What I did for beer today

Washed 100 bottles to be filled tomorrow.

Cheers

Fired up ustream for the big giveaway!

Yesterday I brewed a SMaSH

Today is cleaning day

Failed to win any prizes on the Giveaway; kegged/bottled 6 gallons of Common Room ESB; thinking about bottling or kegging a porter that has been in primary for 6 weeks. It's great having enough of a pipeline that I do not have to rush to bottle or keg.

Set up a time tonight to have my brother-in-law over to bottle his second brew; I taught him how to brew and have been splitting batches with him when the urge takes him, it seems to be about the time he runs out of homebrew.

Washed some more bottles... Brew day on Friday... Bottling on Saturday = busy weekend :cheers:

Kegged 5 gallons of milk stout, and cleaned an a$$ load of equipment for a double brew day on Saturday (blonde ale, and honey brown ale, both AG). Also did some shopping around for a grain mill (still undecided), and a new 60qt brew pot. I'll probably pull the trigger on those Friday, if I can decide on what I want.

Started cold crashing my Kolsch. Made a starter for my IPA to be pitched tomorrow morning. Brewed my IPA w/ Magnum for bittering and Nelson Sauvin and Galaxy for flavor/aroma.

bought a barley crusher.

am presently driving myself nuts at work while i know my shipment of grains is waiting for me at my house... (just came in from grain2glass)

Planned my next brew (a red IPA) and fiddled with the recipe a little. Slowly but surely going to plow through my hop supply this year. Now time to research some Belgian Tripple recipes as it turns out the wife likes them.

Last night I sampled a variety of beers at a local brewery and pizza joint with some friends. Afterward I decided to check the HBT Giveaway, and discovered that my name was drawn for the love2brew.com hops prize - woo hoo!! Looks like I need to start working on some IPA recipes!

Fed ten starters,

I ordered a pound of Simcoe and a pound of Amarillo. I thought about cleaning 2 corny kegs. I poured a pint of 2HA clone instead of cleaning the kegs. I then poured another pint.

Took a hydro sample of my SMaSH beer. It's been 2.5 weeks in primary, but the reading still seems a little high, so I'm going to give it another couple days just in case.

Helped out as a beer steward for a local competition.
One beer judged, a IIPA aged on Spanish Cedar was so good the judge made a note on the score sheet asking if the brewer would share the recipe.
Yeah, it was that good.

bottled 5 gal of Hefe.

Cheers

Kegged a lager...

Could not sleep so got up at 2:20 am and cleaned some bottles so I had enough to bottle my Black Butte clone that had been in primary for more than 6 weeks. Bottled the batch and cleaned up. Spent time trying to track down a three way CO2 distributor I ordered at the end of last month. It was apparently shipped from California via USPS, arrived in Portland where instead of delivering to me it was immediately shipped back to California and "delivered" to the original seller. Decided to brew a 10 gallon batch of my own back-to-basics Cascade IPA this week instead of a planned Ruination clone. I need to pick up another sack of 2-row before I can do both recipes.

Went with 30 uni colleagues (I'm finishing my degree on biological engineering) on a tour in one of the two main portuguese macro breweries. Eventually I told the tour guide I was a recent homebrewer (pretty uncommon thing around here) and she called the brewmaster and had me explaining everyone the mashing process and fermentation, and the role of every ingredient in beer (and thanks to this forum I was up to the task ). Later some guys from the group told me they wanted to start homebrewing and asking what equipment is needed, where's the LHBS etc, so I guess I may have started something

I too got a friend, hooked on home brewing, and drinking craft beer. Today, I made a Starter, and had to buy and use fermcap-s for the first time ever. Planning my next brew, a "Wookey Jack" Clone, and transferring a IPA out of primary now, to make room. I also got my propane refilled today, instead of being exchanged. and last but not least Boiled some canning jars for yeast washing.

Just racked a 1.050 American Amber onto 4.5 pounds of Brazilian Pepper fruits. Brazilian Pepper is an exotic invasive that grows along ditches all over coastal Central and South Florida. I've never heard of anyone using the fruit in a beer, though the seed is often used. The seed is sold as "pink peppercorns". The fruit is much different in character. About 2 - 2.5 millimeters in diameter in massive clusters, and sweet, tart and very slightly piquant. We'll see how this one goes.

Pilgarlic said:

Just racked a 1.050 American Amber onto 4.5 pounds of Brazilian Pepper fruits. Brazilian Pepper is an exotic invasive that grows along ditches all over coastal Central and South Florida. I've never heard of anyone using the fruit in a beer, though the seed is often used. The seed is sold as "pink peppercorns". The fruit is much different in character. About 2 - 2.5 millimeters in diameter in massive clusters, and sweet, tart and very slightly piquant. We'll see how this one goes.

