Kegged Beer, Keggerator, New Brew...

I've got a few things going on in my brew house this week.

First things first, kegging my first beer! I'll be kegging most of my GimmeThatNut Brown ale, probably 4 gallons of it, and bottling the last gallon. This is a huge step because I've had a little bit of trouble dealing with bottle carbonation, and bottling is time consuming. It'll be nice to get a perfect pour out of the tap!

Second, Dan-o (handyman extraordinaire) is gonna help me convert my bar refrigerator into a homebrew kegerator. Drill a couple of holes, pop in a couple pieces of hardware and I should be set! It's always good to have handy friends, especially one's that like to get paid in beer instead of money! I've got everything I need to get it done, 5 lb. CO2 tank full, CO2 gauge, lines for gas and liquid, conversion kit for the fridge, a 5 gallon cornelius keg. All I need is a few more kegs, and a couple more taps and I'll be stylin!

Thirdly, I'm about to brew up a clone of Bell's Two Hearted Ale. I'm going to alter it a little bit to my tastes. I’ll be adding a couple extra pounds in the grain bill, and also not as much hops for bittering. I’m also using a different strain of yeast then what Bells uses. I need to figure out how to propagate yeast from the bottle. I’m sure my wife won’t mind having a yeast propagating factory in our basement.

Big Water Ale - IPA – All Grain (5.5 Gallons)

12 lbs Rahr 2-row Malt

2 lbs Vienna Malt

0.5 lb Cara-pils/Dextrin

0.5 lb Crystal/Caramel 20L

5 ounces Centennial hops (60, 30, 15, 5, 1)

Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast

Irish Moss

I’ll mash at 152 degrees for 60 minutes, and sparge at 169 degrees for 20. My last beer I had 70% extraction efficiency of sugars from the grains. I’m hoping to do a little better this time with a higher sparge temperature to hopefully get closer to 80%. I did add a little extra 2-row to combat my pour efficiency.

Big week! I'll make sure to upload photo's of my first pour(in a couple weeks), as well as some construction photo's of Dan-o and I working on the kegerator set up. I'll also upload a video of my dog chugging a beer in under 10 seconds. YEAH!