Yesterday was a brewday, and I brewed a small batch (around 12 liters in the fermenter) of the recipe below. The original recipe for the ‘Bold Bobcat’ was a bit different, but I had to change the hop additions, since my order of hops didn’t arrive in time (it’s been two weeks now since I ordered). The original recipe contained Magnum, Cascade and Centennial, but I had some Simcoe, Centennial and Amarillo on hand so decide to use them instead. I also changed the hop additions to 20, 10 and 0 minutes, to make an attempt on hop-bursting. These were not the only problems I had, as this was my first brew where I crushed all my grains myself (I’ve been buying pre-crushed grains before), and I’m quite sure I didn’t crush them fine enough, as my mash efficiency was awful (50%). This meant that I had to collect some more wort by extra sparging, and that I had to use a 120 minute boil to gain some more original gravity. I also added 425g of Dry Malt Extract to raise the gravity some more. I still ended up with a lower original gravity than predicted (1.053 instead of 1.066), but it hopefully shouldn’t affect the beer all too much. The yeast starter was in good shape, as the airlock was rapidly bubbling this morning (12 hours later). I’m fermenting the beer at 15 degrees C (low range of what is recommended for Denny’s Favorite), to hopefully get a clean, hoppy and malty beer. If everything goes as planned, this should just make it to the Christmas table.

[codebox 1]