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Add 500mg potassium metabisulphite to 20 gallons water to remove chlorine / chloramine (if required).
Water treated with brewing salts to our Balanced flavour profile: Ca=50, Mg=10, Na=16, Cl=70, SO4=70 (Hit minimums on Ca and Mg, keep the Cl:SO4 ratio low and equal. Do not favour flavour / maltiness or bitterness / dryness. For balanced beers.). For complete details on how to adjust your water, refer to our step by step Water Adjustment guide.
1.5 qt/lb mash thickness.
Start the mash at 113F and hold for 15 mins (ferulic acid rest which helps promote clove-like phenol flavours). This rest works best at a pH of 5.7-5.8 (relative to mash temperature) so if you add mash salts and acid you want to wait and do it after the ferulic acid rest.
Ramp up to 152F and hold for 90 mins (half way between beta/alpha rest).
Raise to 168F mashout temperature and hold for 10 mins.
~90 min fly sparge with ~5.6-5.8 pH water (measured at mash temperature). Collect 14.9 gallons.
Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops per schedule. Lid on at flameout, start chilling immediately. Some brewers choose not to add kettle finings during the boil (such as Whirlfloc) as the beer is supposed to be cloudy, but the cloudiness of this beer comes from the yeast. We still want to remove proteins, hot break material, and so forth.
Cool the wort quickly to 62F (we use a one-pass convoluted counterflow chiller to quickly lock in hop flavour and aroma) and transfer to fermenter.
Aerate or oxygenate the chilled wort to a level of 8-10 ppm dissolved oxygen. For complete details refer to our Aerating / Oxygenating Wort guide.
Pitch yeast and ferment at 62F (wort temperature). We use modified stainless fermenting buckets in wine fridges.
Ferment until approximately 5 points from final gravity and then raise the temperature to 72F until finished. In our case we simply turn off the fermenting fridges and allow the beer to naturally rise to room temperature. Assume fermentation is done if the gravity does not change over ~3 days.
We do not recommend using finings such as unflavoured gelatin as it helps keep as much yeast in suspension as possible.
Package as you would normally. We rack to kegs that have first been purged with CO2. We chill the kegs to near freezing while carbonating at the same time in a 6-keg conditioning fridge. After ~1-2 weeks at serving pressure the kegs will be carbonated and ready to serve. In a hurry? This beer is best served fresh so feel free to raise the CO2 pressure temporarily to 30-40 PSI to carbonate fast over a 24 period, and then turn back down to serving pressure.
Carbonate this beer to higher than normal levels, around 2.5 to 3.5 volumes of CO2.
If you keg, you will find that over time the beer naturally clears as the protein haze and yeast settles. You may occasionally jostle or flip the keg to stir up the sediment to re-introduce the cloudy appearance. Some brewers will use a spare liquid out dip tube on the gas line such that the incoming gas hits the bottom of the keg and automatically stirs up the sediment every time a beer is poured. Others will use a tablespoon or two of flour at the end of the boil to set up a starchy permanent haze. The simplest solution is probably the most popular: Consume quicker