What I did for beer today

Today is bottling day. I'm soaking the last of the bottles in Starsan right now, and then onto racking to the bottling bucket. The prep work takes too much time.

I'm brewing my oktoberfest. Differences from last year are:
Using poland spring instead of filtered tap.
Got my boil off numbers dialed in, so I should be using the correct amount of water.
Using O2 to aerate.(first time)
Using yeast nutrient in the wort a well as in the starters.
I know im excited to see how this comes out.

Kegged a cider and Irish Porter. Moved a double blood orange hefe to secondary.

Finished cleaning out primary from last nights bottling session (an APA). About to start a 5 gal batch of AHS Honey Hibiscus Wit with SWMBO.

Finished bottling my lager and moved my stout to the secondary.

As much as I want to brew something else now, I'm running out of storage. I don't keg, and I barely have enough bottles now for the stout.

I made a hop spider and a wort chiller. Both things are under what it'll cost for just the wort chiller

Barleywine to secondary. Braggot made from Barleywine sparge to secondary. Made an American Ale yeast starter for an upcoming IIPA brewday.

I have walked to my fridge 12+ times looking for the peach extract in my peach wheat beer. All 12+ times I found a good wheat beer with zero peach flavor. For the sake of beer I will keep looking!

I also checked my two fermenting brews several times.

Checked the SG on my BIAB English Mild today - 1010, so ready to bottle in a couple of days. Drank a few pints to make room once I do....

3 cases of empties soaking in PBW now. Between tonight and tomorrow bottling two batches and making a starter for an IPA.

I steward'd for the Cascade Brewers Cup in Seattle this morning. Great experience.

Racked my cascade ale to the secondary, de-labeled a case of commercial bottles for later use & brewed my first 10 gal batch & got my highest efficiency ever...85%!!!!!!

Cleaned my empty bottles, de-labled another 2 cases. So all my empty bottles just need sanitized! Sketched up rough plans for interlocking stacking wooden cases for the bottle collection. Roughed up rollers on a pasta roller to make a grain mill, added a hopper to it. Prepped for tomorrow's brew day, ready to brew!

Had a fantastic day brewing. Showed an extract brewer the all grain process and he was great help. Hit 73 percent brewhouse efficiency for the first time! I'm pretty happy about that. Thanks Steve! We'll have some samples of our work in 4 or 5 weeks.

Just planned my first all grain brew day for next weekend which will also be my first 5 gallon batch upgrading from my Mr Beer kit.

Cleaned my carboy so I am ready to rack my irish red tomorrow.

made meads, started 2 lacto jars, fed weyerbacher riserva dregs, jp weizenbam dregs, started munich for vienna, washed out mead yeast. 14 airlocks going...

Picked up some of my supply to make room for the other15 gals finishing fermenting

Threw the keg in the fridge and pushing 30psi into it currently. Hopefully its ready by st pattys day!

Racked a Belgian Strong Dark to the secondary. Tested my Oberon clone after 1 week in the bottle... Cleaned up and organized the brew area. Nothing bubbling right now, gotta fix that fast...

Brewed a Citra Rye IPA with my Grandson!

Racked Irish red into secondary. Cleaned primary in prep for next brew. Australian lager.

I bottled my stout and decided I'm going to brew a stone levitation clone next.

Brewed a milk stout extract and started drinking my scotch ale!

Brewed my first batch of cider yesterday. Going to delabel And clean some bottles tonight.

Asked the person I get some of my grains from to stock Thomas Fawcett Amber malt so I can brew the DFH 90 clone.

A few days late and a little long winded.

So this past Saturday was brew day. I had help from a friend and everything went pretty darn well. Mash temp was a bit low but other than that a great day of brewing, BBQ'ing and some homemade cheesecake for dessert!

Transferred the wort into a couple ferementers around 6 pm. My friend headed home and I got on HBT and read some threads. Later in the evening I heard my neighbor who usually has a few friends over on the weekend and they often spend time watching ball games or whatever in his garage. So, feeling generous and happy I walked outside and said hey you want to try my new beer? (BeirMunchers Centennial Blonde Ale). Of course they agreed. They asked a few questions about brewing and after 3-4 shared pitchers of beer I was in a schooling mode. I wanted to tell them everything I knew about making beer, which is not a ton of info but I have learned a bit along the way.


It was fun, they all paid attention.. well why not if free beer is involved right? So I explained the use of a hydrometer and refractometer, showed them dry yeast and some yeast slurry I had in the fridge. Told them about mash temps and let them smell some different hops and grains. Just trying to share the homebrew love.

I don't think I turned any of them towards homebrewing though. They enjoy the product, one of the guys was a beer connoisseur of sorts and we a talked a bit about hops and different beer styles, but he wasn't even interested in brewing.. Ah well. Did my part for beer that day.

Well... Can't bring them all to the dark side but you can at least help them appreciate the process!

Yep. Years ago I was stationed with a guy who brewed. Had some of his beer and it was delicious but have to admit wasn't even interested in brewing; it was to complicated and intimidating at the time. LOL

I cleaned and de-labeled 2.5 cases of bottles today and put together my cheap and easy mash tun following the directions at donosborn.com. Now I just need some malt and yeast for brewing my first all grain this weekend.

Finally got around to bottling my Irish Red.

Researched a new brew for a comp in July.

I spent a chunk of my home brew equipment fund on some really nice microbrews even though I told myself I wouldn't


All isn't lost though, the beer is really good

Cleaned my dirty kitchen and peeped to bottle a Hefei my brew partner rocked out...awsome

Dan said:

Yep. Years ago I was stationed with a guy who brewed. Had some of his beer and it was delicious but have to admit wasn't even interested in brewing; it was to complicated and intimidating at the time. LOL

Click to expand...

Awsome I try to talk about my brewing and everybodys like their he goes again.. O well have fun drinking cat piss I say..

Got my kegs in. Brings my total to 5

Took apart half a dozen cornies and gave them a nice oxyclean soak bath. Added some Russian River dregs to a "solera" fermenter and spent far too many minutes smelling some airlocks

Picked up 10lbs of Vienna malt, a mash paddle, and a packet of US-05 for my first all grain I will be brewing on Sunday, a Vienna/Northern Brewer SMaSH. So stoked

Grabbed a variety of Irish beers from Total Wine.

Moved the jug of starter used to harvest yeast from juniper berries to the fridge to cold crash. Going to sour a gallon of sahti with them.

Hugged my bucket of almost-done-fermenting sahti.