Brew #2: Amber Style Ale and an overview of my humble system

So today we bottled up the stout I brewed a week ago. I remade the recipe to the best of my memory that won me a medal a few years ago. Tasted a little sample (pre carbonation/aging) and tasted delicious. Can't wait the few weeks until it's ready to pour!

So here's today's brew complete with pictures to give an idea of how I'm operating here. My system is far from elaborate, but in an apartment, I'm limited to what I can do.

Amber Style Ale
Starting Gravity- 1.0600

Recipe:
Grain Bill:
32.00 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (3.0 SRM)
5.00 oz Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
3.00 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)
1.00 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM)
.50 oz Black Barley (Stout) (500.0 SRM)

Hops:
0.25 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (30 min)
0.13 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (0 min)


The very humble setup:


The inside of my home made mash tun. The sealant I used around the fitting there looks a bit ripe after I brewed the stout


Mashing the grains. Added 170f degree water, this gets the temperature of the pile of grains there to about 155f.


So last week on my first try brewing with this setup, I found that this small of a batch of grains is hard to keep at 155f for a full hour. I solved this problem by turning my oven to 170f, and keeping the mash tun in there. I check the temp of the grains every 15mins.


The mash is done, and it's time to mash out. I drip the wort in to the pot and keep doing additions of 170f water to the mash tun. I use a collander to break up the flow of water to not disturb the grain bed.




And there she boils! 1hr boil total.


After the boil I put the pot into a sink of ice water. What's nice about a 1gal batch is this actually works very quickly, and there's no need for expensive copper chillers. I then funneled the wort (the unfermented beer) into the fermenter. I use a 1gal growler as a fermenter.


Ah yes, yeast... Can't forget the yeast. Here's a mason jar with some Wyeast Irish Ale Yeast pulled from a fermenter at Big Al Brewing. It's nice to not have to spend $8 on yeast for every batch :) So now it's time for this here to make its way into the beer and start the feeding frenzy. Alcohol is just yeast poop afterall.


And alas, the fermenter, the wort, and the yeast become one.... This is where beer starts happening. Time to throw it in a cool, dark place for a few days.