Irish Red in time for St. Patrick's Day

On Thursday, Kristi and I brewed our Irish Red beer in the hopes that we could have it ready before St. Patrick's Day.  For the most part, the brewing process was exactly the same as the Kolsch but with some minor differences.  This time, there were 5 different grains to add to the beer with there being a net total of grains being more than the amount of grains we used for the Kolsch.  The grains used were:

1 lb Crystal 120L

8 oz Abbey

8 oz Caramunich

2 oz Black Roasted

2 oz Special B

The Black Roasted in particular were very dark and I suspect had a lot to do with the near instant darkening of the brew as it warmed up with the grains within.  The hops were, of course, different as we used Northern Brewer hops for bittering and Willamette hops for aroma, still boiling aroma hops for only a minute.

I think we are getting the brewing down better as we actually saw a good wort develop at one point into the brewing.  This was a bit exciting for me (Kristi was out getting some more supplies so she missed it) as we never really got a good look at the wort with the Kolsch.  We then chilled it in an ice bath in the sink (though we are looking into making our own wort chiller so we don't have to worry about carrying a steaming hot 5 gallons of liquid).  We then placed the beer into the fermenter when we were done.

Kristi wanted to try doing a starter batch for the yeast (her background is in Biology so this was easy for her, but I imagine this should be rather simple to anyone that reads the basics of how this works).  What Kristi did was take about a gallon of the beer and place it in our small carboy and placed the yeast into this container and sealed it and the fermenter.  She let the yeast do its job and the next day she place that batch into the fermenter.  The reason she did this was for several reasons.  One, the beer in the fermenter was still very hot and we were worried the yeast had been out too long and not enough yeast would survive to do its job properly.  Two, the smaller volume means there would be "faster communication between the yeast" as Kristi put it.  What this means I'm still not entirely certain, but essentially the yeast grows faster when it has a more dense population.  Because of this, the smaller carboy means a whole lot more yeast to introduce to the fermenter when we added it the next night.  At this time it wasn't showing a whole lot of activity, but we were also informed we may have to wait until next week before we see a great deal more activity.

While getting supplies, Kristi also found out it is best to get a second fermenter to transfer to at one point as it helps with minimizing how much dead yeast you have in your batch.  So at this point we have two fermenters and a bottling bucket to switch between, all before we get to the actual bottling process.  The bottling bucket has a spigot at the bottom so that all we have to do is turn it on and keep the container as unexposed as possible to oxidation and anything falling into our batch.

Tonight we will be finally starting our Belgian Blonde Kristi got for her birthday to make and that should make enough for the carboy itself, so we will not need to worry about doubling up on equipment.  Kristi and I are hoping to use this as an opportunity to play with adding other flavorings to the beer and we'll add more on that when we get to that point.  As the brewing process will not likely be that involved we will probably skip it this time.