Recipe #3 - Hibernation Ale Clone

Recipe #3 - Hibernation Ale Clone - 11/4/09

8.4 lbs Vienna Malt
0.9 lb Flaked Oats
0.45 lb Caramunich Malt
0.30 Biscuit Malt
0.30 Special Roast
0.23 Chocolate Malt
1 oz Centennial Hops (75 minutes)
1 oz Northern Brewer (15 minutes) (fresh hops)
0.5 oz Magnum Hops (15 minutes)
0.5 oz Magnum Hops (5 minutes)
1 oz Northern Brewer (5 minutes)(fresh hops)
British Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1098)

Recipe yields 3 Gallons!

This was our first All Grain attempt. We brought 3 gallons of water to the mid 160's, and mashed the grain in a large pot. Boil in a bag method. We had to top up with just a little boiling water to get back to temperature. This steeped for an hour, and held it's temperature upon completion. We collected roughly 1.67 gallons of wort from the mash. That wort was stored in a sanitized carboy, until we could add it back to the boil pot.

We then sparged, by bringing another 3 gallons of water just over 170 degrees into the grain, and steeped that for 15 minutes. We collected roughly 2.5 gallons of wort from the sparge, yielding us a total of just over 4 gallons of wort in the pot.

That was then brought to a boil, with hops added. Initial plan was 65 minute boil, but we added the hops before boiling was reached, and ended up adding 10 minutes to the overall boil. That means the Centennial spent 75 minutes in the boil.

At 15 minutes, we hopped with the Norther Brewer (fresh) and Magnum (pellet) hops.

At 5 minutes hopped the remaining Norther Brewer and Magnum hops, for aroma.

We had very little boil off in the pot, resulting in approximately 4 gallons of wort in the pot. Since we were planning a 'half batch', in the smaller carboy, we poured off approximately 2.5 gallons into a smaller pot, and chilled it in an ice bath. Chilling to < 80 degrees took approximately 35 minutes (stirring helped). That was then transferred to the carboy, at approximately 75 degrees. We were a little short of our desired volume, so we quickly chilled another half gallon or so (took 5 minutes), and topped up to right around 2.5-2.75 gallons in the carboy.

Hydrometer reading at 75 degrees was 1.060. Adjusting for temperature, that puts us right at 1.062 for the batch.

We pitched the yeast, aerated, and capped the airlock.