Back to the Crouch Vale

Haven't brewed in a loooong time. To many other things going on. We had the Upper Mississippi Mashout in January, I started studying for the BJCP exam which I took in April, and I've had a lot of personal commitments. I decided, however, to get back to the Crouch Vale. I was slack on the notetaking later in the brew session so my spreadsheet numbers are not complete but there's enough there to make another batch.

I noticed some oddities with this batch. Fermentation went fine, but finished really quickly (~3 days) with the gravity stuck about 1.022. I had made a good starter, oxygenated, and temp controlled to 63F. I was using the Wyeast 1318 (London III) yeast. I decided to rouse the yeast and bump the temp up to 67F, and also take daily readings of Brix and gravity just to see what was going on. I'm not making any conclusions about waht was going on, but here's what I saw.

The other thing that I noticed once I kegged the beer was a harsh hop finish, more than I  expected. I dosed the water to try and mimic a Burton water, I should not do that again. I don't know if that bumped up the hop bitterness that much, but compared to my original 'flabby' Crouch Vale this is much different.

Anyway ... on to the notes.

50-50 mix of spring water and tap water.

0715 :: 3 gal strike water on

0725 :: added salts (9 gypsum, 4.5 epsom, 1 calcium chloride)

0735 :: strike h2o @ 137F

0740 :: stirke h2o @ 147F; mash tun is preheating

0758 :: dough in

0800 :: mash @ 151F

0815 :: 7.0 gal sparge h2o dosed and heating

0825 :: sparge h2o @ 93F

0830 :: sparge h2o @ 106F

0836 :: sparge h2o @ 119F

0844 :: sparge h2o @ 132F - adding middle burner

0850 :: sparge h2o @ 145F

0859 :: sparge h2o @ 158F

0905 :: sparge h2o @ 170F

0905 :: begin sparge

0930 :: wort on to boil @ 152F

0935 :: final wort pH was 5.4 @ room temp

0943 :: wort @ 178F

0949 :: wort @ 192F

0955 :: boil

1110 :: added hops + whirlfloc

1125 :: flameout 

1235 :: end hopstand; chill

OG = 9.75 Brix

Chilling for 9 minutes brought the temperature down to 66F.

Oxygenated for 90s @ 0.06 lpm.

Pitched in 0.75l of starter.