Ingredients:
Muntons pale two row, 10 lbs.
Light Munich, 0.5 lbs.
Wheat malt, 0.25 lbs.
Nugget hop pellets, 0.66 oz., 60 min.
Cascade, 0.25 oz., 10 min.
Centennial, 0.25 oz., 10 min.
Cascade, .5 oz., flameout
Centennial, .5 oz., flameout
2nd generation, Wyeast 1056, 1.5 qt. slurry
Mash:
152, 60 min.
Target pre-boil gravity: 1.048
Actual: 1.045
OG: 1.053
FG: 1.013
Notes:
Ah the joys of apartment life: my wife and I live in a second floor unit. I have a decently sized balcony which I have found extremely convenient, though in violation of my lease, for brewing. I understand why this is a violation. It is against the fire code and all sensibility to have an open flame with its energy source (20 lbs of propane) under an overhang and within 10 feet of the building. At the very least, I am putting myself, my cat, my wife, and seven other residences in danger. If I set the balcony on fire, this stick building, slowly heat cured over the last 10 or so years, would go up in a raging inferno within minutes.
So yes, brewing on the balcony of my second story apartment involves a bit of risk. Doesn’t everything we do involve some risk? Getting out of bed every day puts us in harm’s way. But do we let this stop us from getting up (if you are paralyzed by fear and depression this question is not for you) and getting on with it? I would say our lives are lived in a constant state of subconscious assessments of risk vs. reward. It is what we do; it is the way things work.
Our apartment is nowhere near the office. The chance of anyone with any authority to tell me to stop what I am doing is slim to none. I had assessed the risk, calculated the reward, and was moving forward. Up until this last brew I had gotten away with my self righteous justification.
“And now,” as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”
Somebody tattled on me. I was over the sink rinsing some sort of equipment or other when I heard coming through the kitchen window, a very purposeful tread make its way up the stair. Before the no nonsense knock could even be dealt, I knew what I was dealing with.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi,” said a very uncomfortable lady from the office. “You can’t have the open flame there. You have to turn it off.” In an instant all manner of thought entered my mind.
My whole being quaked from upset. My soul lashed out against the bars of this prison we call society. “Fuck you. Leave me alone,” I wanted to say. “You’re not the boss of me.” I hate this place, no fucking privacy. Living on top of each other like some sort of twisted human coup. Gotta drive everyfuckingwhere to get anyfuckingwhere. No place to call my fucking own…You get the idea. Everything that frustrates me about my life and life in general could be related to this one minor incident. And that’s no joke.
But of course, because I am a sane, reasonable being who respects others, I replied to the nice, polite office lady, “Okay, no problem. Is it alright if I move it to the sidewalk?”
“Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.” And the polite office lady uncomfortably lumbered hurriedly away, out of site, back to where she had come from. I shut the door softly with my tail between my legs.
I had already mashed and lautered. My wort was just about to come to boil. Luckily Chessie was home. Seven gallons of hot wort would have been a huge pain in the ass to get through the apartment and down a flight of stairs by myself. We set everything up on the sidewalk outside the apartment, naked to the world. We were at the mercy of the Mormons and shitting, pissing dogs walking their people. Ah, the joys of apartment living in a lifeless city. It is a great contradiction. Inside you feel trapped, outside you feel exposed. Where is the buffer? Are we supposed to enjoy this compressed, concentrated existence?
But this is about beer, not the socio-architectural make-up of our dying cities.
Chessie and I got to within five minutes of flameout before it started raining. Nice. Instead of a little Irish moss (which I forgot to add), how about a little acid rain to help coagulate the break and clear the beer? I dumped in the last of the hops. Chessie and I struggled back up the stairs with a pot full of scalding hot wort. The troubles didn’t stop with the rain. The drill powered pump I use to circulate ice water through my wort chiller wouldn’t work. It took me about fifteen minutes, a few handfuls of hair and some straight up panic before I finally got that piece of shit to run. Turns out I just needed to prime it, that was all. Amazing how things work when you use them correctly.
So I had my wort chilled down. I was headed down the home stretch. The next step was to pitch the yeast. I had started a vial of White Labs WPL001, California Ale, about a week prior. It had been sitting for a few days at 67 degrees. I had pretty much forgotten about it, confident it would be ready for me when the time came. When it came time to pitch, I started to second guess myself. Was the yeast still gonna be viable? After a week? I had really meant to brew three days earlier. I popped open the bung of the growler I was using to house the two pint standard starter and took a smell. My heart sank. It smelled like rubber. What was I gonna do?! I couldn’t use this. The brew store was an hour away. The brew store wasn’t even open now. SHIT! Panic began to creep back into the pit of my stomach. But then I remembered something. I had a back up…
When I had bottled my IPA a week earlier I had decided to try my hand at yeast ranching. After I had racked the beer from the carboy I had saved some of the slurry in a growler. It was in the back of the fridge. If what they said was true, I could add this to my wort and I would get a reaction just as good as any yeast I had bought in the store, provided my sanitation practices were sound. It was time to put theory into practice. I pitched the yeast, cold from the fridge, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I wasn’t disappointed.
It took 48 hours. Pitching cold, into a completely foreign environment was not an ideal situation for my little yeast experiment. That last time I went to the fridge before I saw the signs of fermentation beginning to be apparent, I already was thinking about biting the bullet and going to the brew shop to get some new yeast. But I didn’t have to. On the morning of the third day I woke up and headed to the fridge. PRAISE THE LORD!! I could hear it bubbling before I even opened the fridge up. There it was in full krausen, chunks of pelletized hops careened around the carboy. A solid two inches of white foam graced the surface of my young beer. The busily bubbling blow off tube had created a nice froth on the surface of my container of star san. It was going like gang busters.
After reading up a little on yeast propagation I still wasn’t sure whether or not I could have used my White Labs starter and been fine. I felt my decision, with the success of the harvested yeast, was justified. It was better to be safe than sorry. Plus, I didn’t even want to use the WLP001. I had wanted Wyeast1056 in the first place but the brew shop was out. It had paid back in aces to save some yeast from the previous batch. Yay for yeast harvesting. I will do it now with every yeast I use. That way I will always have a back up.
Now my only problem left is to name this batch. It is the first one I feel I really owned. And the first batch where any names have actually come to mind. I am thinking either, “Murphy’s Law Pale Ale,” or, “Rainy Day PA.” What do you think?
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