Oct 4, 2020 4 min read brew-9

Brew # 9 - Morgan’s Balter XPA Clone

Another extract brew - this time, I'm following a Balter XPA clone recipe

Ingredients

Filled basin with hot water and stood the two liquid malt extracts in to soften
Boiled ~500mL of cold filtered water and added to glass flask for yeast rehydration (see below)
Filled Ferm'us with cold filtered water to 5L mark
Boiled another 1.7L water (that's the max my kettle can take)
Poured ~1L of the boiling water into the Ferm'us
Emptied the wort and liquid malt extract tins into the Ferm'us
Used the rest of the boiling water to rinse the tins
Lifted the Ferm'us and gave everything a good shake to mix the wort and LME and give a bit of oxygenation (much easier with only ~8L in the Ferm'us instead of 20L like I did before)
When I removed the pressure lid the seal dropped into the wort!!! It was sanitised, so it shouldn't cause too much harm, but I had to squeeze my arm into the Ferm'us to be able to reach far enough in to grab it when I finally managed to pull it out of the wort
Topped up with more cold filtered water to 23L - I didn't need any additional boiling water and hit a final temp around ~27C, which is just about perfect
Placed the Ferm'us into a temp controlled fridge at 22C

OG: 1.066 (I think this was wrong and due to the higher density wort at the bottom of the Ferm'us)

Allowed the temperature of the 500mL pre-boiled water (in the flask - see above) to chill to ~28C
Placed the flask in the temp controlled fridge (22C) and allow to rehydrate for 15-30 minutes
I didn't add any wort to the yeast this time
Gently (no splashing) swirled the flask to suspend the yeast in the liquid
Poured the yeast mixture into the Ferm'us
Attached pressure release valve (PRV) to the pressure kit
Monitored every few hours and adjust the PRV to ensure the Ferm'us doesn't become over-pressurised

After pitching the yeast the temp rose to around 27C
I attached the fridge to the temp controller (wasn't attached as I wasn't expecting it to be that high!) and set the temp to 26.5C
I reduced steadily over 4 days to 24C - by this stage the heater was kicking in to maintain the temp, but I figured it was better to drop slowly than bring it down too quickly and annoy the yeast
Left for 4 days

On day 4 primary fermentation appeared done (didn't measure SG), so I attached a sanitised, empty collection bottle to start collecting the trub
After 24 hours, detached and emptied the trub from the collection bottle
Rinsed and sanitised the collection bottle for dry hopping

Added ~30g of Amarillo hop pellets (9.2% AA), ~40g of Citra hop pellets (13.9% AA), and ~15g of Centennial hop pellets (8.8% AA) via a sanitised collection bottle - this was slightly more than the suggested 24g, 40g, and 12g, but I like it hoppy

Because the temp was still up around 24C, I started the crash cool straight after dry hopping to hit the target 3C after 7 days
Temperature controller was used to reduce the temperature by 0.3C every two hours, which means we'll hit 3C after ~6 days