Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Chelsea Dagger Pre-Prohibition Lager (Batch 286)

As I type this, my beloved Blackhawks are in 6th place in the Central Division of the NHL.

At this point, they are 7 points out of the playoffs, and I have not seen anything that makes me optimistic that they'll make up that gap.

I'm doing my part, but I'm just one person, and years and years of being a Blackhawk fan have proven that my efforts are not enough without a great team out there on the ice.

I miss those years when the Hawks won 3 Stanley Cups in 6 years.

Sigh.

But, never say never. I won't give up quite yet.

This last Sunday, I helped the team by brewing up my wonderful beer ...




I pre-heated the water overnight so that I could mash in as soon as I woke up.

I was up at 5AM and mashed in soon after. One thing I tried out on this beer was to add lactic acid to the mash to bring down the pH a bit. This is something I'm playing around with for lighter colored beers.


My fermentor still had Helles in a Hand Bock-sket in it, so I had to keg it. I grabbed a slug of yeast from it to use in this batch of Chelsea dagger.




The mash went as usual. My pre-boil volume was a bit high and my gravity a bit low. I ended up adding sugar to bring the gravity up a bit.

I got things added to the boil as planned. 




I think maybe my boil-off rate in Beersmith might be high. My OG was a bit low even after correcting pre-boil.

I was able to chill the wort down to 52ish and had the yeast pitched by 9AM.


Clean up was done (pretty much) by 9:30. A four and a half hour brew day.

Fermentation started a little bit slower than usual, but it was going by Tuesday morning. I'm sure the beer will be great.



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Go Blackhawks!

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