Oktoberfest Ale

So I went into SF Brewcraft and per their recommendation I decided to go with an Oktoberfest recipe that uses an ale yeast.  I don't have lagering equipment right now so this is a lot easier.
All right, so this was a partial mash recipe. The first thing I did was boiled 2 gallons of water and put into my carboy.

The grain base was:

1.5lbs 2-row
.5lbs German Munich
.5lbs German Vienna
.5lbs Belgian Cara-Munich

I brought 3.5 gallons of water to 155F and steeped the grains for 40 minutes:

Then I removed the spent grains, brought the water to a boil and added 6.5 lbs of Light Liquid Malt Extract.  Make sure to stir the mixture very well.  I guess I didn't do it that thoroughly and have a burn stain at the bottom of my brew kettle from where some of the LME stuck to the pot.

Right after stirring the LME in, I did my first hop addition.  I added 1 oz of Perle 7.8AAU hops for 60 minutes.

After the 60 minutes I turned off the burner and added 1 oz of Tettnang 4.8AAU hops.

Then as quickly as possible you want to cool the wort down to room temperature, I shoot for about 70F.  I do this with a wort chiller connected to a hose, but a lot of people just dunk their brew kettle in a bucket of ice.  I did this for a while and it is not very effective.  Wort chillers are pretty cheap to make, I'll try to put a section up on making one at a later time.

After the wort has chilled down you want to add the mixture to your carboy with the original 2 gallons.

If you're going to do a gravity reading, take it at this point.  Just fill your testing tube with wort, put the hydrometer in the liquid and spin it to shake off any bubbles.  Then take note of the reading.   Mine came out to 1.10.  This seems extremely high and would result in about a 10% ABV beer, but I'm mixing it with 2 gallons of water so I'm multiplying it by a ratio of 3/5 to get a gravity of about 1.06.

To make sure the yeast can work actively you want to aerate your mixture.  A lot of people use oxygen pumps but I kind of just give my carboy a good shake.  After the wort has been aerated open up your yeast, I used a liquid German Ale/Kolsch yeast.  Then fill your air lock half way with water, put the air lock into the stopper and close off the carboy.

Now I just put my beer away in my storage unit and let it do its work.  Make sure to check it in 24 hours to make sure your air lock is bubbling.  It should be bubbling pretty profusely to mean that the yeast is active.  I'll continue checking until the air lock bubbles less than once per minute, which I consider to be the point when primary fermentation is finished and I'll then siphon the beer into my secondary fermenter and let it sit and clear out for another four weeks.

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I made it at techshop.
www.techshop.ws