What I did for beer today

prayed to the rain gods to give us our first good rain in over a month and get the temperatures below 95 F so I can brew some beer. Our ground water is now around 70 F so my chiller does not do much for the volume of water used.

Brewed my Tropical Storm blonde ale and started dry hopping my Badfish IIPA. Hit all my #s spot on too, so it was a good day.

Skipped out of work early to go home and thoroughly ****** the brewery. Always a good reason to leave work

Got my 10 gallons of alt onto the counter/island last night to keg today.

Soaked/cleaned two cases of empties last night and left them to dry overnight. Put them back in heavy cardboard Point cases this morning to store them, after causing a complete domino pile of bottles on me kitchen counter. That'll wake you up better than a cup of coffee. One more case to clean tonight and I'll have 5 1/2 cases of clean empties ready to go.

I checked out a homebrew shop. It's not local to me, but it is local to my shop's sub-shop that I was visiting.

I bought ingredients for Biermuncher's centennial blond and four check valves for my secondaries.

I've been meaning to get some for a while, now. Late last night i had some Apfelwein push back into the secondary. I'll be tearing my regs down to clean them. I just lucked out on the LHBS having check valves .

crushingblackdoom said:

Skipped out of work early to go home and thoroughly ****** the brewery. Always a good reason to leave work

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as in "sanitize"??? or did you throw ed hardy shirts & fake tanning cream everywhere?

Bottled a batch of chocolate coffee stout. Not to be opened until december. Then I cleaned the beer closet.

Just pitchd some wlp 300 into a paulaner hefe-weissbier clone out of "Clone Brews". Looking pretty good. Thinking about racking onto watermelons? Idk yet I'm open for suggestions

Read about multi-step mashing (because I haven't done my first AG yet). Just gearing and educating myself!

Brewed a Helles and Oktoberfest......makes for a long day when you step mash and 90 minute boil two beers. 8 hours worth.

I didn't really do anything, but my iPad smells like hops now. I had two ziplocs full of hops in my messenger bag,along with my iPad and nw everything smells from them

There was a bag of northern brewer and a bag of experimental hops 7272 from the John Segal hop ranch in Yakima, which I picked up at hpofest in Brooklyn on the other side of the country. Now I have to figure out what to make with them. These are very fresh, picked and dried, and we're packed into a brick for commercial sale, but John was giving them to any home brewer that wanted them at the end of the party. This was a benefit for BK farmyards, an urban farming group that cultivates my backyard. We will be growing hops next year.

killed off a keg of cascade apa and started a cream ale lagering

Checked on the 2.5gal BIAB batch I did as my first AG experiment (Centennial Blonde). I brewed it 8 days ago, grav is at 1.008, and it already tastes great. Gonna leave it alone a few days, and if it's stable bottle on Sunday. And...not beer, but I checked on the apfelwein I put in the fermenter 3 weeks ago today. It's down to 1.002, clearing very nicely, and has a very refreshing taste. Can't wait for that one to be done.

Tonight probably pre boiling water to hydrate yeast, measuring hop additions and maybe weighing grains. Brewing another BM clone this weekend. Guess I could zest a couple oranges too.

Ran a CIP on the BK/CFC/O2 for the SMaSHs on 7/21. Hoping to do a double batch, not sure of the timing of the second mash in. I'll be crunching the timeline numbers at work tonight. Lucky for me my brewlog works like a timeline/checklist.

Found out that there's a LHBS about a mile from my office. Stopped in at lunch to pick up some gaskets for my fliptop bottles and a couple of carboy bungs. Nice shop, but they're a little higher than NB on most things I checked. Still...when I just need something minor it's more convenient to pop over on my lunch break than it is to make a special trip to NB.

Kegged 5 gallons of BM's Centennial Blonde (second half of a 10 gallon batch I brewed about 6 weeks ago) and harvested the yeast for an IIPA I am planning to brew in the next couple of days. I also think I am going to pull the trigger and order a Monster Mill today.

Kegged 5 gallons of APA, preparing to brew a PM Stout, and sadly I had to dump a batch of Hefeweizen that time just did not fix. Brewing a cascade pale ale in the morning also.

Drilled a few hundred holes in my new CPVC manifold.

Went to the local craft brewery tasting room and had three pints. Mothers Brewery, Springfiels MO they had a Black Cherry Sherry Barrel brew that was great. They ae also releaseing a Bourbon Barrel aged Brown this weekend. Oh some times just drinking beer is all a man needs to do for beer each day.

