n-ARRROW-ing in on it ....

Since I emptied out a carboy on Friday night, that meant I had an empty carboy and, of course, that means I must brew again. I have two more kits here awaiting such a task and I picked the Mighty Arrow clone kit to brew.

Mighty Arrow is made by New Belgium brewery and is billed as an "aggressively hopped pale ale". It is really good and I am hopeful that this recipe kit follows pretty close to the original. If it does, I will definitely be brewing this one again!

I am still refining my process since getting a 7.5 gallon brewpot. Trying to get a good, rolling boil out of 5 gallons of water on an electric stove has been largely unsuccessful. I have found that if I put half in each brewpot, that I have a much better boil, and a good boil goes a long way to removing impurities -- which can lead to unpleasant flavors as I have read.

I brought two gallons of water up to 160* then added the grain bag and steeped at 155* for 45 minutes. In the meantime, I brought two more gallons up to 170*. After that 45 minutes, I poured 6 cups over the grains and removed them.

This is the part I did different. I split the extract into each pot, and brought both to a boil. I have read about late additions on the extract which tends to lead to a hoppier beer. I went ahead and just kept the other pot at a rolling boil stirring frequently, while adding my hops to the 7.5 gallon pot. At the last addition of hops (15 minutes before finishing) I added the extract that had been boiling in the other pot, along with some Irish Moss, and yeast fuel.

I got a little sloppy with the ice and a couple cubes went into the wort. DOH! I am sure it isn't enough to make a difference, but am hopeful that they don't introduce any off-flavors.

I got the wort chilled down to 80* in my usual 20 minute-ish time frame, and then racked it into the primary. I took a gravity reading and got an OG of 1.050, which was a little low, but I attribute that to the late addition as I have read that does affect the OG as well as the flavor.

Last time, I had to add an extra gallon of water, post-boil, to bring the volume up to 5 gallons. This time I only had to add a half gallon.

I am zeroing in on this full boil, I think.  ; )