I was finally able to brew some beer! I made a final visit to the home brew supply store on Sunday. Got started at about nine o'clock this morning laying out my equipment and prepping for the boil. Everything went super smooth until it came time to chill the wort. Due to the hose clamps on the input to the chiller being tighten on the vinyl tubing while it was at room temperature it started to spray after it had heated up and softed the tubing. Luckily the little water that made it into the wort was while it was still over 200 degrees. I was happy to see my starting gravity was 1.054. For some reason this was higher than my brew software estimated. Oh well. I tasted the sample I pulled and it had a good bitter to it. It should clean up and taste quite nice as long as there is no unexpected infections.
My 5 gallons of sweet delicious ESB are now fermenting in the little bench of the tiny house. I had to buy a Brew Belt to maintain a constant temperature between about 65F and 75F. It will take some playing with to get the setup just right, but I am optimistic it is the best bet, short of making a temperature controlled box in the shop. I don't really want to do that though. It would cost money.
So hopefully in about 10 days I will be bottling up some Extra Special Bitter!
Full boil in my converted 7.75 gal keg kettle.
Second and third hop additions measured and bagged. The muslin bags are awesome.
Bucket of Starsan and my generally messy work bench.
Immersion chiller being sanitized in the boil.