I recruited a new homebrewer today. My buddy had tried to get into it during college but it always fell through. I was brewing my American Brown today so I invited him and gave him an in depth run down of the procedure. It was my first brew in a couple months and we hit all our numbers exactly. When we finished, he went home and immediately started pricing gear at Rebel Brewer. Of course we had some homebrews during the process and as soon as he saw how good they turn out, he was hooked. Welcome to the addiction!

mike20793 said:

I recruited a new homebrewer today. My buddy had tried to get into it during college but it always fell through. I was brewing my American Brown today so I invited him and gave him an in depth run down of the procedure. It was my first brew in a couple months and we hit all our numbers exactly. When we finished, he went home and immediately started pricing gear at Rebel Brewer. Of course we had some homebrews during the process and as soon as he saw how good they turn out, he was hooked. Welcome to the addiction!

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Glad to see someone from my former neck of the woods. I lived in gainesboro for 8 years before moving back to Oklahoma. I'm going back early next year for vacation. Maybe I'll see ya around.

Not today, but I bottled my RIS the other night! Here's the left overs.





Bottling my hefe this weekend. 2 cases of bottles, only$5! I <3 craigslist, haha.

I picked up 10 milk crates last night for various brewing-related activities (carboy transport, bottle storage, gear storage, etc). Those things are extremely handy.

Picked up 3 cornies from someone who has too many, apparently. Is that possible?

Darkness said:

Went to the local craft brewery tasting room and had three pints. Mothers Brewery, Springfiels MO they had a Black Cherry Sherry Barrel brew that was great. They ae also releaseing a Bourbon Barrel aged Brown this weekend. Oh some times just drinking beer is all a man needs to do for beer each day.

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So we're from St. Louis and my son and I are planning to visit mother at the end of August. We are going down to Indian Point at Table Rock for a couple of days of Just Guys time.
I have had the Tow Head blonde, what else are they tasting right now?

Made a 1000ml starter at 6 a.m. In preparation for my Honey Orange Wheat that I will be brewing in an hour!

Went to Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown yesterday. Did the tour and learned very little that I didn't already know from homebrewing, except that the small craft brewers do essentially the same thing on a somewhat larger scale. One thing they do to their beers that I and most of us don't do is lager their ales. They keep them at 34 for a month before bottling or kegging. They use corn sugar just as we do in bottles to naturally condition, and force carb their kegs. They also use a proprietary yeast, and when I asked if I could get some of if they sold to homebrewers I got an emphatic NO. I guess I'll have to try to harvest from the bottles that I bought there.

I also did a tasting of 6 of their brews, all Belgian ale styles as that's all they make, and had a Hennepin and a Witte in the cafe with lunch.

Made starters for tomorrows Dubbel and Blonde. The yeast for the Dubbel swelled up just fine, but the yeast for the Blonde was an older pack (late May) and didn't swell at all over 4 or so hours. I'm sure it's fine (Mr. Malty says 50% viability) but it always gets me paranoid.

Cleaned a butt load of bottles in preparation for bottling two batches tomorrow. Definitely starting to see the benefits in kegging, but I've got no room. SWMBO's already annoyed by the amount of brew and brewing equipment in the apartment.

Oh, ran into another homebrewer in the beer aisle at whole foods. Had a nice chat and found out he won a silver at the NHC about fifteen years ago.

My first double brew day. I should have started the second one sooner.

SMaSH brews. Both with 10 lbs Maris Otter pale malt. Both had 1 oz hop additions at 60, 10, 5, and whirlpool. First with 13.9% columbus, second with 4.7% willamette.

That was a lot of work.

Saw my IPA fermentor was holding at about 71 degrees, so I went and finally bought a bucket to cool it down with. Also drove about 30 minutes to the LHBS and joined the local homebrew club. Bought Palmer's book & an oz of cascade hops for dry hopping the IPA.

Kegged my West Coast Blaster - amazing flavor, the extra .5 ounce of FWH and accidental extra ounce of Cascade at 60 minutes wasn't overwhelming at all. Made room for the case of non-labeled bottles I was given.

Received two recipes and an immersion chiller in the mail. A scottish heavy and a citra IPA.

And joined the AHA.

spacecowboy13 said:

And joined the AHA.

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I renewed today.

Brewed my DIPA.

Finished my 4 tap keezer. Kegged my blue moon clone. Productive day.

Clean bottles for my hefe going in them tomorrow... How exciting.