The Two Hearted Ale is also still going well.  It, too, has a large bubbly krausen head six days later.  I don’t want to rush these ales, but the sumer drinking season is at it’s peak right now, so I need to get these in kegs and carbonated:)

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Click here to view the embedded video.

When I got up this morning, the krausen was just about to shoot out of the blow-off tube, so the fermentation has taken off well.  I can’t wait to taste this ale!

On a side note, yesterday I took a trip down memory lane, compliments of the gift of a friend (thanks, Mark!).  About a month ago, I was given a couple CDs that had a Tubes concert from April, 21, 1977, that I actually attended at the Palace of Fine Arts, in San Francisco.This was back in my wilder days, and we had an “interesting” ride to the city to see the show.  I finally got around to ripping it into iTunes and was surprised to find that all of the tracks were already tagged for song title and artist.  It was great to hear old favorites like What Do You Want From Life, Stand Up and Shout, You’re No Fun, Hit Parade and White Punks on Dope.

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My mash efficiency was good today.  My recipe called for an original gravity was 1.060 and I hit 1.058 – pretty good:)  I really love the aroma of the wit wort both before and after the hop additions.  It is one of the more aromatic boils I do.  Once you add the fresh orange zest, it smells like fresh squeezed orange juice.  I love sticking my head in the empty boil kettle when I’m cleaning up.  The aroma is amazing!

Six hours later and the huge WLP 400 Belgian Wit Ale yeast starter is doing its job.  The wit is happily fermenting away:)

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We’re having Easter brunch with Stephen at the BrewBarn. It’s our traditional Easter event, and the familiar faces are here:)  Stephen made fabulous grilled prime rib sandwiches.

We shared some North Coast Brother Thelonious, Green Flash Imperial IPA,  and some Bear Republic Racer 5.  All in all, a great low-key afternoon!  Thanks, Stephen:)

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The mash-in went perfectly! We hit 149 degrees on the mark.

Once we looked at just how much a bag of cane sugar is, we both decided to back off from 6 pounds of sugar to 5 pounds.

Per Jamil, we’re doing an extended mash – 80 minutes.

The OG seemed a little low after the sparge (pre-boil) at 1.036, but we still have a ninety minute boil to go, not to mention five pounds of cane sugar:)

Sampling the style we’re brewing…

It’s in glass! OG is 1.084…

I was really worried about the 1388 yeast.  I made the starter Wednesday evening and never saw any activity.  When I got up Thursday, nothing was going on.  I cooled the starter so the yeast would drop out and by late Thursday evening, there was a really nice yeast cake on the bottom of the flask.  I fed the starter about 400 ml of wort on Friday morning and it took off like a banshee after just a minute or so on the stir plate.  Four hours later, there was no activity!  I chilled it once again and then decanted off about 500 ml of nasty starter beer this morning, fed it another 300-400 ml of wort, and again it burst to life, fermenting out in about 2-3 hours!  Jeez – this 1388 yeast just chews through the wort.  I’m expecting a quick, violent fermentation in my carboy:)

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