It will be an American White Ale with strawberries and rosebud tea. There are many photos, so it can also hopefully be a guide for new brewers.
Begin at the beginning. Filtering water. The DI filter resin looks nearly expired (changes from blue to gold).
But a quick check of the TDS meter shows the output is still zero total dissolved solids.
Stove side of the brewzaster area. Already rinsed it all down.
Working side and spectator seating.
The supplies and ingredients start to take over.
Most of what's going into this beer.
Heating the water for dough in. Dough in is the hot strike water is mixed with the grains to achieve a desired mash temperature.
Boiling water in the mini-mash tun to bring it to zero thermal mass.
Hot water is added to the grain, and it is stirred up to prevent clumping.
Perfect temp for the kind of mash I wanted for this beer. Turning starches into highly fermentable sugars.
Meanwhile I crush up the strawberries for later by hand.
Done, now set it aside covered.
Measuring the hops for the boil and setting aside.
Measuring herbs - Chinese licorice root - for the boil.
All the boil additions. Hops, herbs, yeast nutrient, and clarifier.
Getting ready to sparge, or rinse the sugars from the mashed grain. I do a dunk sparge with a big grain bag.
The mash is done.
Dumped in the sparge bag and stirred.
Dunking. I lower the grain and agitate it gently so liquid loosens it up.
Then lift the grain to drain the wort (water with sugar from mashed grains). I dunk sparge 8 times.
This is the liquid after sparging. I add light dry malt extract (or pilsen, which is extra light for this beer) later because my small mash tun doesn't hold enough grain to extract enough sugar for a 5 gallon batch.
Bring the liquid to a boil.
Add the dry malt extract and stir it in.
Here the malt extract is dissolved.
Bring it back to a boil and start additions of hops, herbs, etc.
First addition of hops and herbs goes in.
Half an hour later, the second hop addition goes in. This was the strangest color (chartreuse) hops I've ever seen.
It even made chartreuse foam, which seems wrong somehow.
Whirlflock (clarifier) goes in near the end of the boil.
Flame goes out on the boil, and the strawberries go in. I want the fresh flavor, and I want them pasteurized, but I don't want them cooked.
Temp is about 180F, that will kill bacteria.
The into a water bath to cool quickly. 10 minutes, drain the water and add cold water again for another 10 minutes.
Then into an ice water bath to cool to pitching (adding the yeast to the wort) temperature.
Sanitizing the fermenter and anything else that will come close to the cooled wort.
Nearly at pitch temperature.
I tied a hop bag around the siphon to prevent the strawberry mush from clogging it up.
First peek at the color while siphoning.
The leftover in the boil kettle is kind of ugly.
But the wort is gorgeous.
This is the DIY adapter I made to use an aquarium pump to push air through a 2 micron stainless steel airstone to get oxygen in the wort.
The dry yeast is pitched into the fermenter, and allowed to rehydrate for a bit.
Then the wort is aerated for 20 minutes.
I measure the sugar (food for the yeast) in solution from some wort I saved aside.
Aeration is done. The fermenter is sealed with a blowoff tube that allows gas and schmoo to escape into a bottle with sanitizer, and does not allow bacteria back in.
Here's how I set up the blowoff tube in the fermenter. I can remove it and make it into an airlock when the most active fermentation is done.
The other end goes in a bottle with sanitizer next to the fermenter.
Here it is set aside to work.
Three hours later and fermentation has already started.
I'm saving this Chinese rosebud tea to go in secondary about 3 days before bottling.
Pitch +4 hours
Pitch +4 hours
Pitch +5 hours
Pitch +6 hours
Pitch +7 hours
Pitch +17 hours
Pitch +18 hours, switched to an airlock.