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Wow, when I lived in FL we used to pay people to rip these trees out...never thought of brewing w them.

Curtis2010 said:

Wow, when I lived in FL we used to pay people to rip these trees out...never thought of brewing w them.

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To my knowledge, nobody else has. I'm very eager to see how it comes out.

Brewed an all grain wheat beer and drank my first bottle of my first batch of homebrew!

I let my beer age one more day. Must...resist...temptation...grrrr...

My last order showed up at my house and my wife called to tell me that a bag of dme exploded all over everything! Bummer...

BUT, the fine young men and women at Midwest Supplies came through again...replaced at no charge to me! They are a hell of a staff

I built a 10 Gallon mash tun yesterday and today decided that my next and likely all future brews will be all grain efforts.

Tupperwolf said:

Brewed an all grain wheat beer and drank my first bottle of my first batch of homebrew!

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Very nice! I was getting ready to tell you how much nicer your rig is than mine, but then I saw the vise grips!

Ordered ingredients for Biermunchers Cream of Three Crops Cream ale and an oatmeal stout kit. Also picked up some campden tablets, whirfloc, and some more pint glasses. Also sampled my English Bitter that was bottled 3 weeks ago (it's pretty good, but needs another week before its ready).
Edit: also ordered 5 lb of rice hulls. Headed to the bottle shop in a little while to pick up some Left Hand Nitro, and some more Boddingtons on nitro.

I picked up some oak chips, a clip for my auto-siphon, hop bags and a book. I racked to secondary yesterday. It will probably be my last time doing so, until I start making lagers and Belgians.

Brewed batch of Doppelsticke today, 3rd attempt at this style. Scored 42 @ FOAM Cup in November, though this recipe has been tweaked slightly. Hoping this will be even better!!

Just bottled my porter! Took all of 45 minutes and the worst part was the cleaning, which was another 90 minutes. Tasted great!!

Brewed on a beautiful Saturday.

Yesterday was indeed a beautiful day here as well! The robins are back,& the male cardinals were already fighting over territory in the garden by mid-morning. Spring is near folks! So get those May & June beers going!
I cleaned up some more bottles to back fill two case boxes for the next brew (like I really need to). Dug out some collection bottles to take pics of for the purty bottle thread too. Re-aranging bottle stacks as well,including give away pile. Gotta take an FG reading too. Dang wind is howlin on this sunny Sunday.

Trying my first all-grain today. Not full-boil, I don't have the space for that, so it's a BIAB all-grain partial boil. The recipe is a simple Premium American Lager, just 10 pounds of 2-row and a pound of flaked corn.

Obviously I want to fit as much as I can in the boil kettle/mash tun. It was a little close for comfort. Beersmith calculated I'd need 4.4 gallons out of my 5 gallon tun, but it was just a bit optimistic. I'd say I am about half an inch from the top, with foam actually up against the lid...

But it fit, and I hit my mash temp on the nose.

Brewed 10gal Black IPA
cleaned 3x fermenters
cleaned & sanitized 5 kegs
x-ferred my Grommet C.A.P. to keg & started force carb
x-ferred my last 5gal of Sculpin clone to keg to dry hop & started force carb
x-ferred my French Oaked Old Ale to keg & started force carb
discovered I have another 5gal keg of Tasty APA
put the heating pad on my 10gal of Calypso-Amarillo Saison to get that yeast roaring towards a 1.004 finish
kegged 10gal of RIS to store for filling our club Whiskey Barrel in about 3 weeks
Rinsed the 001 yeast cake from the RIS to pitch half in my Black IPA and refrigerate the other half

Just checked the 1st FG on my dark pseudo lager. Looks like it'll be brown instead of the black it was. no discernable smoke flavor. Grilled roasty flavor gone,but down to 1.012. Damn,back to the drawing board...

Bottled my 2nd brew, an Irish Stout. It tasted awesome despite being green and flat.

Brewed my first Partial mash, and realized I can go All-grain, without buying a ton of stuff!

My all-grain didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped. Entirely due to inattention to detail, though. The recipe is one I put together leisurely over the last couple months. I forgot that I had started it just as a concept, not tailored to any particular equipment, so I had the efficiency set at 70%. I consistently get 50-55%, so I came out substantially low. Fortunately I caught this, and just added a pound and a half of DME. Everything else went according to plan and it looks and tastes great. Now just have to get it down to 9°C and pitch!

This is the last of the lagers for the year, I think. Did pretty well, though. Started with two vials of WLP833 and did a Vienna lager, a doppelbock, half a gallon of a "little doppelbock," a bock, a gallon of an experimental starter beer, a maibock, and now a premium American lager. I've got a lot of beer queued up in and nearly ready for bottles....