Dubbel Brewday 11/23

I needed a cider version 2 (Louisburg; pasteurized but no sorbates, so the yeast should love it) and to knock out one of those kits I had. I settled on brewing Northern Brewer's La Petite Orange.

Here's the spread: Malt extract, Wyeast smack pack of 1214 Belgian Abbey,
specialty grains, soft candi sugar, worksheet.

Adventures in Cider:
I used 5 gallons from Louisburg Cider Mill. I used Cider Hill Family Orchard last year, but I found out too late that their bottler adds preservatives. Louisburg has a press on site, so they don't. I didn't heat the cider or add anything too it (I meant to add yeast nutrient, but I forgot). I sanitized a 5 gallon carboy, added a Wyeast pack of cider yeast at 64°, and stuck it in the shower. There was a little detectable activity this morning (~13 hours after pitching), but it seemed to be very happy by this evening. The OG of the cider was about 1.054, so if it ferments almost all the way, it'll be close to the 6.5-7% range.

Bubbling up into the airlock... Oops.
I was under the impression that ciders didn't do that too much.

La Petite Orange (no orange):
I bought a kit for a dubbel a while back, but never brewed it. With studying for the PE over and biking pretty much done with for a while, I ran out of excuses. I wanted to do a full boil, but I was by myself, so could only do a stove-top partial boil. I brought 1.5 gal of water (1 gallon to 1 lb of grains) to about 150° and steeped the specialty grains for a half hour, then removed the grains.

Grains draining over the wort.

I added water to get to 2.5 gallons, brought it to a boil, and then added my hops. Because yeast utilization is affected by gravity (higher gravity - less utilization) and my gravity was artificially high due to the partial boil, I didn't add my malt extract until halfway through the 60 minute boil. The recipe also called for 1 lb of soft candi sugar added at flameout. There was a kuttke bit of a sludge at the bottom of the kettle when I was cleaning it out, so I don't think it all entirely dissolved... Hopefully that doesn't affect the gravity or the taste too much.

The smack pack of the yeast I had was pretty old, as in "manufactured Dec 2013" old, so I was a little concerned when the bag wasn't full inflated after 4 hours, but I pitched anyway. I'd heard that if it's kept cold the whole time it should still be good. I also heard that this yeast is notoriously slow, so I thought it might just be taking a while to get really started, but after two days of nothing, I figured it was time to pitch a new smack pack. 

The new smack pack still took forever to inflate; after ~6 hours, it wasn't all the way inflated, but I had to go to bed. Looks like it did all right. The short krausen makes me think it wasn't as oxygenated as it could have been.

I took a Brix measurement when I pitched the yeast, and it seemed abnormally low - 8.2, which corresponds to an OG of 1.034. I've had problems with inaccurate gravity measurements and partial boils before, so hopefully this is the same thing. Otherwise it'll be the weakest dubbel ever. According to the recipe calculator at Brewer's Friend, the 1 lb of candi sugar contributes about 7 points to the gravity, so that 1.034 is probably the result of poor mixing since the predicted OG was 1.052.

Problems:
Cider: none. Everything seems to be going well. It'll probably get bottled December 7 or 14,
La Petite Orange: Yeast was old and didn't take off; had to re-pitch. Not all of the candi sugar dissolved. Gravity might have been negatively affected.

Needs:
Oxygenation system. I have an aquarium pump.
Cooling system for bringing the hot wort down to pitching temperature.
Some sort of temp control