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Homebrewing!

For those of you that may be interested, one of my other hobbies is homebrewing. I'm still relatively new to it but last week I decided to embark on a pretty cool adventure... making Chicha de Jora! So the other night I stumbled upon the Chicha episode of Brewmasters via Netflix and seeing that 3-5 day turnaround time I just had to make it! So I did some research around the interwebs and developed my own recipe. I just really didn't want to take the time to germinate corn or to chew 8 lbs of corn so I decided to try something a little different. So here is the recipe I developed including a picture of the finished product which turned out more like a really heavy soda than beer due to my mistakes.
Traditionally, Chicha is strained using a straw basket filled with hay. I couldn't find any hay so I used dried long fibered sphagnum instead...

What follows is the recipe I attempted:

2.5 cups Dried Long Fibered Sphagnum- boiled for 10 minutes (in place of hay/straw)
8 lbs dried, flaked yellow maize≈5 gallons when saturated
2.5 gallons of water
1 oz Amylase enzyme
1 package of “sugar cane swizzle sticks (4oz)”, crushed
1/4oz cloves, divided into two equal portions
1oz cinnamon sticks
11.5oz fresh spearmint, crushed (typical size for fresh packaged spearmint at a grocery store)
1 cup fresh dill, crushed
1 package American Ale strain yeast
1 package Bavarian Wheat strain yeast

•Crush your sugar cane with a hammer
•Crush your spearmint, dill, and cloves with a mortar and pestle
•Sterilize your brew pot, lid, fermentation bucket, lid, airlock, thermometer, specific gravity measurer
•Fill brew pot with 2.5 gallons of water and add your corn
•Bring to 155F
•Add your amylase and stir it in completely
•Once the temperature has returned to 155 add the package of sugar cane, dill, spearmint, cloves, and cinnamon
•Maintain at 155F for 30 minutes to 2 hours (I did the first batch for 1 hour, but the temperature raised to 170 at one point, denaturing the amylase)
•Put all of the Long Fibered Sphagnum into a separate pot and fill with water until the sphagnum is completely saturated and there is enough excess water to bring the mixture to a boil without burning the sphagnum
•Heat the sphagnum pot on high heat, stirring often to avoid burning
•Once the water is boiling begin timing the sphagnum pot, once 10 minutes has passed pour the sphagnum mix into a colander
•Mash the sphagnum into the colander to remove some water and allow to drain until your corn mash is finished
This is what was supposed to happen, skip to the part with asterisks to read what actually happened
•Pour your corn mash into the colander and collect the liquid that pours through, this is your first runnings.
•Put 2.5 more gallons of water into your brew kettle and put the corn mixture back into the brew kettle and return to 155F
•Keep corn mixture at 155F for an additional hour
•Pour the corn mixture through the long fibered sphagnum in the colander and collect the liquid that comes through, this is your second runnings
•Combine the first and second runnings in a 5 gallon brew pot and cool to 70F
•Sort through the corn mixture and collect the cinnamon sticks and sugar cane and put into a Ziploc bag for re-use later
•Let your runnings sit for 12-24 hours in a dark sterile environment (your brew kettle sealed with cling wrap will work fine)
•If your runnings were not in your brew pot add them to your brew pot and bring to a as vigorous a boil as possible without boiling over
•Boil runnings for 3 hours
•With 45 minutes left in the boiling process add your cinnamon and sugar cane
•Cool this mixture as quickly as possible via an ice-bath
•Once the mixture is cool take your specific gravity reading and pour the mixture into your fermentation bucket and add both packets of yeast
•Wait 3 days, take another specific gravity reading, if your beer is at the alcohol level you desire go ahead and bottle, if not let fermentation continue and check on it again every two days
•If the specific gravity does not change much between readings then go ahead and bottle
*****This is what actually happened*****
•Poured maybe 1/16th of the mash into the colander before it began overflowing
•Gave up trying to get liquid out of the mash and ended up pouring all the mash into my bottling bucket
•Added about 2 gallons of water to the mash in the bottling bucket
•Stirred vigorously until mixture was homogenous
•Fished all the sugarcane and cinnamon sticks out of the mash
•Drain as much liquid out of the mash as possible (After about 3 hours I was able to get around 5 gallons, but I kept adding water to keep the mash at the 5 gallon mark, thus watering down my runnings)
•As soon as I finished draining the runnings the valve broke and my mash spewed all over my kitchen and me, i'm still trying to make my floor less sticky
•Brought the mixture to a vigorous boil for 2 hours
•With 45 minutes left in the boiling process I added my cinnamon and sugar cane to the wort
•With 30 minutes left I tied the dill stalks and leaves that I hadn’t used before together and let it sit in the water until the boiling was complete
•Cooled the wort as quickly as possible using an ice bath until 70F
•Poured the wort into the fermentation bucket and added the yeast, stirred until thoroughly mixed and sealed the container
•Forgot to take a hydrometer reading until the next day it was around 1.011
•Bottled after 4 days hydrometer reading around 1.009 (human error likely in the readings)

