Hobo's Delight, recipe v1.01 (I)

After the positive impression I got from the first taste of my exploratory batch of Hobo's Delight I not only decided to go ahead with starting another batch but also to commit to an initial recipe. The following lists ingredients and procedures for six gallons of Hobo's Delight, from the brew kettle to the carboy. It mirrors ingredients and procedures for my first batch except for the hops: I felt safe increasing the amount by 60%.

So here we go:

• Equipment:
  A big brew kettle, volume at least five gallons. For most of us, that a big pot. Pretty much any pot will do but some are better than others. I decided to pay extra for a sturdier pot with a thicker bottom, and I experienced no scorching and burnt residue in two batches. With cheapo pots I used in the past I pretty much always experienced some scorching.
  A big spoon, used to stir the cooking wort. Use metal or plastic, not wood. Wood is more likely to carry some bacteria and we want to keep our wort as clean as possible for as long as possible.
  A kitchen scale, for measuring weights up to a pound.
  Plastic jugs, to hold three gallons of water.
  Carboy, six gallons, with a fitted air lock. That probably means a drilled stopper as well, to connect the air lock to the carboy.
  Funnel, strainer, and ladle, to get the wort from the brew kettle into the carboy. I actually paid money for my strainer but I can think of all sorts of substitute contraptions from things laying around the house. The strainer must fit into the funnel and is for keeping most of the spent hops out of the carboy. For the ladle, I use a small stainless steel cooking pot. It's way bigger than a standard ladle and hence more efficient.
• Ingredients:
  Water, 5 1/2 gallons.
  Dry Malt Extract, amber, 5 pounds.
  Ordinary table sugar, 1 pound. For extra kicks.
  Hops pellets, Cascade, 1.6 ounces. This is where the kitchen scale comes in handy.
  Yeast, one sachet (11.5 g), Safale US-05. That seems to be the most common brewing yeast these days, judging by the two stores sampled.
• The evening before brewing day, put the plastic jugs with three gallons of the water into the fridge. The idea is that it will be cold in the morning. Just before commencing the brewing, transfer that water into the freezer. The idea is we want it as cold as possible but not frozen.
• Fill the brew pot with the remaining 2 1/2 gallons of water. Add the malt extract and the sugar. Put the temperature on high. Nothing much will happen for quite a while except for the water slowly getting warmer. The malt most likely will have turned into a thick dry crust floating on top of the liquid. Don't worry, that's normal. It will break up and dissolve eventually.

• As the water really gets hot and the malt starts dissolving it is time to stir the put regularly to prevent scorching of the bottom layer sugar and malt, in particular with a cheapo pot. Also, this is the time to keep a close eye at the pot to catch it and turn down the temperature the moment the liquid reaches boiling. Boiling wart is finicky just like boiling milk, and even the just 2 1/2 gallons of wort will readily climb out of that 5 gallon pot to create a huge smelly mess.
• As the liquid reaches boiling turn down the temperature. On an electric stove, the pot may have to be pulled off its burner to prevent it from boiling over. Adjust the temperature to keep the liquid boiling vigorously, but with a comfortable safety margin from the top of the pot.
• Add one ounce of the hops. Gradually, don't dump it all at once, or the wort will start climbing again.
• Keep boiling the wort for one hour, stirring maybe every ten minutes, or more or less frequently, depending on the confidence that the brew kettle won't scorch the malt.
• Add the remaining 0.6 ounces of the hops, boil for five more minutes. The original hops was for flavor, cooked for so long as to kill its aroma. This hops is to restore the aroma, but it won't cook long enough to generate much flavor.
• While the wort is boiling, prepare the rest of the equipment. Everything that comes into direct contact with the hot wort should be disinfected. I do this by filling a bucket with five gallons of water and half a cup of bleach. Then I keep the airlock, strainer, funnel, cooking pot, submersed for a few minutes, and take them out of the bucket and rinse just before I use them.
  For the carboy, I put some of the bleach solution inside, shake it strongly, then pour out the bleach. Then I repeat the shaking and pouring out with a small amount of tap water.

• Also while the wart is still cooking, get the three gallons of ice cold water from the fridge and transfer them into the carboy. The funnel will come in handy.
• As soon as the cooking time for the aroma hops is up, turn off the stove and remove the kettle from the heat. Put funnel and strainer on top of the carboy and ladle all of the wart into the carboy. What I did was get a big piece of cardboard (like from the nearest trash container) and put it at the bottom of my bath tub. The cardboard should be big enough so that the carboy and the brew kettle can sit on the cardboard inside the bath tub side by side. This not cuts down on the mess, it also makes any cleanup trivial.

• Get a feel for the temperature. A thermometer comes in handy but isn't necessary. Just feel the outside of the carboy. The combination of the ice cold water and the hot wort shoudl result in a pleasantly warm but not hot feel. For thermometer users, the cutoff between warm and hot is at 100°F.
• Once the wort is warm instead of hot add the yeast. No special preparation necessary for this type of yeast, just sprinkle it in. Finally, attach the air lock.

And that is it, except for some extended equipment cleanup of course. Fermentation should start within the first twelve hours (likely sooner but don't panic if it doesn't), it should be strong after 24 hours and remain to be strong for several days. Mine is going strong right now, after two days of fermenting. And I expect some noticeable activity to continue through the remainder of the week.

Once fermentation finishes the beer will be ready for the next step. Of course, I will be reporting as soon as it happens.

PS: 

For reference, I actually took a initial specific gravity reading of my beer before I added the yeast (not part of the description above). The initial specific gravity basically means the temperature adjusted specific weight of the wort prior to fermentation. It was at 1.047 kg/l. Which means it has the potential for some pretty strong beer, with a 6.5% alcohol content. Of course it depends on how many of the sugars actually ferment into alcohol. Well, we will see. And I will report later.