Pliny The Elder Clone

Brewed a Pliny the Elder clone beer this weekend.  I got a lot the hops used from the Russian River brewery website and got ideas about the malts from fellow brewers as well as the hop profile.  Here is the process I used. 

Pliny The Elder Clone
Single Infusion – Double Sparge method
(5 gallons - All grains)
Target OG 1.070
IBU - high
FG 1.012

Ingredients
10 lbs 11oz Pale 2-Row malt
2 lbs Crystal (40L) malt
1 lbs 8oz Munich 10L malt

1oz – Amerillo 14% (bittering hop) 90 min
.5oz – Magnum 15% (bittering hop) 90 min
1oz - Columbus 9% (bittering hop) 60 min
1.5oz - Semcoe 13% (flavor hop) 15 min
1 oz - Centennial 10% (aroma hop) 3 min
.5oz – Semcoe 9% (aroma hops) Flame Out

Irish moss (Winfloc tablets – 1 tablet)
California Ale dry yeast

Step by step

Brewing Process:
Bring 1gal water to 175F and pour into mash tun and swash around to set the temperature environment before mashing (10 min).  Bring 4.5 gal of water to 165 degrees; add to your mash tun.  Add grains slowly while stirring lightly to ensure good saturation and even temperature ranges among the grain bed.  Keep mash temperature at 152F for 60 min.  Gently stir the grains at 20 min and 40 min.  While you are waiting start boiling enough sparge water to 170 deg.

After the 60 min mash is finished, run out a few quarts of wart back onto the grain bed..  Do not disturb the grain bed.  Once a clean run out is attained, drain all the wort from the tun into boil pot and measure run out.  Add sparge water to grain (pore water to grain bed slowly), stir grain lightly to loosen sugars.  Add enough spare water to just cover the grains.  Run out back to the tun after 5min, using same run out process mentioned above.  Continue the second batch sparge in the same manner as the first until you collect 7.25gal wort or wort SG reaches 1.010 (my run out never got below 1.020 before reaching 7.25 gal kettle volume).  Bring your wort to a boil to past the hot break for 15min then add the hops as described above.

Once the wort has been boiled for 90 min, rapid cool to 90F and rack to a clean and sanitized carboy.  Seal and allow the wart to settle for 2-3 hours then pitch yeast when temp is between 70F- 75F.  After fermentation takes on a vigorous nature, raise temperature to 70deg, if necessary, until Specific Gravity (SG) gets between 1.015 - 1.020 then rack off sediment into clean and sanitized carboy.  When SG gets to 1.012 rack off sediment to clean and sanitized keg or bottle as normal.

Our actual SG after rapid cooling the wart was 1.065 (90F), adjusted for temp, SG - 1.069. BrewHouse Efficiency was approx. 76% and ABV @ FG of 1.012 should be around 7.47%.

By the way, I used water from a Reverse Osmosis dispenser at WinCo Foods at 30 cents a gal.  That water has always given ma a PH of between 5.2 - 5.4 in the mash and I have not had to add any water salts. Vancouver, WA has the best brewing water I have used anywhere.

-dave