Well, it was another successful day at Shak's Brewery! 
(I HOPE!)
45 degrees on December 26th, here on the lake shore in Wisconsin, was too nice to waste! So I decided to make a tweaked Weissen.
Of course, the day wasn't without its problems - who'd of thunk that less than a cup of wheat DME would make the boil turn into a geyser!
Oh well, this was my 4th brew and I find I learn something new every time! The lesson today was in heat control!
Every batch I've made so far has had widely varying amounts of extract in them. The last one, Shak's Winter Warmer Ale, had 9lbs of Amber DME + other fermentables and, while it got away from me a couple times, it wasn't near as volatile as this wheat DME! I have a Blichmann burner and figuring out the valve settings has been a challenge! The first batch I brewed, I spent 2 hours trying to get the valve to work without freezing up - AFTER watching the video on the website! For some reason, that video doesn't translate well to the real world! So, today, I discovered that I can keep the boil going WITHOUT having the valve open so far...
Half the fun is the experimentation!
(I HOPE!)45 degrees on December 26th, here on the lake shore in Wisconsin, was too nice to waste! So I decided to make a tweaked Weissen.
Of course, the day wasn't without its problems - who'd of thunk that less than a cup of wheat DME would make the boil turn into a geyser!
Oh well, this was my 4th brew and I find I learn something new every time! The lesson today was in heat control! Every batch I've made so far has had widely varying amounts of extract in them. The last one, Shak's Winter Warmer Ale, had 9lbs of Amber DME + other fermentables and, while it got away from me a couple times, it wasn't near as volatile as this wheat DME! I have a Blichmann burner and figuring out the valve settings has been a challenge! The first batch I brewed, I spent 2 hours trying to get the valve to work without freezing up - AFTER watching the video on the website! For some reason, that video doesn't translate well to the real world!
So, today, I discovered that I can keep the boil going WITHOUT having the valve open so far... Half the fun is the experimentation!
