We brewed again today, back to the lighter session ales after last week’s stronger Simcoe IPA. Too light, in fact, because in attempting another clone of Harvey’s Best Bitter using the no-sparge method, we decided we would not sparge the mash at all and just collect all of the runnings from the mash tun and add hot liquor to gain the total volume. The result was a very low original gravity, 1.030 instead of the target 1.042, and an efficiency of 46%. That’s really low! I guess you can’t just follow the no-sparge calculations blindly. Using the new stainless steel hose braid as a mash screen may affected the runoff, it’s too early to tell. Clarity was better than usual on our system, but not as good as with the giant batch of last weekend. We’ll continue to refine that.

We racked the Simcoe IPA to secondary, as we left the Simcoe hops for dry-hopping this beer at John’s house, so we can’t keg it yet. Gravities were quite different, which was strange, we hit 1.019 on one and 1.014 on the other. Slight temperature differences during fermentation must account for it.

Primary: Harvey’s Pale Ale clone

Secondary: Simcoe IPA (ver. 3), Simcoe IPA, version 4, Alpha King Pale Ale clone

Casked but not yet tapped: -

Kegged but not yet tapped: Snake River Pale Ale clone, second keg