SD Brewery Tour: Intergalactic Brewing

So, our plan last week was to visit Belching Beaver's new tasting room in North Park.
But since Dave's plan is to visit actual breweries, and not just tasting rooms, our plan changed. I'm sure we will go visit BB soon, but not as part of the Brewery Tour.

So, with a new plan we decided to visit Intergalactic Brewing instead. Man were we not disappointed! Nice little tastin room, with some really well-made beers. I'll be coming back here again soon. Check out Dave's full revew over at Hop-Daddy.

San Diego Brewery Tour

So, inspired by my friend Dave over at Hop-Daddy I'm attempting to visit as many breweries in San Diego as possible. I don't plan on writing any full on reviews, just more of a log of which breweries I do visit and my general impressions.

As Dave will attest, I'm pretty liberal with my reviews. I like them ALL!! usually....

Tonight, Belching Beaver's new tasting room in North Park. I've never had any of their beers, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Brew Day - 4/14/13 - Double IPA

So, today's Brew Day (which was actually over a week ago...) involves several firsts. The first first (heh) was this is the first beer that I am brewing in my new facilities (i.e. our new house). We moved in last October, and with the garage being a total mess, I have been putting off making any beer just for sheer logistical reasons. Well, 6 months later, and the garage is still a mess, but a little bit more of a controlled mess. I was really itching to make something, so I set aside some space and some time and away I went...

That brings us to the next first (second first?). My new Mash tun!!

I've finally got a proper 10 gal MT and now I can start making full 5 gal All grain batches. Cool!

I need to focus a little bit better on my calculating because my mash temp was higher than I anticipated. I think I assumed that my grains were colder and adjusted too much. I'll be sure to get a better read next time.

Now I just need to get a bigger boil kettle because it's REALLY hard to prevent boil-overs with this "7.5" gal turkey fryer. I say "7.5" because that's how it's advertised, but I measured it and it's closer to 6.2-6.5 gal. If you look closely at the next picture, you can see the residuals of the boil-over... Oh well, one more piece of equipment to look for. This will make a nice HLT some day. BTW, I have found some great deals for 10 gal kettles over at http://www.homebrewfinds.com/ .

Ok, so the next first for this brew day is this is the first time I've used the super-hyped Mosaic hops. I was surprised at how fruity these smelled. A lot of pineapple and mango. I was expecting more citrus and pine for some reason. I don't know why. In any case, they smelled AMAZING before and after throwing them into the boil.

So that's pretty much it. I also used my new refractometer for the first time this day, but I didn't get any pictures of that. For the most part the brew day went pretty well. My OG was a little bit lower than I was shooting for, I think that is because of the higher temp in the mash. Not too bad for a day of firsts!

Recipe:

The recipe is based on a Ruination clone I found on homebrew talk. I used the same malt bill, but replaced the hops with what I had on hand.

Malt bill

14 Lbs Pale Malt (2 row)

1 lb. Crystal 20L

Mash - 152 Est OG - 1.077 (I hit closer to 156 and my OG was 1.071)

Hops

1.75 oz. Cascade hops (60 min boil)

1 oz. Citra hops (30 min boil)

1 oz. Citra (10 min)

1 tablet Whirfloc (15 Min Boil)

1 oz. Citra (1 min)

1 oz. Mosaic (1 min)

1 oz. Citra (dryhopped)

1 oz. Mosaic (dryhopped)

Hydrated US-05

14 days ferment @ 62

Then DryHop 7 days @ 65

Est FG - 1.013