The American Red was brewed on the 12th.

I would have written about it earlier but after my last post the door was kicked in by a few of our city’s finest and I was dragged off in the middle of the night at gunpoint. It seems that the government has a problem with feeding one’s kids booze and making them work every waking hour. Who knew? Aahhhh well, we live and learn I guess.

So no more beer as food for the kids. Too bad though they really liked it. We have to find other things for them to eat (or at least that what the nice officer said…). Harley’s still on a hunger strike but at least Dina found another food source.

Personally I didn’t even know that blue tinsel was edible.

Anyway the American Red didn’t really turn out as red as I had wanted, but it was only a first attempt. It’s more of a brown with red aspirations. It should taste fine though.

In the pursuit of a real red color, unmarred by the dull coloring of my usual base malt, I opted to use Pilsner Malt instead of 2-Row. Other than that it was a fairly straightforward recipe.

• 18 lbs German Pilsner
• 2 lbs Vienna
• .5 lbs American Crystal 60L
• .5 lbs Roasted Barley
• 1 oz Northern Brewer (pellets) 8.2AA 60 min
• 2 oz Fuggles 4 AA 20 min
• 1 oz Fuggles 4 AA 1 min
• WLP001 American Ale Yeast

I had originally planned on conducting a fairly thick mash somewhere around 152F but due to incompetence of the head brewer (read: me), who forgot to take into account that the grain had been sitting out in a cold garage, the mash only got up to the low 140s. So the HLT was fired up again and near boiling water was added which loosened up the mash considerably and only managed to bring the temp up to 146F. So in the end I had a rather wet mash with a rather low temp.

What does that mean? Basically two things will happen with a low mash temp. First it will make the wort more fermentable and bring the final gravity lower than would the same grain bill mashed 10 degrees higher. Second it will end up tasting a little drier. Obviously the second is due to the first but thought I’d explain it. Since this is my first time brewing this recipe it might be a good thing.

The yeast seemed to really like it. Lee brewed with me again and we put his half into a carboy. He had a bit of trouble and had to switch to a blow off tube. Mine stayed in the bucket but did make an unsuccessful escape attempt. I’m still getting a bubble now and again so I haven’t checked the gravity. It should finish in the next day or two. I’ll probably rack mine to a secondary for a couple of days to finish before putting this one in a keg.

Speaking of which, I have NOT started the keggerator project yet. Why? Because I haven’t so stop asking! It will get done at some point, just like at some point the kitchen will be finished. Maybe this coming week I can get a few hours to work on it.

Though not tomorrow, as Lee and I will be starting Round 1 of the California Common experiment, in which we will brew at least 4 different versions, maybe 6, hopefully finding one we like. Tomorrow Lee will be pitching one yeast into his half while I pitch a completely different one. How exciting!