Solera #4

I'm about ready to pull 5 gallons off my Solera, so today I'm brewing a batch to replace the 5 gallons I'm pulling out. I'm calling this Solera #4 as it's the fourth five gallon batch going into the 15 gallon Solera. This is a pretty basic grain bill, just pilsner and spelt malts. I'm mashing high on this batch, ensuring there's some long-term food supply for the critters. Here's the recipe as I'm making it today.

Target O.G. 1.065

8# 11oz Pilsner Malt
2# 3oz Spelt Malt
28g Aged Hops (60 min)
Brett Barrel III INISBC913

Mash at 160F, 90 min boil

Nothing fancy on the water chemistry today. I filled my HLT with 4 gallons of RO and 7 gallons of carbon-filtered tap water. I won't need that much water, but I just use leftover water during cleanup.

Brewing Notes

No issues during this session. Gravity came in a couple points lower than target at 1.061.

Update 3/23/2016
I pulled a sample last night. It has some really nice fruity notes going on, and mild funk. I was a little worried because I used the Brett Barrel III yeast that I'd saved from the CS Brett Experiment. It had been sitting in the fridge for a while, so a lot of the cells had definitely died off. I made a starter to try to revive the surviving yeast and get it going. It seemed to work, but there was a noticeable lag before there were visible signs of fermentation. Also, the starter had a fairly strong berry aroma. Even with the starter, I believe it was under-pitched. So long story short, I'm glad that I wasn't able to pick up on any obvious off-flavors.