 155ºF and steeped the grains for 60 minutes. While this was going on, poured the dry yeast into a pyrex measuring cup and added some luke-warm water and about a teaspoon of sugar to get it started. After about 45 minutes, we heated another gallon of water to 170ºF. After the full 60, we used this water to rinse the grains into the brewpot, bringing it up just under 3 gallons. Brought this to a boil and added the liquid malt extract.
Returned the wort to a boil and added the Columbus hops for an hour. With 10 minutes left, added the Cascade hops. Then when time was up added the Centennial. Switch the pot off and poured it into a brew bucket with an 8 lb bag of ice. This brought it down around 100ºF, so we added another bag of ice. We were using a floating thermometer to gauge it and at some point it broke into the wort, spilling shot and pieces of glass. After some quick checks on forums and a test with a magnet, we decided the shot was steel as opposed to lead. The actual thermometer part inside did not break. We filtered the whole batch through a funnel filter to get the glass out. Then we returned it to the bucket and measured the OG at 1.056 at 65ºF, making the actual OG to be 1.057 with a potential alcohol content of 7.4%. We then added the yeast. Put a lid and airlock on the bucket and stashed it to ferment.
Tags: amber ale, beer, home-brew, port chester, recipe
How did the thermometer break? Fast temperature change, or hit with some ice? Good thing the inner part didn’t break, but I assume its a standard non-toxic wax thermometer and not mercury.
Not sure. There was some ice in there. Could be the temperature change too. Leena actually noticed and pointed out that it wasn’t floating. Well, it was floating, but horizontally rather than vertically. Definitely no mercury. I thought they used some sort of spirit inside the bulb. Not sure. And it seems that the shot at the bottom was steel, not lead, so that is also good. Though, from reading, people suggest there would be more lead in some city water supplies than that would have contributed.