All the Essentials for a Saturday Morning

Its a gray, autumnal Saturday morning at Estate du Pappers and I'm brewing. Got my mash tun, matches, brew sheet, and cup o' joe.

Up for today - the latest iteration of our house pale ale, about 1.052 OG, mash temp at 152, organic pale malt from Gambrinus for the base, and Bravo, Ivanho, Centennial and Cascade hops.

I scrolled over the post and the "It's a gray, autumnal Saturday morning..." popped up - and I immediately thought, "must be near Chicago." Hah. I haven't even set foot outside today - it just looks sad. Brewing makes me happy, though.

It's a bright, sunny, autumn day here in New England. A bit windy though (which means this time I'm going to start with more wort in the kettle - boil off is insane on windy days).

Heating up the strike water for a nut brown ale.

Pleased as punch that my insane housemate has gone to FL to spend Thanksgiving week with family. This makes for a more pleasant brew day.

Yup. It's going to be a good day!

I have three batches of beer, that if I want to share around christmas I have to get bottled this weekend. People think because of my bottling thread, that I love to bottle. I hate it. Absophuqinglootley hate it....That's why I came up with my system to make it less intolerable......But that doesn't mean I still don't keep putting it off.

Holy Mother of Muckups . . . . muilti-tasking and too much wind have made my hop addition timings not even as good as approximations. And the boil time, don't even ask.

Probably will turn out fabulous and I won't be able to replicate it. In any case, it will be beer, and it will be fine.

After I get this all cleaned up, its off to the grocery store and then to church, tonight is our night to cook for a local homeless shelter. Chicken and mashed potatoes - I'll be the one peeling 9 lbs of potatoes

Pappers_ said:

Holy Mother of Muckups . . . . muilti-tasking and too much wind have made my hop addition timings not even as good as approximations. And the boil time, don't even ask.

Probably will turn out fabulous and I won't be able to replicate it. In any case, it will be beer, and it will be fine.

Click to expand...

You know you've reached RDWHAHB-hood when....

Last brew I did, and teach your friend day 2 weeks ago, I was too busy chatting with folks, answering questions and drinking that I got all my hop additions discomabulated and never took any grav readings either pre or post boil....It should be an interesting beer.

And as it turns out, I hit the target OG exactly - 1.052 - I'll attribute it to good karma.

Revvy said:

I have three batches of beer, that if I want to share around christmas I have to get bottled this weekend. People think because of my bottling thread, that I love to bottle. I hate it. Absophuqinglootley hate it....That's why I came up with my system to make it less intolerable......But that doesn't mean I still don't keep putting it off.

Click to expand...

Love this. Now I feel better about constantly putting off bottling, despite constantly complaining about not having a consistently timed pipeline. So it goes!

(For this exact reason, I'm now on to my very sour, off-flavored amber batch... you get used to the flavor after a while. )