Hybrid Cream Ale
Vice City needs beer. So I'm making one for them.
| Style | Cream Ale |
| Yeast | Safale US-05 |
| Start | Jun 8, 2013 |
| Original S.G. | 1.040 |
| Final S.G. | - |
| ABV | - |
| Last Update | Jun 9, 2013 |
Each year at Convergence some friends of mine produce an awesome retro-video game themed room party called Vice City. To help fund this venture they give away gallons and gallons of beer (homebrewed stuff, now) in exchange for voluntary donations for the attendees. I agreed to brew and donate a five gallon batch of a beer of my choosing.
Owing to the late start date, and my desire to not screw it up with a more-advanced all-grain style, I choose Northern Brewer's Hybrid Cream Ale extract kit. It should be ready in four weeks, have about 4% ABV and taste somewhere between a domestic lager and an European ale.
Despite this being an partial-boil extract kit I proceeded to do a full volume boil out on my brewing deck (which is actually the same as my general-purpose deck). I started with 7 gallons of tap water and, over the course of an hour, boiled it down to maybe just under 6 gallons. Surprisingly (and delightfully so) my OG was 1.040 - exactly what the kit recommends.
After I decanted the wort to the carboy I found that it was too warm to pitch yeast. I shelved it over night and pitched the yeast the next morning. I hope this won't cause any problems. Furthermore, I pitched the dry yeast, completely un-rehydrated, directly into the carboy (after some extensive oxygenation with pure O2). This lazy technique is a bit of an experiment as I want to see how little work I can do to get it bubbling. I'm not worried because if it fails to start fermenting in a day or two I can always pitch some more (properly hydrated) yeast.
I have [reasonably] high hopes for this one.
//Serially