What better way to celebrate the end of a sub-zero temperature stretch than some early morning cold brewing? Since we both have some great conditions for lagerning brews, Nick and I decided to revisit our very successful “Samuel L. Jackson” brew that was a slightly stronger version of Sam Adams. Since we both enjoyed this brew so much the first time, we decided to double the recipe and make it a big batch. As I have mentioned in the past, volume has been a reoccurring problem in this most recent brewing season. I thought about it and went to the drawing board for some potential solutions. I think I have it all figured out though.
First off, the recipe was the same as the original, just doubled. I also had to make some slight adjustments to the hops and the yeast. I used a Wyeast Czech Pils instead of the Munich I used the first time and I changed the flavor and aroma hops to all Liberty. The bittering I changed the hops to Galena so that I could get the alpha acids with using less hops.
So here is the recipe:
42 lbs 2 row US
4.6 lbs Crystal 40L
4.5 lbs Munich
3oz Galana hops (60min)
2oz Liberty hops (30min)
2oz Liberty hops (dry, secondary)
Mashing:
Strike – 16 gallons (1.25qts per lb) at 165 for 153f 60min
Mashout – 5 gallons boiling to bring the temp to 168 – This required us to draw some off because of a loss of head space. We need to make sure that we stay under 52lbs in the future so that we can fit in the volume of water to get up to temp
Sparge – 11 gallons at 170 – batch sparge
This was a total of 32 gallons in volume which put us spot on for the final volume we were looking for. It appears that the problem I was having was that I was not adding in mash tun dead space. I had kind of let is pass in the past because we were using the smaller tun, but with the 20 gallon mash tun it creates a lot of dead space. Below are pictures from my dead space testing I was doing Saturday night. Now I am currently adding in a gallon worth of losses in mash tun dead space.
At the end of the day, we have 10.5 gallons of Samuel L. Jackson each with a OG of 1.052 (.002 below our target, oh well, close enough). We got some breakfast and had a pretty relaxing brew day.
Brewday Breakfast
I haven’t tried the Samual Jackson yet, but Nick’s homemade venison sausage is fantastic. I got 2 pieces left over from our ice fishing trip yesterday. I’m gonna fry it up tomorrow for lunch. Yum!!! Thanks Nick.
Yea the sausage was great! It’s 50/50 venison and pork so that it still has some fat. It’s spiced like an italian sausage so the venison sausage would compliment a red sauce or something. Good stuff.
Cooking while you brew. What a great idea. Thanks.
Genius use of the propane burner there. That just might have to be me this Saturday!
Samuel L Jackson lager, brings back memories of the Chappelle show “TRY MY MOTHERF*#@kin’ BEER!”.
“Tempriture?” What is this, backwoods New York? Oh wait, it is.
What would the world be without editors? Looks like the grammar they taught in the one-room classroom sunk in. Too bad person hygiene didn’t.
That breafast looks like something I left in my toilet once.