Many Faces of Freedom Steam Beer(#21)

Ingredients

6 lbs. Briess Pale Malt Extract

1 lb. Briess Amber Malt Extract

2 lb. 2 Row Pale Malt

1 lb. Crystal Malt

3 oz. Northern Brewer's Hops

1 oz. Fuggles Hops

1 pkg. Wyeast #2122 California Lager Yeast

Algorithm

Popped the Wyeast smack pack and let it expand. Made a starter by adding 6 tbsp. amber dry malt extract to 600 ml. tap water. Boiled for five minutes in an Erlenmeyer flask, cooled and added the live yeasties. Put a fermentation lock on the flask and put it in a dark place for a day to start really pumping(4/18/97). Mashed grains in 3.0 gallons of water @158F for 40 minutes. Extracted the wort and brought it to a boil. Added malt extract and brought resulting wort to boil. Added 2 oz. Northern Brewer's hops(boiling hops). Boiled for 58 minutes and added 1 oz. Northern Brewer's hops(flavor hops). Boiled for another two minutes. Inserted wort cooler to cool wort down and strained into a bucket with 2.5 gallons chilled Utopia spring water. Added unsoftened tap water to bring volume to five gallons. Transferred to 6.8 gallon glass carboy for primary fermentation. Added 1 oz. Fuggles hops for dry hopping.

Fermentation

OG 1.050 @ 64F on 4/19/97 added 1 oz hops for dry hopping

IG 1.018 @ 65F on 4/23/97 racked to glass secondary

FG 1.014 @ 69F on 5/12/97 Bottled in brown glass

Results
This brew was the first in a series where a party was held to brew up the batch. I was lucky enough to have a lot of folks willing to stir the boiling wort while I tended the fajita and chalupa making chores. The results which were sampled at the next brew party, turned out very well indeed. The brew had a proper balance between maltiness and hops and good head retention. There may have been a little too much foaminess on pouring but the final result was quite drinkable. As of 7/5/97 I still have a few of these left.

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