Mild Brew
While I’ve got a pretty fine Pale Ale, and I had been craving pale ales, I find myself craving more malt-focused beers now. To prevent myself from raiding my aging reserves too much (Doppelbock, Stout, even my high-alcohol ESB), I decided to make something malty – and ale – to get my fix relatively soon.
Recipe
Pre-Brew
Not wanting to pay for yeast when I had perfectly good American Ale yeast (Wyeast 1056) from my Pale Ale, I decided to make this English beer with an American Yeast.
Kegging (6/30/11)
I tried a new method of a (mostly) closed transfer. I connected my auto-siphon to my keg-to-bottle setup (quick disconnect, hose, cobra tap) and ran it in through the keg’s ‘OUT’ post. After sanitizing, I ran some CO2 through the ‘OUT’ post with the vent open to hopefully purge the keg of oxygen. Then I sealed it up, hooked the auto-siphon/keg-to-bottle contraption up to it and started siphoning with the vent open. It worked out pretty well. I even put some chopsticks on either side of the auto-siphon with a rubber band to keep it at the height I wanted to prevent getting trub. The end result was a pretty hands-off, mostly closed, oxygen protected transfer from the carboy to the keg. Now this isn’t a beer I expect to save for a long time, so it’s probably not going to be much benefit for me now, but it gives me a chance to try a new technique and hopefully I can be adept at it in the future when I am dealing with a beer that I want to take good care of.
Also, I performed yeast washing per the instructions in this thread. I’d gotten kind of bad at collecting and washing yeast lately and this seemed like a good approach. I bought some lids for the Mason jars we already had (I ended up with 2 pint jars and 1 quart jar). It worked out pretty well, although I think I got a little too much gunk from the bottom. I’m really not sure how to pour 1 quart carefully out of a 6-gallon glass carboy. Also, this yeast bed looked kind of grungy. We’ll see how it turns out. I think when I go to use it, I should definitely do a starter and maybe do it well enough in advance that I can go buy new yeast if necessary. It does look nice in the fridge, but after seeing it in the carboy, I’m concerned. It reminds me of my Brown Ale.
