Voodoo people pale ale II

Eight months since my last brew day it was finally time to get going again. I opted for a (hopefully) improved and simplified version of my last batch Voodoo people. Specifically:

• Added some Munich malt to give a richer, breadier and more layered/complex malt base
• Reduced the amount of minerals added to tone down the harshness of the bitterness
• Decreased the boil time to 30 minutes to shorten the brewday a bit, since it doesn’t seem to have any negative side effects
• Opted to use US-05 instead of Wyeast labs American ale II since liquid yeast can be a bit delicate and with a baby around I wasn’t sure I would be able to brew as planned

Another difference was a new stainless steel fermenter in place of my old plastic buckets.

Apart from accidentally stirring my brew water with a dirty spoon as it was heating (forcing me to start over with new minerals added etc) the brewing itself was fairly straight forward. I also got some measurement wrong, probably the pre-boil gravity, so I’m not sure what my mash efficiency was.

Fermentation started about 12 hours after pitching the yeast. My replacement Plaato worked like a charm, but their suckback preventing valve most likely leaked a little making the registered numbers look way too low. After a day of worrying about a potential stuck fermentation I took a gravity sample and found the beer had reached FG in just three days. I dry-hopped, waited 3-4 days and then legged the beer.

I’m planning to try pressurized transfers of my beer in the future but didn’t have all parts for that yet. I still wanted to try parts of that process so I connected my auto siphon to the liquid post of the keg. That idea looked good on paper but the gravity transfer combined with some hop material clogging the valve quickly reduced the flow to a trickle. I removed the disconnect and used the tube alone but it was still too narrow to give a good flow without any pressure behind it. This is definitely as area of improvement for next time.

With some mild burst carbonation the beer was drinkable (but not really done to be honest) just nine days after I brewed it.