15 gallons of goodness

16Nov08

Today was a brew day at the Sever household – 15 gallons of our award-winning house stout, Choking Sun. Sorry for the dark picture – I am amazed at how little light there is in the garage, even with a flash. 5 gallons of it will be packaged in bottles and hauled down to Atlanta for my cousin & his band mates, and the other 10 will live here, to go on tap sometime around February / March next year.

The brew day went pretty well, and I took my grant out for its second test run. The first trial was a fantastic failure, but this time it worked like a charm – I transferred all 21 gallons of sparged wort from the mash tun over to the kettle using the grant, and once it was set up, I didn’t have any issues with it at all. The serial communications between the control box and grant circuits worked flawlessly. It was a little bit of a pain to get set up purely because of the long (10 foot) tubing sections, and when the grant has its own stand and is transferring just a few feet, it will be much easier. Still, I am tickled that it worked so well. I got some MPG video of it in action, but at 13 Megs, it really isn’t interesting enough to upload for the size.

Only two things went a little awry; first, our printer is on the fritz and refused to print a recipe sheet, so I had to log all my notes on a regular blank sheet of paper – oh well. Second, when I was draining the wort into the third carboy, I accidently dropped a piece of tin foil into the kettle and into the wort. Hopefully if it contaminated things it will be minor – I pitched a ton of Nottingham yeast in there, and so long as it takes off before any bacteria or other stuff takes hold, I should be OK.

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