Cascade SMaSH – Krepples Brew Log

Heat 6 gallons of water to 160°. (4 gallons filtered Dover city water and 2 gallons of distilled water to reduce sulfates.)

Gently dough in grains until all grain is covered by water.

Mash grains at 150° for 1 hour.

Remove “grain bag” and allow grains to drain.

Rinse grains using a colander and get every last drop of wort potential.

Bring wort to a boil, add 1 oz Cascade (8.6AA) hops and continue boil for 60 minutes.

Add 1 oz Cascade hops. and continue boil for another 20 minutes.

Add 1 oz Cascade hops and continue boil for 10 minutes. (This is a good time to drop in the wort chiller.)

Remove from heat source and drop wort temperature to 160°.

Add 1 oz Cascade hops and continue hop stand for 1 hour.

Reduce wort temperature to 68° and take OG reading.

Sufficiently aerate and transfer to primary fermenter.

Pitch directly onto existing yeast cake.

Allow beer 2~3 weeks in the primary to adequately ferment and cleanup any diacetyl produced during fermentation.

Transfer to secondary for 1 week adding 2oz Cascade for dry hop.

Bottle and wait another 2 weeks…

Enjoy!

April 23, Brew Day
- Adjusted mash pH to 5.3 using 1/4 tsp citric acid.
1″ krausen after 15 hours. Ambient room temperature is 63°. Carboy was cooled to 58° overnight using ice bath, slowing the start.
1 bubble per second in the airlock after 24 hours and light brown islands are forming on the otherwise perfectly white krausen.
Krausen is beginning to drop out after 48 hours. Airlock is still bubbling once per second.
Allowed the carboy to reach room temperature (~65°) at 60 hours.
Krausen has completely dropped out at 72 hours, but air lock is still very active with one bubble per second.
96 hours and airlock is still seeing 1 bubble every 1.5 seconds.
Day 6, removed carboy from brew kettle heat sink, still seeing 7 bubble per minute in the airlock.
Day 8, still seeing 3 bubbles per minute in the airlock and yeast is starting to drop out.
Somewhere between day 8 & 17 all airlock activity has ceased.
Day 17, added 1/2 tsp gelatin finings diluted in 2 cups of boiled water.
Transferred to secondary and began dry hop at 3 weeks.
Bottled at week 4, drops taste like cascade hop candy, however a shot of the flat beer had a strong alcohol taste.
After 2~3 weeks bottle conditioning and carbonating there is no residual hot alcohol taste and it is a very good brew.
Still delicious at 6 weeks.
The only change I would make to this recipe would be mash a degree or two warmer to make a less fermentable wort. It is delicious and is easy to drink, which could be bad at 7.88% ABV.