Spaceship Juice

First brew-post!  This weekend I made a recipe that Joe cooked up out of internet skills and imagination.  Through the wonders of Houston public transport he made it down to DeFalco's and bought all the grain, hops, and yeast needed and bussed back.  Interesting experience for him. Ask him sometime.  In any case, we had the name before the recipe, but we both clearly decided that "Spaceship Juice" was valid for a potent beer. All-grain recipe is as follows:

17	lbs	British Two-row Pale
1.5	lbs	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (he made a sub here, not sure what)
1	oz	Roasted Barley

	85mins	2oz	Cascade pellets
	60mins	1oz	Magnum pellet
	30mins	1oz	Magnum pellets

Belgian Abbey II yeast

1oz Irish moss boiled 15mins.

My setup is fairly simple but has been nearly 8 months in the making.  As you can see, I have an old Anheuser-Busch keg that once upon a time carried bud light. I figured this was wholly appropriate because I was liberating that confused keg from a lifetime of carrying bad beer! It was really exciting for that keg to know it would soon be making something worth drinking even though there would be some transformations between then and now. This keg was purchased on Craigslist from a guy who forgot to return it and lost his deposit. I then borrowed an angle grinder and cut a 12" hole in the top, sparks flying everywhere, and installed a spigot and a brewmometer in the side. Set up on a propane burner it really does the trick!

This time we brought the water up to 161F and cut the flame, then dropped in the extra large grain bag in and poured the grains into it.  With some vigorous stirring inside the bag we were able to get everything wet and the temperature dropped to 157-158F.  After an hour of mashing we lost about 5 degrees Fahrenheit and finished at 153F.  I really need a way to sparge my Brew In A Bag (BIAB) system at the moment, and am thinking in the future I will heat some water in my old 5Gal pot to 175F while the mash goes on and sparge with it; hopefully to improve the efficiency.  Baby steps though. :)  I'd really like to get some way to improve the efficiency because we ended up at 1.083OG and were hoping for 1.095-1.103 if all went well.  However, the stirring made a huge difference here since last time we were nowhere near the current 70%.

The boil included a healthy smattering of the tasting of prior batches. We had quite the taste-fest going on and by the time cleanup came we (Joe and me, but not so much Thomas) were a little tipsy. Hence why the photos of the chilling process (homemade counterflow) and my yeast starter are non-existent as of yet.  Next time though!

Since I label (almost) every batch and have been lazy a bit lately, I would like some suggestions for the "Spaceship Juice" label. Send em on in! The return will be a nice 6pack mailed to your front porch via FedEx (it's illegal to ship beer USPS).