What I did for beer today

Brewed up an all grain batch of Honey Pale Ale. 1st time using my 11 gal kettle with new ball valve and weldless thermometer. Had a slight drip at the thermometer which sealed up with increased heat.

I've been sitting on a couple of gift cards from Amazon and Northern Brewer that I had earmarked for capital upgrades to my brewing setup. The challenge was to come up with something that would truly be beneficial, without requiring a lot of additional time and costs to implement. Since I've been transitioning from BIAB to using a Rubbermaid mash tun, I have quickly realized that a single kettle just isn't cutting it. I just pulled the trigger on a 62 quart stainless stockpot that we serve as my new boil kettle. I also ordered an additional Blichmann floor burrner, along with 24" extension legs. Not only will this give me the ability to independently heat and control my separate sparge water and boil kettle, but it will be instrumental in working towards 10-gallon batches in anticipation of the summer blonde ale season!

Washed the 24 wine bottles I got a few days ago. Then rebottled some wine I had in screwtops.

Harvested Hefe yeast
Kegging 3bbl of Hefe
Clean Fermentor
Update brewlog and schedule
Order yeast

Order How to Brew by John Palmer

Scott

Yesterday I drank the first of my lager. It was only at 3 weeks, 2 in a carboy and 1 in a keg, for lagering, but hey, there was a game on! I'll restrain myself from drinking any more for another week or two to give it a full month.

Oh, it was REALLY good. It was an all-grain, BIAB, American lager. The color is about that of a Bud, but it has real taste.

stumbled upon an ale pail at a thrift shop for $2. got it home, cleaned it up, and it holds water, good seals, air tight, plan to put it straight to use in my pipeline.

Bought a brand new Kenmore 7.2 cu ft freezer on sale for a keezer project.

Spent a lot of time that would have been better spent on other things reading through threads on here....

Started a starter of washed US05 for a batch of Blue Moon clone... Realized that I need more DME for another starter for a batch of Old Jubilation clone that is next in line.

OH YEA!! Scored a 5lb CO2 bottle on loan till I deploy in the summer! I will have that Blue Moon clone on draft when I go to Texas in March!! Sweet.

Mashing in a phat tyre clone right now

I roast some barley for brewing a dry stout later this week. Even though I have cold, it smelled really, really good!

I didn't do anything for homebrew BUT I did push the cause of Craft Beer in ireland. I spook with a few suppliers regarding there craft range. I'm now getting Brew Dog's Punk IPA on draft and some more of there higher % in bottles, also Molson Coors took over the Franciscian Well craft brewery last week and will supply me with their beers, couldnt get them before. Another is now supplying me with samples to give to customers to see which will work on tap. I'm a happy publican today

I bought a project box, and a new funnel with strainer. Built a temperature controller for my "new to me" freezer. Brew a 5 gallon batch of a Flat tire clone. Setup a temp fermentation chamber (stupid freezing temperatures) De-labeled and cleaned more bottles. Made the dogs some treats with the spent grain. Attempt to grow a SCOBY. Over all I say it was a good day! Back to work tonight... blah!

I cracked my first self-made homebrew today after about 10 years.

Brooklyn Brew Shop Everyday IPA. It is only 1-week in the bottle, but it was definitely carbonated (a bit too carbonated actually) but pretty darned good. One more week in the bottle and I'll chill down the rest of them and serve em up!

I loaded my 4#, 5#, and 10# CO2 tanks in the car to refill them all this afternoon (the 5# is new to me--needs an updated hydro test as well). Then I'll finish carbing my Coffee Vanilla Porter and start carbing my Sculpin IPA clone in hopes of getting them ready for a family party on Saturday.

Probably eyeball my RIS fermentation (started Sunday) and guesstimate whether it's ready for a gravity reading.

Measure out grain & clean/sanitize fermenters for 10gal of Centennial Blonde on Sunday (or next Thursday), and pitch the yeast for 10gal of Belgian Tripel into the first step of a 2 or 3-step starter for Presidents Day Weekend brewing!

Then drink several pints of my Tasty APA clone. Having no CO2 for the last few days and having to drink scraps from my bottling days has been really depressing!

Finally tracked down what I think is a good craigslist deal and pulled the trigger on a 20lbs CO2 tank for 50 bucks. gas still in the tank.

Sciatic issues, my back is screwed, so I spent the day watching Don Osborn and Brewing TV videos.

Got my first all grain 2.5 gallon to bottle, hope my back comes around enough to do it tomorrow or the next day.......

