This third brew is a Wheat with a recipe from Hop City. I'm using RBC 342 which is supposed to have some Watermelon essence although I have smelled it and don't pick up on that. It does smell really good, very citrusy.
For this one I made a yeast starter. 1/2 DME and 2 cups of water were boiled and then cooled before I added my Wyeast American Wheat Yeast. I had already broken the nutritional packet and the pack sat at room temp for about 6 hours. It was fully swollen at that point. Then I put the flask on the stir plate and stirred it for 6-7 hours. Then put it straight in the fridge.
Also, I have a double sieve and will use that in my funnel when pouring the wort into the primary. For the first two BBs I used a siphon.
Okay, this one went pretty well except for the cool down with the wort chiller. I really overthunk it I think. Bottom line is that I think I should just turn the water on full force and leave it there. I have like 15 feet that coil into a bucket of ice water between the faucet and the chiller and was thinking if the water flowed through the ice water longer then it would get colder and therefore chill the wort more. So, I was adjusting the water force a lot and it took 40 minutes to cool it down.
This time around I took an OG reading. First pulled a sample with the beer thief and then I put it in the fridge until it got to 60 degrees and measured it -- 1.067!
The absolute best part though is that I used a yeast starter this time. A Wyeast packet left out at room temp for 6 hours then combined it with a DME/water mixture on a stir plate for 6 more hours. Put it in the fridge overnight and then pitched it the next day (with maybe a 30 min on the couter warm up.) See the stir plate, wort, and yeast video below. In the video I say I'm going to let it go all night, but I didn't.
That made so much difference I can't even believe it. In the next video and pics you can see just how crazy the yeast went in the first 24 hours. In my first two beers I don't think I even had one full inch of foam. This one was coming out the airlock! Gotta love it.
