Vanilla Bean Blonde - brewday

The Brew

Inspiration: c.o. Infusion Brewing

This will be the 4th time brewing an American Blonde with vanilla. The first attempt was actually my first brew. The inspiration for all four was attempting to clone my wife's favorite beer brewed in Benson, NE by Infusion Brewing Company. Each attempt has been different and progressively getting closer to a true clone of this great beer.

The Recipe

Grain/Sugars:
9.25 lbs. 2-Row (US) [92.5%]
8 oz Crystal 10L (US) [5%]
4 oz Crystal 20L (US) [2.5%]

Hops:
1.40 oz. German Tettang @60. (A: 2.4%, B: 4.1%)
0.50 oz. Czech Saaz @15. (A: 3.6%, B: 4.8%)
0.50 oz. Czech Saaz @0.  (A: 3.6%, B: 4.8%)

Yeast:
Danstar Nottingham Ale packet  (re-hydrated)

Extras:
1.0 tablet Whirlfoc @15m
0.5 tsp Wyeast nutrient @15m
3.0 Vanilla beans. soaked in vodka, sliced and scraped. @2 day prior to packaging 

Brewday

12/12/2015 - Brewday
Made a party of sorts out of this brewday. I was joined by 3 good friends to enjoy some beverages, food and brewing.

The four of us shared a variety of beers; New Belgium's La Folie, Oskar Blue's Hotbox Coffee Porter, Upright Brewing's Seven, Deschutes Jubel, Brickway's Chocolate Coffee Stout and my Punch Bowl IPA. This list resulted in less than perfect note taking, no pictures and perhaps some subpar attention to detail on the brew. Time will tell.

I took advantage of some extra time on Saturday to prep for the brew. I pre-measured and captured strike and sparge water. I weighed out and labeled each boil addition and even heated the garage.

Fired up the burner on to get the water up to strike temperature and overshot a bit. Once that was down, mashed in the cooler, stirred and hit pretty much head on at target mash temp of 153°F. While the 60 minute mash was underway I heated the sparge water to 180°F. At 60 minutes, pulled a half gallon to vorlauf and then captured first runnings. I was expecting to pull more volume off the first runnings then I did. Only got about 2.8 gallons from the first run. Despite this we continued on as planned batch sparging in the 5.5 gallons of 180°F water and hitting a sparge temp around 168°F. Let that sit for about 10 minutes and then drained off. Ended up with almost exactly 7.5 gallons collected, which was right on target. I didn't take an accurate pre-boil gravity (see beer list above).

Boiled as per schedule. Chilled while a rare December thunderstorm rolled through. Pitched the yeast into the cleaned and sanitized carboy. Then transfered nearly 6 gallons of 1.045 OG wort onto the yeast. Eight hours later, very active fermentation was underway. Activity noticeably increased at the 24 hour mark.  One thing to note, the color in the carboy is quite a bit darker then expected for this grist. 


Complete brew details here.