Picked up the plastic enclosure for my STC1000 build(which should arrive thursday/friday). I may brew tonight if i get back from work/happy hour in time.

Picked up a 50 lb sack of 2-row, another 10 pounds of other grains, and a half pound of various hops (Challenger, Warrior and Fuggles), despite six or seven pounds of other varieties in the freezer, for an ESB and an RIS I am planning to brew this weekend.

I just tested my first batch. NB Irish red ale which started out at 1.042 and finished at (with corrections for temp) at 1.01 It tastes really nice and to get a taste test with co2 I put a sample in a soda stream bottle added a blast of c02( not very scientific but hey) to carb it and I ended up with a nice creamy head and to my taste a very drinkable Red Ale. This puppy is going in the keg, gassed and into my newly built keezer this evening. Whoo Hoo...

I just un-boxed my order from Midwest a few minutes ago. I believe I'm going to start my first all grain brew tomorrow morning!

Just bottled my wild yeast saison. Captured yeast from my front porch by letting a jar of wort sit out for a few hours. Stepped it up with a starter and brewed a 2.5G extract saison. The yeast demolished the sugars in the wort and it finished out at 1.004. Drinking the leftovers from the bottling bucket now and it's delicious.

Made a trip to brew-n-grow for saturday`s Kolsch.Racked Blue Moon clone to
secondary and made a 1600 ml starter with washed 2565.Lookin` forward to
saturday.

Cheers

Received my shipment from Northern Brewer. Subsequently installed bulkhead and weldless Brewmometer on my new kettle, and installed bulkhead and false bottom into the Rubbermaid 10 gallon cooler I've had waiting. Seems I've run out of plumber's tape, so I'll have to make a Home Depot run before putting on the ball valves and leak testing.

Picked up some miscellaneous supplies at the LHBS. Bottled 2.5 gallons of Arctic Brown Ale and 2.5 gallons of Black Coffee RyePA. Picked up a bottle of rye whiskey that I'll use to soak oak cubes in and toss in the whiskey rye porter that's currently in primary.

Had my first taste of BierMunchers Captain Hooked on Bitters Red Hook ESB clone. 2 weeks bottle conditioning and damn...it was fantastic! I can't wait to taste this in another week. I also took my 1st gravity reading my all grain Caribou Slobber after 18 days in primary. Down to 1.010. I'll take another reading in a couple days and probably bottle it.

I pre-ordered five varietals of hops (centennial, chinook, glacier, northern brewer and willamette) for planting this spring and stopped by my lhbs to get ingredients for my next two batches. One of which I will hopefully be brewing tomorrow.

after we get prepped for this storm i'm going to keg my 10 gallons of Red IPA

Boiled some DME for the second step of a starter. Yeast are healthy, got krausen in the pitcher in an hour...

Ground some MO and toasted some oats for a 3 gallon BIAB in the blizzard tomorrow

Bought my first kegging system and kegged my Irish Red

Picked up some more Teflon tape so I could put ball valves on my new kettle and cooler MLT. Leak tested both. Marked my mash paddle with volumes up to 7 gallons for my new kettle. Then tried putting my new kettle over two burners on my crappy electric stove to see how much I could boil. While doing that, calibrated my thermometers. Then got unbelievably irate when my kettle not only couldn't boil enough for a full boil, it couldn't get as strong of a boil at under 5 gallons as I could with one burner and my old kettle. So my new kettle won't be getting any use for a long time unless I either break fire code and violate my lease (risking fines and/or eviction) and use propane on my balcony, or deal with hauling 5+ gallons of near boiling wort up 14 floors, and (again in violation of lease/fire code) store propane inside my apartment. So looks like I'm still stuck doing small boils in my old 5 gallon kettle. Gah. I was in a great mood until my electric stove proved just how worthless it is.

Cleaned out an old keg I got from a buddy, checked sales, tried to clean root beer residue out of the cobra tap that was inside. May just pitch the line and get a new one.

Dry hopped a Pale with Galaxy and Citra this morning. Also put my first keg in the fridge! So excited to have my first homebrewed draft :rockin:

Picked up a second keg after just getting my first one yesterday. Now I need to brew something soon so I can fill it. In the meantime I will be polishing off the bottles I have to make room for keg 2 in the beer fridge.

Bottled my brown ale, and bought a growler of Flat Earth's Great Design Smore's Porter. And drank some good brew too!

Did surgery to my turkey fryer so it safely (I hope) holds a keggle. Blichmann burner on the wish list lol... Also finished cleaning up the keggle for bare minimum use tomorrow. Need to make gallon markers and boil water for an hour to get a boil rate.