The Recipe:
After milling the grain I added my one pound of flaked wheat, a couple of fistfulls of rice hulls, and the ground cinnamin. Flaked wheat doesn't need to be milled (in fact is probably shouldn't be) because it has been processed into a pre-gelatinized form. If you purchase raw wheat you'd have to do a cereal mash seperately from the main mash to gelatinize the starches, then add it to your main mash to convert the starches. Personally I haven't found a recipe in which I felt compelled to do my own cereal mash, yet. When working with wheat, since it has no husks, it is best to add some rice hulls to prevent getting a stuck mash. However, as I found out on this day, I hadn't added nearly enough.
The mash should have only take about an hour but because I had to refloat the mash not once but twice, each time adding more and more rice hulls, the mash lasted nearly three hours. Most of which was spent watching the very slow trickle of wort I got after refloating the mash twice.
Grain Bill:
13 lb Pale British Malt
1 lb Flaked Wheat (unmilled)
1 lb Chocolate Malt
0.5 lb Black Malt
0.5 lb Cara-Hell
Hops:
1 oz. Centennial (8.0%AA) 1st Wort
1 oz. Centennial (8.0%AA) 15 min
Yeast:
Wyeast 1084: Irish Ale
Additives:
Dash - Ground Cinnamin - Added to mash
Smidge - Irish Mosh - Added last 15 min of boil.
Not Enough - Rice Hulls - Added to mash
2 Oz. American Oak Cubes - Medium Toast - Added to Secondary
A pint or so of top shelf whiskey or bourbon (Maker's Mark or Knob Creek) - Added to Secondary.
The Brew Day: January 9, 2008
It was a chilly Saturday when I decided to break out the brewing equipment and do a five gallon batch. I wanted to make something that would go well when you've a good reason not to leave the house on the weekend when there is snow on the ground and the air pollution has built up in the valley reducing visibility to 13 blocks.
After milling the grain I added my one pound of flaked wheat, a couple of fistfulls of rice hulls, and the ground cinnamin. Flaked wheat doesn't need to be milled (in fact is probably shouldn't be) because it has been processed into a pre-gelatinized form. If you purchase raw wheat you'd have to do a cereal mash seperately from the main mash to gelatinize the starches, then add it to your main mash to convert the starches. Personally I haven't found a recipe in which I felt compelled to do my own cereal mash, yet. When working with wheat, since it has no husks, it is best to add some rice hulls to prevent getting a stuck mash. However, as I found out on this day, I hadn't added nearly enough.The mash should have only take about an hour but because I had to refloat the mash not once but twice, each time adding more and more rice hulls, the mash lasted nearly three hours. Most of which was spent watching the very slow trickle of wort I got after refloating the mash twice.
Having chosen to brew on a particularly chilly day I took over the living room to setup the mash and sparge. Eventually I got the brew kettle full of enough wort to move the kettle out onto the front porch and fire up the propane burner for the 1 hour boil.
After a one our boil I chilled the wort with a copper coil immersion chiller, pitched the yeast, and let it do its thing.
Once fermentation had taken hold I moved the fermenter into the cellar where it was about 58 degrees F in an effort to control the fermentation temp.
After about 18 hours the fermentation had kicked up so much that I needed to take the airlock off my primary and switch over to a blow-off tube setup. About 24 hours of that and the fermentation had settled down enough to switch back to a standard airlock and bring upstairs into
a 68 degree F environment.
a 68 degree F environment.Update: January 17, 2009
I moved the beer from primary to secondary fermentation and added the oak cubes.
I'll let fermentation complete and age for a couple of weeks before I add any bourbon, which will in all liklihood stop any yeast activity the moment it goes in.
