Mad Pig Brew Day

The Surly Sow has mutated.  It's become bigger, more bitter, hoppier, more aromatic, and about 1% more alcohol.  The color looked great in the sparge, the kettle smelled fantastic with 8 ounces of hops going into the boil, and the gravity sample tasted out of this world!  I cannot wait for this beer to finish fermenting so it can go on draft!

I did change one thing in the recipe and added 1 lb of corn sugar to the boil at 10 minutes to dry the beer out a little.  Here's how the brew day went.

I finally found a picture of a "mad" pig that didn't involve foaming at the mouth.  ;-)  I didn't think I'd be happy with a white background on the image, but in the end I was quite surprised at how well it made the pig stand out in the label.  He's one P.O.'d pig!

I was getting everything ready Saturday night and decided to bring things inside to sanitize them so I could spend some time with Carlen while I did it. The fermentor (keg on the left) was easy to sanitize on the stove.  I just put a little water in it and boiled it for 10 minutes.  I had a new thermometer and spigot for the brew kettle and wanted to put it through it's paces for brew day so I put it on another burner.  No leaks!

Santa brought a ping-pong table for the kids this year.  It sure is a nice place to spread out the brew stuff!

31.77 pounds of grain + 9.5 gallons of 175 degree water = 154 degree mash!  Hit it dead on!

Sparging one hour later.  The wort was a beautiful golden/amber color.

The hot break forming on top of one full boil kettle.  I've learned that my boil off rate is very high in the kettle (3 gallons per hour) so I have to collect 14 gallons of wort to to boil down to 11.  10.5 of which goes into the fermentor and 1/2 gallon which is left behind because it looks like pea soup from the pellet hops.

209-210 degrees is the perfect boil temp!  Keeps the wort at a nice, stead boil without going crazy.

14 gallons of wort at a boil with the first addition of hops floating around.  When the 3 ounces of Chinook hops hit the kettle the whole garage smelled like heaven.  Or, what I hope heaven will smell like!

The one hour boil is done and we're cooling everything down to 80 degrees with the immersion chiller.  Also cleaning up the boil over that happens when I put the wort chiller in the pot.  Don't know why it happens, but it does.  I'm thinking of switching over to a different kind of chiller, but haven't figured out which one I want yet.

All those hops left over on the screen after the wort has been drained off.  The wort is in the fermentor and 1800 ML of WLP001 yeast starter is in there chugging away.

2 weeks until this one is done fermenting.
1 week dry hopping.
2 weeks carbonating.
2 weeks conditioning.
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7 weeks until it's ready to drink.