I was originally planning on brewing McShepardSons Irish Ale this past weekend, but my son had an Ultimate Tournament, and I would rather watch him play when I have the opportunity.
St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and I wanted the beer to be ready to drink by the 17th.
So ... rather than delay the brew day, I brewed it earlier than originally planned.
February 25th.
This is the 2nd time I've brewed this beer, and is the 4th batch of beer I've brewed this year. It is the 352nd batch of beer I've brewed all time.
If you're interested in seeing the recipe ...
I started before Sunrise. Actually, I started the night before by getting the water ready and setting the timer to start heating the water while I was sleeping.
I generally brew on Sundays, and recently, rather than rush to get done before church, I've planned my brew day to have the mash done and set the Foundry to heat up to almost boiling while I'm away.
It works pretty well, but it does mean that I finish up later in the day.
Anyway ... I did that again. The mash went well. My pre-boil gravity and volume was on track.
After church, I started the boil. Everything went as planned through the boil as well.
An hour later, I was chilling. It's still cold enough outside to get quick efficient chilling.
I racked into the Chubby, which is the fermenter I used for Pressure Fermentation. This is actually a new Chubby, which I got because I had broken the gas-in post on my old one.
When I contacted Anvil to get the plate on the top replaced, they sent me a whole new fermenter.
Not exactly what I wanted, but that seems nice of them.
Since I had the new Chubby, I decided to use it for this beer. But, I didn't want to pressure ferment this beer.
Instead, I decided to use the naturally generated CO2 to push liquid out of a cleaned / sanitized keg so that it would be purged once fermentation was done.
We'll see how that works.
Around 11:30 or so, I pretty much was finished up and got to do a bike ride.
After the bike ride, I prepared chicken to grill.
My last few whole chickens have been spatch-cocked and halved, and I did the same thing for this bird.
I set up this one with the Vortex off-center with some apple-wood.
The temperature ranged from 300 to 325ish.
About 40 minutes into the cook, I flipped the chicken over to let it cook upside down.
Then, after another 30ish minutes I flipped the two halves again. After about 1.5 hours total, the bird was ready to eat.
The one turned out just perfect. Nice and juicy with great apple wood and lemon pepper seasoning. It was wonderful.
Paired nicely with my Arctic Vortex Winter Saison.
I kept the McShepardSons Irish Ale fermenter sealed overnight to let it build up pressure.
The next morning, I connected the gas to the keg and pushed out about a gallon right away. The rest took more time to push it's way out. Actually, only about half of the liquid was pushed out by the time the beer reached FG.
I guess technically this is sort of a pressure fermentation, but certainly not as high a pressure as I've done most of my pressure fermentations so far.
I'll probably be kegging next weekend and the beer will be ready to drink in plenty of time for St. Patrick's Day.
I'll probably let you know how it tastes.
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Go Nuggets!
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