I suppose this is the official kick-off for the BJCP Project. This first beer is an American Lager and as always, the name is derived from a TTP (Tactic, Technique, Procedure) or an APT (Advanced Persistent Threat). Iron Liberty is cyber espionage group that targets the energy sector. BJCP Style: 1B - American Lager BJCP: "A very pale, highly-carbonated, light-bodied, well-attenuated lager with a very neutral flavor profile and low bitterness. Served very cold, it can be a very refreshing and thirst quenching drink." Brewday 04.11.2021 Recipe: I propogated a 2L yeast starter for this brew 24hrs in advance. 2-row and flaked rice Milled 2-row I used the Beersmith water calculator for this brew. I'm running a baseline of reverse-osmosis water so building up the salt profile is a little easier and consistent. Pre-boil gravity 1.039SG/9.9P The entire hop charge for this batch is a measly 20g of Hallertau...a far cry from the 100s of grams I would typically be using for other beers. Post-boil gravity 1.055SG/13.9P I conducted a serial dilution (1:100) of the 2L yeast starter and found that the yeast density was higher than I expected. Based on my math I'm showing that to pitch a 1.5 million cells/mL/Plato I need to pitch about 130mL of the starter. This seems like a tiny amount of yeast, but I'm going to trust the math here and see what happens. I also made some mistakes in my water calculations...again (I blame the new kettle configurations...more on that later) so I only ended up with 4 gallons of wort in the fermenter. 04.14.2021 (+2): After a little more than two days with essentially zero change to gravity I've revisited my pitch rate and it turns out...math is hard and it's really important to place your decimals in the correct position. Below (Left) was the pitch rate from my initial inoculation and (Right) was the appropriate pitch rate. Both of these are based on my cell counting which was 2.45 million/mL/Plato cell density. Looks like I was only off by about 260 BILLION cells. Since I still had the remaining slurry on the stir plate (definitely should have had this in cold storage) I went ahead tossed that into the fermenter. We'll see how it turns out considering the circumstances. The silver lining here is that I've refined my process for yeast counting/calculating pitch rate so this sort of situation can be avoided in the future. It's ok to make mistakes, just try not to make the same ones over and over. 04.26.2021 (+14): Looks like the additional yeast was able to kick-start the fermentation. Here's the fermentation curve after adding the yeast slurry.
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Jamie WeissHomebrewer, Recognized BJCP Judge, aspiring Certified Cicerone Archives
November 2023
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