Jackknife Barber

Ref 2023-01 Jackknife Barber Brewer Pain & Patience
Style British Golden Ale Type Beer, all-grain
Started Tue 24th Jan 23 OG 1.050 Status Archived, 4.7% ABV
Packaged Mon 6th Feb 23 FG 1.010 Fermenter Fermzilla 5 PSI
Handle 2023-01 Jackknife Barber
Brewer Pain & Patience
Style British Golden Ale
Type Beer, all-grain
Fermenter Fermzilla
Status Archived, 4.7% ABV ABV
Started Tue 24th Jan 23 OG 1.050
Packaged Mon 6th Feb 23 FG 1.010

Collaboration at a Maris & Citra SMASH with Gregg from Bottle Monkey.

Milestones & Tasks

Feb 06 -407dKegged 19 litres
Feb 01 -412dDry-hopped
Jan 24 -420dStarted Primary
Feb 202306Mon

Just put away about 19 litres of this into two kegs; a 10 litre MJ Mini and the rest into a standard 19 litre Corny. Not sure why I used a full-size keg to hold just over litres but by then I’d already sanitised it, so why not.

I’m slightly disappointed to only get 19 litres from the FV when there was just over 21 to be had. The trub line wasn’t above the disconnect I’d fitted to the collection jar (light beer, sparse hopped) so I started using that to draw off, but the flow stopped 3 or 4 litres into the first keg despite adding 10 PSI using a mini CO2 cylinder. In the end I went back to the floating dip-tube, which I still haven’t weighted properly and which is therefore still not going all the way down, especially when it starts fouling the Tilt. Oh well.

On a positive note I’ve measured FG at 1.011 so we’re looking at 4.7% ABV, 0.1% above the anticipated final and that’s more than acceptable as bang-on given the likely margin of error when checking a partially carbonated brew. Slightly more cloudy than I’d have expected given the 3 days of cold-crashing and use of Protafloc, will probably clear if lagered for a couple of weeks, but that seems unlikely because the taste is already very moreish despite lacking body. Into the fridge at 15 PSI of CO2 for a couple of days.

Good start: Jackknife Barber’s kegged and partially conditioned, 14 days after brewing.
5 days
Feb 202301Wed

Fermentation seems to have well and truly stopped since about 3 days ago, so yesterday I blipped the temperature by 2℃ to finish things off before switching off the heater altogether, and today I dry-hopped 25g Citra as per recipe.

Jackknife Barber, 8 days into Primary

It’s weird to be seeing the fermentation curve flattening out 8 points shy of FG, especially for a light beer such as this. Are we really only on for 3.8% ABV here? The upward trend (it did peak at 4.0% ABV) is also weird, and I can only assume that what we’re seeing is a combination of Tilt’s aversion to absolute readings and maybe some yeast climbing aboard near the end of the ride.

Another possible explanation is that Voss didn’t like the near-death experience when I accidentally froze the contents of my beer fridge a couple of weeks ago. Luckily my sachets of kveik were surrounded by the cold-packs it shipped in, which I’m hoping acted as thermal buffers. Certainly no untoward signs where fermentation is concerned up to now.

Let’s let the Citra stew for 2 days, then start to ramp down towards cold-crashing on Friday night. Bottling date tentatively set for Tuesday 7 Feb.

8 days
Jan 202324Tue

Kicked off a Maris and Citra SMASH with Gregg this morning, no incidents and very much bang-on the numbers. We’re under-pitching Voss on this one, using just ¼ pack instead of the ½ that went into my last brew, Geronimo III, with the idea being that if it won’t kick off in the same timeframe we can always throw in the rest of the bag. Nothing else to report for now …

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