Jalapeño Cream Ale

For my 4th brew, I'm making a Jalapeño Cream Ale based on the following recipe.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/jalapeno-cream-ale-131294/

This is my first All-Grain brew. New bunch of challenges and a brand new chunk of steps added to the brew day. The first thing to mention is the new mash-tun for steeping grain. I built mine from the following tutorial except I used a 5 gallons cooler instead of the 10 since I couldn't find one, and I was looking into doing half batches in the future anyways.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-10-gallon-rubbermaid-mlt-conversion-23008/

So, the recipe..

Jalapeño Cream Ale

3.04G, all grain; OG = 1.052 FG = 1.011; IBU = 42.6; SRM = 4; ABV = 4.8%
60 minute boil.

Ingredients

Amount	Item	Type	% or IBU
4.00 lb	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)	Grain	74.0 %
0.55 lb	Corn, Flaked (1.3 SRM)	Grain	10.2 %
0.55 lb	Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)	Grain	10.2 %
0.30 lb	Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)	Grain	5.5 %
0.55 oz	Northern Brewer [8.50%] (60 min)	Hops	29.2 IBU
0.55 oz	Mt. Hood [6.00%] (25 min)	Hops	14.3 IBU
0.55 oz	Mt. Hood [6.00%] (15 min)	Hops	10.2 IBU
0.50 tsp	Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)	Misc
3.00 items	Jalapeno Peppers (Secondary 7.0 days)	Misc
3.00 items	Jalapeno Peppers (Boil 15.0 min)	Misc
	Harvested #1056 from previous brew	Yeast-Ale

 Steps and How it Went Down

00. A day before brew day, slit, wash and roast jalapenos in oven for 20-30 min. Then slice them and soak them in vodka overnight.

01. Filled the mash-tun with hot water to heat it up.

02. Boiled 10L of water to 79C(174F).

03. Drained the mash-tun of hot water.

04. Added grains and 6.37L of water, mixed it all up to get rid of any clumps of grains. (1.2L per pound of grain)

05. Made sure the temperature was at 68C(154F), closed and let sit for 60min.

06. Boiled 13L of water for sparge.

07. After 60 minutes, drained 2L of the wort out and poured it back gently on top(vorlauf).

08. Drained the mash-tun into boil kettle.

09. Added sparge water. 11L was needed to get to 14.2L total pre-boil. Let sit for 10min.

10. Vorlauf and drain mash-tun in kettle.

11. Checked pre-boil gravity and got 1.030.

12. Bring to boil.

13. Added Northern Brewer hops at 60min.

14. Added Mt. Hood hops and jalapenos at 15min.

15. Added Mt. Hood hops at 10min.

16. Added Irish Moss and yeast nutrient at 10min.

17. Cooled down in sink of cold water to 18C(65F), took gravity and got 1.047(a bit lower than expected).

18. Pitched #1056 yeast. Closed and let sit for almost 2 weeks.

Additional Notes

When I mashed out the first running of the wort, the drain got stuck due to the weight of the grain squashing the stainless steel supply hose. When building the mash-tun, I had read about this being a possibility and that an option was to used stainless steel wire inside to help it keep shape but couldn't build it initially so I decided not to do it. Big mistake. When it got stuck, I went and pushed with the spoon to free it up. Worked but I probably got some grain powder into the wort, as I didn't vorlauf it again then and there. All and all, not a big issue but that just added a lot more time to the brew day..

UPDATE

12/09/2010

A day before transferring to secondary, repeated process with jalapeno peppers. Slit, roaster, sliced and soaked overnight in vodka. Raked the beer in secondary, added jalapenos. Tasted the beer, it had a nice little hotness to it.

12/16/2010

Tasted the beer, the spiciness was just perfect. Just enough that I think it will tone down a bit with carbonation and still retain enough hotness to be easy to drink and very enjoyable. Mixed in with 0.35 cup of dextrose and bottled.