What I did for beer today

-Brewed 8 gallons of beer (India Pale Lager)
-Kegged 5 gallons and bottled 3 gallons of beer (Dark American Lager)
-Drank homebrew

Brewed six gallons of Founders breakfast stout clone!

Got some fittings to hook the IC to the pump so I can chill without using the garden hose. Then I checked the gravity of my ESB. Still a little high (1.018 with Wyeast 1968). Gonna let it sit for a couple more weeks.

It was a big brew weekend at my house. Saturday was for projects:

- Bought a clean homer bucket and parts to finally mount my old Corona mill permanently on a bucket.
- Bought 50' of 1/2" copper to upgrade my wort chiller and assembled. I'll use the smaller one (25' of 3/8 copper) as a pre-chiller.
- Hit up the brew store and picked up a couple bags of grain.

Sunday was even busier--I started at 10AM and went till midnight:

- Brewed my English IPA, with a two-hour mash schedule (I started it before church and finished up when we got back)
- Bottled my White House Honey Ale AG recipe--super tasty, I can't wait for this to be ready
- Tried a test bottle of the spiced Christmas ale I bottled last week. The flavor's rounding out, but somehow it's still way over-spiced, much more than what I remember from previous years. Going to have to review what I did wrong on that one.
- Bottled about six gallons of hard cider after backsweetening with fresh cider. Going to have to monitor these kind of closely and pasteurize when they hit proper carbonation. This stuff tastes amazing!
- Prior to bottling the WHHA and the cider, cleaned and sterilized 150+ bottles which had been knocking around the basement for several months. We're having a "bring a non-screw off six pack" holiday party at my house on Friday and it's a good thing--I've got two batches of beer and another six gallons of cider ready to bottle, and only a couple of dozen bottles left in my storage closet!

After drinking a home brew and noticing that it was still green, I postponed bottling what's in my fermenter right now and will let it sit for an extra week.

Brewed 3bbls of Amber and broadcast the process to those willing to watch as well as answering any questions during that time.

skw said:

After drinking a home brew and noticing that it was still green, I postponed bottling what's in my fermenter right now and will let it sit for an extra week.

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I only drink green beer on St. Pat's.

Brewed a second go at a west coast ipa. Put the kettle outside to cool, but still took a lot of time. Like 2.5 hours.

Will likely be investing in a plastic swamp cooler for the next batch.

Decided to ditch the BIAB and built a MLT out of a 10G round cooler. Easiest DIY project ever. Went from cooler to mash tun in about 5 min. Celebrated my victory with a home brewed pumpkin pi ale.

Bottled a 5 gal batch of Belgian Tripel.

I went to a Utah State Liquor Store. You can't get good craft beer just anywhere in UT, and I'm here on travel. So I stopped off at a state store and got some 10.4% barley wine. The two remaining bottles are sitting in the hotel sink on ice.

I love beer. Amen.

Bottled a 5 gal batch of ESB

Took advantage of Midwest's keg sale and ordered 4 ball lock kegs. They'll go nicely with the chest freezer that's being delivered in a few weeks.

BlindFaith said:

Bottled a 5 gal batch of ESB

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hoping to brew another one of these tonight, wont have enough 2row for a 10 gallon batch so i'm going to have to pick some up on my way home

Made up a small starter yesterday with some washed yeast (first time!). Tomorrow, I'm gonna brew a rye bitter that I'm calling Quite Rye-ght!

Not so much what I've done for beer but what I am going to do for it. cheers.

Scrubbed out the boil kettle
Back flushing the heat exchange
Deep cleaning brew room floor
Setting up a 3 year hop order
Putting in a grain order
Getting in some research time on yeast handling and maintenence, mostly looking into the washing process at this point.

What did I do for beer today? Nothing. What will beer do for me once beer-thirty rolls around? Plenty.

Printed labels for the beer I'm bottling tomorrow.

Does anyone read more than the last four posts?
Secondary IPA on 3.5 ozs of Crystal hops.
Secondary Pale Ale on 2 ozs of Glacier and 2 ozs of Sterling

Dumped 5 Gallons of liquid Band-Aids down the shower drain

Accidentally dry hopped The wrong beer, putting 2 ounces of Centennial into a Belgian pale ale (and left them there)

Dry hopped the intended beer with 2 ounces of Centennial, an American IPA

Cleaned my beer lines for the first time in five years of using kegs (not the same lines as when I started, though!)

Sat down to HBT and a pint of double brown ale...ahhhh, the reward is always so satisfying.

worksnorth said:

Does anyone read more than the last four posts?
Secondary IPA on 3.5 ozs of Crystal hops.
Secondary Pale Ale on 2 ozs of Glacier and 2 ozs of Sterling

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I often read a couple pages myself. But damn its a long one!

I think the fact this thread is so long is a testament to the brewing activity of HBT members!

And to stay on topic, I shook my yeast starter numerous times today to keep it active and aerated. I'll toss it in the fridge first thing in the morning to cold crash for a while and then get brewing and decant the liquid later on before pitching.

Kegged pale.

Kegged honey wheat.

Harvested and washed yeast from said fermenters.

Taste tested IPA, Pale, Oatmeal Stout.

Built this:




Drank a barleywine.

Picked up another keg.

Pushed IPA and Pale to reduce sediment.

It was a busy day.

Taste tasted my all Belma pale ale for the first time. Turns out I don't like Belma! Taste and (even worse) smell, are just bizarre. Tastes like grass covered strawberries! Good thing this was only a 5 gallon batch and Belma only cost 5 dollars a pound!

Got my brick of Westy 12.

Forced a couple bubbles out of my hefe ferment and inhaled deeply. Yum.

currently brewing a 10g ESB

Stepped up a starter for a Helles lager I'm doing Saturday..

Picked up two of Briess rye, one more Maris Otter, two of Amarillo hops, one of some New Zealand hop, and Irish Ale Wyeast. I'm going to use it for my one-gallon, all-grain, all-original ale. And, when I say 'all-original,' I mean that I'm going to make a rye ale with black pepper. It will probably be awful.

Bottled my Thor-Bock batch 3, and my Carlsberg Elephant clone, at 11.2%, and 9.1% samples got me pretty well. Ordered a new stir plate. Fed my wild norsk yeast, and my wyeast hellerbock yeast. Also kept a promise to my wife, and didn't go to a tasting of the Stone Vertical Epic series.

Dry hopped my pale for our work competition

Check the SG on the batch in the primary. Sitting at 1.020. It's almost done. Definitely still going though. I could see the bubbles when I opened the bucket. Shooting for 1.015-1.018.

Picked up a 55 lb bag of Maris Otter

Kicked the kegs of galaxy pale ale and Irish red ale. Swapped them out with a California common and a chocolate coffee oatmeal stout. Just in time, I needed an empty keg to put my amber ale tomorrow, before putting another batch of galaxy pale ale on the BRY-97 yeast cake tomorrow.

This morning I took my starter for tomorrow's brew off of the stir plate and threw it in the fridge. Earlier tonight I weighed out my hops and the salts for the water adjustments.

Bottled 6 gallons of dry stout, yummy!

Started making cases for bottle storage too.

Rebuilding my DIY stir plate to handle the bigger stir bar for the 5L flask. Also started wiring my 750W electric fan heater into the fermentation chamber to heat the fridge side allowing me to do ales in the fridge and lagers or storage on the freezer side.

By the way, 5L Erlenmeyer flasks are stupid big, like cartoonish big.