Red Hook ESB clone

I brewed tonight!!!!! I did a Red Hook ESB clone. This time I brewed an extract kit from one of my favorite suppliers. I get most of my stuff from either Midwest Homebrewing in Minneapolis or Northern Brewer in St. Paul.

I like to do kits occasionally, especially for beer types I've never tried before. I've never done a bitter.

I got this kit from Midwest. The recipe is as follows:

4 lbs Alexanders LME
3 lbs Light DME
16 oz Caramel 60
3 oz Tettnang hops
0.5 oz Willamette hops
Wyeast American Ale #1056 (ahhh, good ol' 1056)

Procedure:
16 ounces of Caramel 60 was steeped in 1.5 gallons of water at 155°F. [I know what your saying, "you started a sentence with a number! How dare you!" I say, "get over it!"] I put the grains in a muslin bag and put the bag in the cold water. Once the water got to 155°F, I let it sit for about 30 minutes. I removed the grains and sparged them with about 1 gallon of water at about 130°F.

OK, I have to stop here. I just want to point out for the record that I hate anything that isn't metric, and basically the only other thing is the English units (a.k.a. American units). Gallons, inches, pounds, ounces (both liquid and dry), yard.... Good grief, how inconvenient can it get? I am a fan of the metric system. I wish so desperately that the US would switch. The American system is so silly. OK, back to the brewing.

The malt extracts were added to the water and the mixture was heated to a boil. 2 ounces of the Tettnang Hops were added to a nylon bag and placed in the pot [You: "You're really starting to annoy me with the numbers at the start of a sentence!!!!". Me: "Shut up and read!!!] This was boiled for about 60 minutes during which time I got my daughters ready for bed, watched Emeril Live for a while with my kids (it's my 3 year old's favorite non-cartoon show) and pulled my 1.6 year old out of the toilet...literally.

0.5 ounces of Willamette hops and 1 ounce of Irish Moss were added for the last 15 minutes. 1 ounce of Tettnang hops was added for the last 5 minutes [Me, in a preemptive strike, "It's a blog!!!! Not Nature or Science. I'll start sentences with numbers if I want to, jerk!!!!!!!!! and I'll use a lot of these: !!!!!!!!"] I cooled the wort with my homemade wort chiller and dumped it into my fermentation bucket when it was at 100°F. I topped it off to 5 gallons with cold water and pitched the yeast.

I put the bucket in the basement in my utility sink to keep it off of the cold floor and to make any blow off easier to clean up.

It was a good brew night. I now have the following:

Primary 1: Red Hook ESB clone
Primary 2: Pilsner Urquell clone
Secondary 1: Belgian Ale (Fat Tire clone, try #2)
Secondary 2: Oatmeal Stout
Bottles: Bavarian Helles, Fat Tire clone #1, Irish Stout, Pale Ale, India Pale Ale (I really need to start naming my beers).