Los Angeles Brewers

Just so you know, home brewing is full of fun and promises. We promised to deliver 40 gallons of beer to a party, and that happened. A friend needed a keg for his birthday, no problem, let us look in the back. A special 40th Birthday Wit needs to be made, we’re on it. Family calls, we are men of action.
The latest action comes in the form of a football game. A father in law wanted to show some friends his son in law’s hobby and we are happy to help. With burnout set in from a very busy summer behind the burners, we set out to shorten our brew day a bit, and try some extract brewing. We have not brewed with any extract for over two years and for some reason, were a bit hesitant to do so again. The shortened days and cramped calendars took over and it was time to try extract/ steeping grains again.
A citra pale ale was our target. We started with Jamil’s great book “Brewing Classic Styles” extract  and steeping grains recipe and traded all the hops in on some Citra hops.
The brew day started well, then the problems snuck up on us. We filled the boil kettle a bit too high, still thinking that we were sparging. We swear it looked right. When it came time to dump in the extract, well the kettle almost overflowed. Remember the displacement factor? Nope, not today.  Problem two: Our kettle is set up with a false bottom to help with straining hops. Well, some extract got under the screen away from the stirring spoon and burnt to a crisp. We are still scrubbing the kettle clean. On the positive side, we tasted a sample tonight and you can sort of tell. There is a bit of roast/burnt carmel in the flavor, but not too much.
We dry hopped and took a gravity reading tonight. The O.G. was 1.062, a bit higher than we wanted, and now after 1 week of WLP 001 doing it’s thing we are down to 1.028. Still some more work to be done.