Brew #2 Hobgoblin Again

The Return of Wyeast 1028

Even though it had only been a week and the first attempt was still in secondary, I wanted to get a head start on the next phase of what is sure to be a long proses.

My objective is to produce a beer as close to Witchwood's Hobgoblin Ale as possible with the ingredients available to me. Continuously brewing this beer will also give me a good idea of what kind of substitutions will work. Substitution is an important thing to understand, as this entry will demonstrate.

To recap, I’m still using the same ingredients:

6 Ounces Crystal malt
1 Ounce Chocolate malt
0.5 Ounces Black patent malt
12 Pounds Pale malt

1 Ounce goldings for the bitter
1 Ounce goldings for the mid
1 Ounce goldings for the finish.

The weird thing about this batch from the start is that a different yeast was used. If you will recall, last time I had to substitute Wyeast 1318 for the suggested 1028 as my home brewing supplier didn’t have any 1028 left. This time I got to the shop shortly before closing time. Ironically there was no 1318 left, and the only available substitution was 1028! In the quest for consistency I had come full circle.

Also, on my way out of the shop, the iron gate came off it's hinges and nearly crushed me.

THE MASH

Seeing as I fell short last time I decided to bump my strike water temp up to 81° Celsius That got it up to 66° Celsius but I was concerned about it falling off during the later part of the mash. Reluctantly I committed another 1/10th decoction. Like magic It hit 78° Celsius, and then later evened out to 67° Celsius - 68° Celsius.

Super. The rest of the mash went just fine. Circulation and sparge were good to, identical to the last brew. Nothing out of the ordinary to report there.

THE BOIL

This was a little different. I was fallowing my friends suggestion to do that fancy pants maneuver with the lids half cocked in order to bring it to a boil faster and use less heat. I tried it and was rewarded with a minor boil over. My fault I’m sure, but I was seriously irritated at the roller coaster of heat adjustment I had to do to get the pots back on a steady clime. The result was I didn't get my heat break for 40 Minutes-- fuck. ...and so the kettles came out a little short from the extra evaporation.

After I finally got the heat break and started the clock, the hop and Irish moss additions all continued on schedule. Same as last time.

WORT CHILLER

That’s right, I finally got a wort chiller together. It’s an ugly thing that doesn't look anything like what you see in those nice orthographic drawings. No this looks like some one took a perfectly constructed wort chiller, and then had a baby elephant sit on it.

Never the less it worked fantastically, or at least more fantastically than not using one. I can take a five gallon pot down to body temperature in 15 Minutes.

OG: 1.050... How stereotypical. You would think I meant to do that.

BIG FUCK UP

I don’t know what was with the wracking cane this time. I’ve never had so much trouble with whole hops getting in the tip and killing the siphon. It happened four times before I flipped out again and just dumped the kettle into the primary. Fuck sakes. I’m going to get a gawd damn auto-siphon. Depending on mother nature to keep a siphon going might have been alright for the Roman aqueducts, but this is BEER we are talking about.

THE FERMENT

As of this posting batch #2 has been going strong for five days. I'm disturbed at some serious cloudiness, where as batch #1 was comparatively clear at this point-- (time to review my notes) -- It doesn't taste contaminated, and the gravity is at 1.030 at the moment.

BTW Batch #1 is still in good shape, and still going. Currant gravity is 1.024. We are half way there.