The finished product after 4 days fermenting

Chicha de jora by mcmcnair, on Flickr

If I were to do it again this is the recipe I would follow:

2.5 cups Dried Long Fibered Sphagnum- boiled for 10 minutes (in place of hay/straw)
8 lbs dried, flaked yellow maize≈5 gallons when saturated
2.5 gallons of water
2 oz Amylase enzyme
1 package of “sugar cane swizzle sticks (4oz)”, crushed
1/4oz cloves, divided into two equal portions
1oz cinnamon sticks
11.5oz fresh spearmint, crushed (typical size for fresh packaged spearmint at a grocery store)
3 cups fresh dill, crushed
1 package American Ale strain yeast
1 package Bavarian Wheat strain yeast

Prep Work:
•Crush your sugar cane with a hammer
•Crush your spearmint, dill, and cloves with a mortar and pestle
•Sterilize your brew pot, lid, fermentation bucket, lid, airlock, thermometer, specific gravity measurer
•Combine the dill, spearmint and half the cloves in a cheesecloth bag for later use
•Combine the sugarcane, cinnamon, and half the cloves in a cheesecloth bag for later use
NOTE: If working with a 5 gallon brew pot you will need to make the mash in 2 batches of 2 gallons of water and 4 lbs of corn per batch
NOTE: If working with a 10 gallon brew pot you can make the mash in 1 batch, these directions will follow a single batch mash using a 10 gallon brew pot
1. Put all of your corn into a nylon bag
2. Add all of your corn and water into your brew pot and mix thoroughly
3. Bring your corn mixture to between 140-150F and add 1 oz of amylase
4. Maintain for 1-2 hours, the longer you let it sit the more sugars available for fermentation, thus potentially higher alcohol content
NOTE: Ideal temperature is 148F; DO NOT Get above 150F, the Beta-amylase will denature and stop converting starch into fermentable sugars
5. While the mash is cooking, put all of the Long Fibered Sphagnum into a separate pot and fill with water until the sphagnum is completely saturated and there is enough excess water to bring the mixture to a boil without burning the sphagnum
6. Heat the sphagnum pot on high heat, stirring often to avoid burning
7. Once the water is boiling begin timing the sphagnum pot, once 10 minutes has passed pour the sphagnum mix into a colander
8. Mash the sphagnum into the colander to remove some water and allow to drain until your corn mash is finished
9. Drain the nylon bag full of corn of liquid back into a large container (sterilized 5 gallon fermentation bucket works well) and pour any excess liquid left in the brew pot into the container as well, these are your primary runnings
10. Seal the fermentation bucket to prevent contamination
11. Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4
12. Again drain the nylon bag of liquid into the same large container as before; this should yield at least 5 gallons of runnings (preferably 5.5-6)
13. Thoroughly clean your brew pot, scrub any residue off and sterilize it again
14. Pour your runnings through the sphagnum into your brew pot (repeat until all chunks have been filtered by the sphagnum
15. For additional clarity pouring the runnings through a very fine mesh
16. Bring the runnings to as vigorous a boil as possible for 1 hour (only partially cover your brew pot, some evaporation is desirable at this point)
17. With 15 minutes remaining add the cheesecloth bag containing your sugarcane, cinnamon, and half the cloves
18. With 10 minutes remaining add the cheesecloth bag containing your spearmint, dill, and the remaining cloves
19. Congratulations you now have wort!
20. Quickly cool the wort via an icebath to approximately 70F
21. Pour the wort into your fermentation bucket
22. Take a small sample to take a hydrometer reading and pour it back into the bucket when finished
23. Add all of your yeast to your fermentation bucket and stir vigorously until it is thoroughly mixed and frothy
24. Seal your fermentation bucket and put your airlock on your bucket
25. Wait 3 days and take a hydrometer reading. At this point the Chicha de jora is technically ready to be bottled or drank, however I would bottle up maybe ¼ of it and let the remaining wort continue fermenting until hydrometer readings no longer change, bottling every two days.
26. Bottle your Chicha and enjoy!:beer:
 
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