Batch #2

So many different beers to make... what to make for batch#2?  I'm just getting back into brewing, so why the hell not go big?  How about a Pliny clone?  Yea, let's do that.

Brewing

Brewed this one on 2014-06-25.

Gandhi-Bot yeast starter

The previous night I made up a starter with 1/2cup of light DME, 3.5cups of water and some of the yeast I got from New England Brewing right off of the Gandhi-Bot tanks.  It took off nicely.

I used 4.2lbs of Pils DME and 3.3lbs of Pils LME(that's what the homebrew store had), & 12oz of dextrose.  For steeping grains I used 8oz of Crystal 45 & 8oz of Carapils, and steeped them for 45min.

Look at that vigorous boil!

This was a 90 min boil with 3.5oz of Columbus in for the full 90, .75oz of Columbus at 45, and 1oz of Simcoe at the 30 min mark.  Looking back on this, no wonder it turned out so bitter!

At flameout, I steeped with 1oz of Centennial and 2.5oz of Simcoe for 30 min.

I used an airstone with an aquarium pump attached to oxygenate it before pitching the yeast starter.

The OG of this came out to around 1.060.

About 1.060

After it was done fermenting, I harvested off 4 jars of yeast trub, cold-crashed them, decanted off the beer and then combined to 2 jars for reuse later.

I dry-hopped this with 1oz of Simcoe, 1oz of Columbus and 1oz of Centennial for 5 days in a purged corny keg.  Leaving this dry hop back in, I added another dry hop round for .5oz of each again and let that site for 6 days.  After the dry hop, I pulled all the hops, purged the corny keg with CO2 and cold crashed it for 2 days before transferring to the serving keg.

The Verdict

This beer was wicked bitter at first, especially when tasting the hydrometer samples before it was carbonated.  So much so that my wife thought it was ruined. Once it carbed up, it got much better, but still very bitter. Color-wise, this looks pretty spot on with what I remember of Pliny. Ultimately I was loving it by the last 2 glasses from the keg.  So the lesson learned from this one is that you really do need to let them age a bit.  I think if I let this age for 3-4 weeks, it would have been perfect, but I was impatient and didn't have a stockpile of homebrew ready yet.  Now I know.