I've been wanting to do another smoke beer, so I had previously ordered a
10 lb bag of Weyermann Rauch Malt to use as the base. Choosing the base style
took awhile but once I came across some of the new Belgian Candi Syrup, I
knew I wanted to do a Smoked Abbey/Trappist style brew.
Recipe
Of course I can never leave well enough alone and decided to split the batch
into two. On the left, the starter for the St. Fumidus using White Labs WLP500
Trappist yeast, and on the right, the starter for Smoked Goat using White
Labs WLP833 Bock yeast.
I also just re-worked the manifold
on my cooler mash tun (a 60 qt Igloo Cube).
I already had a hole cut in the side of the cooler from the previous copper
manifold. There is a 1/2" brass nipple passing through the cooler wall.
The plastic fittings screwed right on. The large washers help stablize
it and some 100% silicone sealant was used to keep it from leaking.
The valve assembly is just press fit and does not leak.
This is the new layout inside the cooler. All the pieces are press fit to
make it easy for cleanup.
I get plenty of flow from all the holes drilled. The whole unit hugs the
bottom pretty well so there was very little particulate matter when vorlaufing.
The grain bill on St Fumidus was less than 14 lbs so there was lots of
room left in the tun.
While the mash rested, I began to set up the sparge water. I got this small
burner at my local Ace Hardware for $12.95 on sale. I brought my liquor up
to temp on my cajun cooker and then set it on the burner to hold the temp.
The medium setting kept 5 gal of sparge water at 175 throughout the process.
The only problem with the burner is that it is rather small in diameter compared
to my HLT kettle. You can see the overhang. Balance was important. I will
need to make some form of supports to stabilize the whole contraption.
Time to vorlauf. Mmmmm, smokey wort!
The good ole vorlauf/sparge shield. Just a cheapy aluminum roasting pan and
lots of holes.
I put gravity to use for the sparge.
I was only using 1 oz total hops for this batch and half were first wort
hops. I just eyeballed half the bag and dumped into some of the first runnings.
As I sparged , I transfered the wort to my keg kettle and got my boil going.
The fabulous brew stick on the right gets used to measure wort/liquor in
my kettles. The black marks are for my 7gal HLT, the red for the converted
keg. It gives me an idea of how much wort I am starting with and how long
a boil I am looking at to boil down to my batch size.
The candi syrup is dark like molasses but perhaps not as quite as thick.
I decided to pour it into a pot and then pull some wort from my kettle to
mix and thin it out before adding it to the boil. No chance of it sinking
and scorching on the bottom that way.
The rest of the day was a no-brainer with no other hop additions. Just had
to toss in some whirlfloc at the right time.
Chilled the wort, pitched the yeast. Once they ferment out, I might blend
some of each batch in a few bottles.