Double checked my readings with the hydrometer last night and it matched my refractometer readings of 1.011.

 Starting Gravity - 1.064

Finishing Gravity - 1.011

This gives me an approximate alcohol content of 7% abv

After dry hopping with the Centennial for 1 week, bottling will commence on January 5th!

Brewed my first countertop mini mash this past weekend, an Arrogant Bastard clone recipe from Clarke. Much thanks to him for his advice on this one, the man is a plethora of beer knowledge!

I did have to tweak it a bit because I could not get Warrior hops, substituted with Centennial at 10aa, my mash math calculations came out to be potential alcohol of 6.6%. Next time I do this I am adding a couple more pounds of 2-row to attempt to get more of a yeild from the grains per Clarke’s advice.

Promash has this coming in around 1.075 OG (I used 70% efficiency.)  Given an attenuation of 73-80 with WLP 001, I should have a final abv of 7.3% - 8.1%.  64.5 IBU’s. 25.2 SRM give or take.

Arrogant Bastard Mini-Mash Clone

Buy:
6 pounds Liquid Malt Extract
5 pounds 2-row Pale Malt
2 pounds 120L Crystal Malt
1 pound Black Patent Malt (or Carafa III malt)
1 ounce Chinook hops
2 ounces Warrior hops
Irish Moss (unless you already have it)
White Labs WLP001 or WLP002 or Wyeast English Ale Yeast

Put this in your mesh grain bag:
5 pounds 2-row Pale Malt
1.5 pounds 120L Crystal Malt
1/4 cup Black Patent or Carafa III malt

Add 2 gallons of water at 162 degrees F to your igloo cooler. 

Add the mesh bag full of grain and make sure it’s completely submerged. 

Cover the igloo.   Leave this alone for 60 minutes at least.

Then, heat up another 2 gallons of water to 170 degrees this time.  Once it’s at
this temp, turn it off and remove from heat.

Open the valve on that igloo and empty the mash water into your brewing kettle. 

Get as much of that out of there as you can. 

When you’re done, close the valve.

Open the top of the Igloo, add the other 2 gallons of water you heated to 170.
Splash it all over the grain bag.  Don’t burn yourself.  Cover the igloo.  Let it
sit for 10 minutes. 

Then, open the valve and start emptying that into your brewing
kettle until you’ve collected as much as your brewing kettle can handle. 

Add your liquid malt extract and stir until it’s all part of the wort.

Bring it to a boil.
Once the boil starts, add 3/4 ounce of Chinook hops
15 minutes from the end of the boil, add 1 tablespoon Irish Moss
10 minutes from the end of the boil, add 1/2 ounce of Warrior hops
1 minute from the end of the boil, add 1/4 ounce Chinook hops

After the boil’s finished, chill the wort as you normally do to get the temperature
down to 80 degrees or lower.

Add 2 gallons of ice cold water to your fermenter (bucket or carboy). 

Then, pour in your wort, leaving behind as much of the hops and sediment as you can.

Aerate your wort as you normally would.

After aerating, pitch 1 vial of White Labs WLP001 or WLP002 or Wyeast English Ale
yeast.

Once primary fermentation is complete, pull the yeast off the beer.  Then add 1
ounce of Warrior hops (this is your dry hop) and allow to sit, undisturbed, for 1
full week.

Bottle with 3/4 cup of corn sugar and allow to age for 4-6 weeks or more.

Brewed on December 23rd

Slow to fermentation after pitching yeast until I raised the surrounding temp to around 74 degrees, after that I started to see action from the blow off tube.

One week later:

Fermentation should almost be complete in primary. The blow off tube has slowed down significantly and it should be time to add the dry hops. I will check the refractometer readings on Monday when I have the time to verify if fermentation is indeed complete.