The small beer was a success. It tastes clean and, as expected, watered down. It came in at 2.62% ABV and, the color and flavor are the same as the big beer (only watered down). I just wanted to see what would happen if I boiled, hopped and fermented the second runnings. I will seldom throw this stuff away again. Next time I will add some dry malt and boil it just like the big beer. The only thing this beer lacks is malt and alcohol. The dry malt should fix that. I will use a few more hops too. One thing you can use the small beer for, if you don't add dry malt, is to cut your big beer when you don't want a heavy beer. I have mixed the two when I wanted something a little lighter. This is good when you have a heavy beer on tap but, you want to drink it outside on a hot day. Just mix them. It tastes just fine. It may not be competition quality but, it will be very, very drinkable. Who knows? I may just enter a small beer in a competition just to see what it does.
Give it a try!
Freak
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Small Beer Success!
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2 comments:
Freak man, I got a couple of questions for you.
How much of the second runnings do you collect? Do you go by O.G. or volume and then adjust the preboil O.G. to what you want? My Sparge water capacity is somewhat limited but I'm definitely interested in this. It's like free beer.
Also, how much of the DME do you add? I know it probably depends on the gravity; I was just wondering if you had a some sort of formula or just went by feel.
Keep up the awesome work.
Hey Reed,
We just did it again on Sat. I have been using all the water I can in the sparge tank. I suppose I could add more mash water. It really does not matter. Take all of your 2nd runnings and add water to the boil if you need to bring the volume up. Figure in your boil off rate and add 1 lb. of dry malt, per gallon, for every 20 points you want to add to the gravity. If you intend to end up with 5 gallons, hop it just like you would for any other 5 gal. batch.
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