The long,
long awaited "
America, Fuck Yeah!" is fermenting. I had been thinking about this brew since the spring, but didn't squeeze it in before I moved. In the summer, the new house was too hot.
On Friday I brewed a 1 quart yeast starter wort (
White Labs California V ale yeast), then doubled it to a half gallon on Saturday. The main brew was Sunday night: a partial mash (mashed 4 lbs of
Rahr barley malt and 2 lbs of white wheat malt, and combined with 5 lbs of DME). No good reason for the wheat; I just wanted to see what it's like. (But also: c'mon! This is America (fuck yeah!) with our
amber waves of grain in the midwest, in addition to our famous
hops from the northwest!) I'm still calling this a pale ale rather than a wheat beer. You'll understand when you taste the hops.
The hops.. oh, the hops! 1 oz of
Chinook at 60 minutes, 3.5 (yeah!!) oz of
Simcoe from 20 minutes down to 5, and 1.5 oz of
Amarillo at 5 minutes and flameout. I'll also be dry-hopping with more Simcoe and Amarillo. This is a lot of hops for a 5 gallon batch. It smelled heavenly.
I pitched at about 1:00am Monday morning. When I woke up at 8:30, I had some visible activity, and foam in the blowoff tube. When I went home for lunch (12 hrs after pitching) it had blown off the cap. The ferment took off almost like those batches where I pitched on a previous batch's cake. It's just awesomely healthy. I am
very pleased with this yeast, so far.
This is going to be a great beer for hopheads. Actually, from what I tasted of my hydrometer sample, I kind of wish I has scaled back on the Chinook a little; maybe 3/4 oz. But we'll see what a few weeks do to it.
Monday night: the currents and eddies are amazing. Kat says it looks like I'm brewing
sea monkeys.
Update 11/16: bottled last night. Smells wonderful.