Monday, June 13, 2011

Rampart Red Ale - Part 1

An Irish Red Ale from Hop To It! Homebrew
ABV 5.0%
IBU 28

Ingredients:
  • Specialty Grains
    • 6 oz CaraRed Malt
    • 6 oz Medium Crystal Malt
    • 4 oz Extra-Dark Crystal Malt
    • 2 oz Roasted Barley
  • Muslin Bag
  • 6.5 Pounds Light Liquid Malt Extract
  • 2 oz US Kent Golding Hops
  • Yeast: WYEAST 1084
  • 5 oz Corn Sugar
    • for bottling

Two-Stage Fermentation

My friend Hilary helped us make this Irish Red and, I will say, it was truly a first homebrewing experience. In all, the brewing went well. We followed a mix of the instructions that came with the Irish Red Kit and those outlined in Charlie Papazian's wonderful book The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Brewing on a mediocre electric burner is less than ideal, but a fair amount of patience and a few White Rascals saw us through it. Everything went swimmingly with the exception of cooling the wort, removing the hops, and activating the yeast in a timely fashion. The wort chiller wasn't functional due to a lack of a garden hose and/or a faucet adapter. Because of this, we had to wait quite some time despite placing the wort into the primary fermentation bucket and filling it up to the 5-gallon mark. I should note that we didn't have a strainer or filtered funnel at the time either, so the hops remained in the bucket for the duration of primary fermentation. The yeast packet takes 3 hours to activate... something we did not know until the point when we needed to put it in. Thus, the yeast was not put in until the following morning since I fell asleep and Ramius was no help in his occasional capacity as an alarm clock.

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