Saturday, June 24, 2017

Abbey Ale

I helped my friend and fellow club-member, Vito, brew an all-grain batch this morning. It was to be a pilsner, but because I don't have temperature control in my fermentation space, I pitched Abbey Ale yest into my share of the wort.

Ingredients  - for 15 gals. post boil

28 lbs German 2-row (2.0 SRM) Pilsner malt
2.8 oz Perle hop pellets (8% AA) - at 60 mins
1.5 tabs Whirfloc - at 15 mins
1.4 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker pellets (4 % AA) - at 15 mins
1.4 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker pellets (4 % AA) - at 0 mins

Ingredients - Fermentation of my 5-gal share

2 vials White Labs WLP 530 Abbey Ale Yeast


Procedure - 17 gal. boil

RO water, 5.3 ph
Single recirculating infusion mash
Sparged with 14 gals 168°F water
90-minute boil


Pitched Abbey Ale yeast at 70°F.


We used the specs sheet from Vito's previous brew of the recipe as the guide:


Oct. 2017: The beer was weird. The Belgian flavor was there, alright, but one could tell that the grain bill was all off for that yeast.  It could only be described as a hybrid beer, and a not very good one.  I'm afraid that I wasted Vito's perfectly good wort.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Housekeeping time ...

So, today I did the long-overdue chore of thoroughly cleaning the keggerator. I even unscrewed and took up the metal plate that protects the floor of the fridge portion, and cleaned and sanitized underneath that.

I also replaced the gas lines with some of those Brew Ultra spiral-curled PVC-free gas tubing.  It sure makes the inside of the kegerator a lot tidier!