Pale American

Following the success of the IPA I decided it was time to get back into it.  Need to brew something for summer here.  Catching some waves (still to do), relaxing on the beach and enjoying some home brew in January.  Certainly Australia in January is a special place and has special needs for beer.

So I took a chance back at Dave's and picked up the APA kit with a few extra ingredients.  Most of the kit was dry malt, which was a bit of a surprise.  Hops were still in plastic baggies other than the finishing hops, so similar concerns on the ingredients but we'll give it a go.

A lite steeping process but was great with the setup using the handles above the kettle with the steeping bag.  So cool... I love it. (and yes that is pizza in the lower right of the frame)

Steeping bag above

And most of the boil was through fine.  No dramas.  Fun watching all the malt take up....

All the malt added

At the end of the day everything went fine with the exception of cooling the wort.  It took a lot longer than last batch and I believe it's because the cold water is generally hotter due to the summer.  It just didn't seem as cold to cool and it took far too long.  I got impatient and added the wort back into the carboy and pitched the yeast.   WHAT!?  I pitched the yeast directly without checking the temp...!  This was a complete oversight and complacency on my part.  Liz was coming back from girls night and I just wanted to get it finished, but made the mistake.  I'm estimating it was about 84F when I pitched it.

Luckily when I checked the next day it was starting to ferment... and about 24 hours later it was clear this didn't have too bad of an impact.

Anyway it's up and going, OG was 1.056

740: boil on... getting to steep 30C
746: 42C
752: 66C
753: begin steep - pot is in the middle of the burners, 71C moving off burner alltogethre
804: steeping still... steady at 69C
816: - off steep, up to boil. lid on   
825: - 90+C.... bringing to boil then adding the dry malt extract
834: boil on!
919:
920: - pitched hops "bag 2"
934: - bag 1
949: ....
1112: OG 1.056