Brew 2, First Hefe

My second brew of 2012 and my first bottling finished, suprisingly, easier and cleaner than all previous batches. To start off with, I didn't have a boil-over. A combination of leaving one gallon (or so) out of the kettle until hot break and a constant skimming of foam caused there to be no boil-over, just a nice, smooth transition from not boiling to boiling.

However, it wasn't until I cooled the wort and pitched the yeast that I discovered my 4 gallon recipe was around 3 quarts short. Now, before with the porter I was a quart short. Now that I think about it, a quart over or under shouldn't matter as long as your gravity was hit correctly. Which, in this case, it was. However, being 3 quarts short made me wonder. Opening up the mash tun to retrieve a bag of grain and to begin the cleaning process I discovered my hose filter wasn't nicely settled on the bottom of the tun. It was, instead, suspended within the grain, leaving a good amount of delicious wort behind. So next time I need to remember that once I'm ready to begin the boil, give the tun a stir to make sure I got all the sweet liquid that I can get.

All in all, brewing today went off well. Stirring the cooler slightly caused the chilling process to go from boiling to 80F in the shortest time yet. It had to have been under 15 minutes, but I didn't check. Hopefully this yeast strain gives me the desired taste. I chose the Wyeast for it's bubblegum qualities, but my local store only had White Labs. We'll see how the taste comes out. All in all, ~3.2 gallons should end up being a tasty brew, and eventually (after a couple of refinements) a perpetual house brew. Oaked Hefeweizen, anyone?

Speaking of oaked, I had a thought that once I perfected my porter I'd take 1-gallon samples and subject them to various types of aging. My winter ale was ... ok ... with oak, but I had wanted it to be sweeter. The porter might benefit from the oak more than the winter ale did. But, after bottling the porter today (busy brew day...) I can say that it turned out, yet again, fantastic. The changes I made to the recipe really brought more chocolate and coffee and roasty goodness out. I'm excited to see how it turns out in a few weeks and I'm going to have to force myself to put a bottle away so I can age it.

Hefeweizen should be bubbling by the end of tonight, porter is bottled, and in two weeks I'll bottle the Hefe. I haven't decided if I'm going to bottle and brew in two weeks or if I'm going to bottle in two weeks, then in two more weeks brew an Irish Red. Today was fun, but it really did eat up my entire day. I want to brew 100 gallons this year, so once I crunch some more numbers I'll know if I'm going to be bottling in two weeks or repeating today in two weeks. Part of me feels that if I do what I did today every two weeks...by the end of the year I'm going to be burnt out. Don't want that.