First brew-day of the year and overdue. Christmas & the New Year had a dramatic effect on stocks. Of the two kegs of IPA & two of porter that I brewed just before the holidays, we’re left with a scant few pints of the porter that I’ll need to make last till today’s batch is ready. Oh well, I guess it’s an opportunity to “study” some commercial craft brews.

As this is the first brew-day since Santa visited it’s my first chance to play with some of the presents he gave me:

Counter-flow wort chiller.

Inline oxygenator

New pump.

I’m not expecting any particular problems but the day always ends up running long when I have new toys. Hopefully the new wort chiller will help shorten the process in the long run as it should speed up that part of the process compared to an immersion chiller. I’m hoping that it will save some water as well, though I don’t tend to have any water wasted as I reuse the water from chilling for cleaning and rinsing the kettle & mash tun.

As an experimental new brew, I’ve scaled back my IPA recipe to make a more quaffable but still aromatically hoppy American pale ale. I had planned to use solely Amarillo hops but MoreBeer was out of stock on them as they’re still waiting for their supply from the 2011 harvest to arrive. I’ve gone with Columbus for bittering & Cascade for flavor/aroma. If they have Amarillo or Centennial in stock by next week then I dry-hop with one of them, otherwise I’ll go with more Cascade.