Brewing class day 4

Homebrew class of 2008

We brewed up 10 gallons of an Extra Special Bitter today using the all-grain method on my gravity feed system. 18lbs. of 2-row and 28oz. of Crystal #60. Our efficiency was huge which required us to add some water to the wort to get down to the gravity that we were shooting for (1.052). This ESB is a very quaffable beer and always scores well in the competitions. In the mean time we tasted the Hefeweizen and IPA from the first class and discussed a method of evaluating the beer. Then we rack the Irish Stout from last weeks class into a keg and forced carbonated it, readying it for the beer fridge to condition for a week before tasting next week at the potluck. The class was very engaged in the all-grain brewing process and all went well until the end when it was time to chill the wort. We had a large amount of pellet hop debris that clogged the outflow valve of the boil pot that required some reaming to correct. Once that was cleared the chilling went forward smoothly and the wort was pumped directly into the fermenter at 70f. We pitched a stepped up English ale yeast (Whitelabs WLP002) http://www.whitelabs.com/ and concluded the brewing session.