I'm gonna rest it for two weeks, I've read a couple people say it's not really that necessary for lightly roasted malts but meh, not gonna brew for two more weeks and I'd rather be on the safe side.
Permalink Reply by MrC on December 8, 2008 at 9:02pm
No, I don't do a full wort boil for kits.
For my latest kit brew, I made up a small wort using approx 4 litres of water and 4 large spoons of kit (hopped extract). I then boiled and added my hops and cooled as if it was a full wort boil:
10 Min:
12g Sauvin
12g Cascade
0 Min:
20g Sauvin
20g Cascade
I then threw it all in the fermenter and topped it up to 21L.
I read somewhere (I think it was John Palmer) that hop utilisation is affected more by the gravity of the wort than the size of the pot. So my theory is that by boiling the hops in the right gravity wort I will still get a good amount of flavour & aroma, even though it was a small volume boil.
The smell coming out of the airlock seems to indicate that it has worked well but only time will tell.
The other option you could think about it buying a Mac's Pale kit and steeping grain to convert it to a Dark. Freshly steeped grain and hops may give it more life. I've done it several times, even got a silver medal for Mac's Pale kit with steeped crytal and chocolate malts and a hand full of Amarillo.
A sleepy munton's stout. in 5days it managed to go from 1042 to 1028, 3 days later it hadn't budged
I'm thinking that I didn't aerate enough after having boiled the water, I pitched a decent sized US05 starter and it went off well. temperature stayed well within the US05 comfort zone. I have no idea what could have sent the beasties to sleep.
racked it to secondary yesterday and there's a little bit of action but I'm giving up on it as one to leave for a while.
Permalink Reply by jt on December 10, 2008 at 1:16pm
642 - An Ale with Styrians - yesterday during a rainy day off
85% Pale
10% Munich
5% Crystal
a handfull of pale chocolate
17 IBU Super Alpha @ 60, 8 IBU Styrians @ 15
I did this a month or two back but dry hopped with 25gm Styrians as well.
It didn't come into it's own for at least 4 weeks after kegging - by which time it was nearly gone
Hopefully it'll be good to go from day one without the dry hopping this time round