| Ref | 2023-03 Geronimo | Brewer | Pain & Patience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Style | New England IPA | Type | Beer, all-grain |
| Started | Thu 9th Mar 23 | Status | Archived, |
| Packaged | Tue 21st Mar 23 | Fermenter | Fermzilla |
| Handle | 2023-03 Geronimo |
|---|---|
| Brewer | Pain & Patience |
| Style | New England IPA |
| Type | Beer, all-grain |
| Fermenter | Fermzilla |
| Status | Archived, ABV |
| Started | Thu 9th Mar 23 |
| Packaged | Tue 21st Mar 23 |
Nice! Very cloudy with a moderate amount of mouthfeel, perhaps slightly more carbonation needed. I did fill the keg fairly well and there probably wasn’t that much head-space, so perhaps that’s to account for the lack of bubbles. By no means flat, but then again also not overcooked.
FG was measured just now as 1.014 (1.016 @ 8.4℃) but there was a fair bit of foam so I’m going to say we’re near as damn it on target (1.012) for 6.6% ABV versus expected 6.9%. Tastes just fine to me. 😉
Usual method of purging sanitiser filled keg with CO2, carefully throwing in half a crushed Campden tablet, then purging some more. Didn’t bother doing the lines this time, and got pretty much one full Corny keg out of it with not much left behind but hops and trub. Brewhouse efficiency is down a bit as a result of 2 litres lost post-fermenter, but I’m happy with the filled keg, especially as any more would have seen me dirtying another vessel for the sake of one or two pints. Gravity is 1.014 versus expected 1.012, equating to about 6.6% ABV instead of expected 6.9%. No complaints from me!
Fermentation appears to have slowed to nothing and most of the Krausen has cleared, so I’d like to throw the finishing hops in now and have the last remnants of fermentation clean up the introduced O2. In an unexpected development I seem to have lost pressure from the FV, with the gauge on the spunding valve indicating 0 PSI at one point. Tightening up both top disconnects resulted in the needle budging a little, but she really seems to be done now. Hopefully we’ll get another burst now that the hops are in and that will act as insurance against suck-in during cold-crashing.
Quite a good brew day today. Only one small error (heaters on Auto rather than Auto Mash, no scorching though) and I’m very very close to all my numbers, both in terms of volumes and gravity. The only exception there is the amount of trub loss when using the Trubinator, and going forward I may think about creating a dedicated equipment profile for when I’m using this piece of kit. Unfortunately doing so would effectively fork any subsequent tweaks as I’ll be tuning two profiles, so we’ll have to think about this some more.
One thing which did give me slight concern today was my desperate under-pitching of Voss Kveik. If memory serves correctly I used half a sachet of slurry on a previous incarnation of Geronimo and then a quarter on Jackknife Barber, leaving me with one quarter sachet and the hope that my previous doses hadn’t been too greedy.
I warmed the alarmingly light bag during boil using my laptop, weighed it at 51.93g, and pitched it at around 24℃ with the empty bag weighing 10.71g – so 41.22g of yeast for 21 litres of 1.064. Nothing happened in the following hours and nothing continued to happen when I turned in for the night, but at around 05:00 the next day it took off in typical Kveik fashion. The following morning I was relieved to see I’d remembered to fit the spunding valve, but disappointed to find I’d adjusted it too high, because it was hissing merrily at around 17 PSI. Voss is one hard, mad bastard. Reduced pressure gradually to 5 PSI as I don’t want to suppress too many Esthers or release too much hoppy goodness via CO2 when it’s time to dry-hop. All good for now.
