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| SC having a little too much fun |
1) Beerfest Asia 2012
I brought along a few friends for this one, in a bid to spread the word on good beers. The selection was much more satisfactory than what I got last year (I went on the last day, and nearly everything I wanted had been sold out!), and in particular I was hankering after sampling some Lagunitas. Here's a list of new stuff I tried that night:
- Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Sumpin'
- Lagunitas IPA
- Elysian Brewing Dragonstooth Stout
- Elysian Brewing Immortal IPA
Hmm not that impressive a list, since I was actually concentrating on having some wild fun instead (see pics!). Right now it's still dominated by large industry players, but I'm hoping that it will shift towards micro/craft breweries in future years.
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| WP showing some beer-lovin' |
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| And I knew we'd get there in the end ... |
2) Brew-Together session (hosted by Eric)
I met Eric just about 2 months ago, when he dropped by to the last Brew-Together session hosted at my place. He was planning on doing DFH's 60 minute IPA for this session, but somehow managed to mix the dates up and thought we were only coming over the following day! =) That aside, everyone got settled down pretty quickly, and the brewday went on.
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| Pouring the wort back into the tun for the boil |
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| Yx caught stealing homemade candi sugar! |
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| Praying to the Beer Gods |
I was as usual in charge of preparing the yeast. Say Wee initially requested WLP002, but this current starter ended up looking extremely strange - WLP002 flocculates like mad normally, forming huge sticky chunks of yeast. This particular starter though, appeared a lot more powdery. Being suspicious, I brought along backup packages of good 'ole Nottingham dried yeast as well, which we did use in the end.
3) Brewday 10/6/12 - disaster.
Where should I even begin? Gosh. By some odd coincidence, I was also planning to brew a continually-hopped IPA this weekend, with the aim of perhaps sending it in for competition in a couple of months' time. So I was all set - a large 1.6L Pacman yeast starter, grains all ready, equipment all ready.
Everything went well up till the end of mashing. I thought the colour was a little too light, so I added 100g of Crystal 40L and a pinch of Cara-aroma for 15mins. Yes - what the heck - what in the world is a "pinch" and how am I going to recreate this for future brews? As luck would have it, the brew turned out a tad too dark after that. And because I messed with the grains in the last 15mins, the mash became too sticky, did not drain into the mash tun dead space, and my recirculation pump went dry and burnt out. WTF #1.
Fine, I went on manually recirculating etc. Then came the boil. I stood there for an hour, adding the hops continuously a few pellets at a time. Near the end of the boil however, the sheer amount of hops clogged up the screen separating the tun from the deadspace. The heating element started charring, producing a very nasty smell - I swear some of it got dissolved into the wort! WTF #2.
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| Charred element - I spent an hour scouring it! |
I was pissed and upset by this time, and really thought about just dumping the entire batch at this time. But heck, you never know .. so I decided to go ahead to chill the wort. As the recirculation pump had burnt out, I couldn't chill the wort to anywhere below 40C. That, and I forgot to prepare ice and was in the "heck it!" mood by this time. So I dumped hot wort into the fermentor and left it in the fermentation chamber to cool down over the next several hours. By the time the wort was cool enough for pitching, it was near midnight. WTF #3.
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| All this for beer that turned out too dark |
On a slightly happier note, I did hit gravities for this brew, and the last I checked 24hrs into pitching, the Pacman yeast had already reached high krausen.
Time to pray to the Beer Gods for better luck next time!
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