What I did for beer today

Tried to regulate the temp of my BDSA and Grahamn's English Cider. Drank my first bottle of Saison (first Belgian/French style ale brewed) and was pleasantly surprised after only 1 week in the bottle.

Sniffed an airlock.. That's about it!

In the last 24 hours, I've brewed a NB 1554 Clone, got my hand on a donor keg for my keggle bulid, and ordered all the fittings needed for it as well. Going to try all gran for the first time in the next 2 weeks or so. Already got my MLT built, now all I need is my HLT and I'm golden!

cleaning one of the kegs

I made this yesterday



And this the day before.



The first is a strawberry chocolate ale, and the later is a Racer5 clone.

Shared one with a buddy I was in Iraq with.

Relocated the wort pump in my brew stand. Doing the HLT pump tomorrow, followed by a quick CIP. Hoping to rack one but will keg it if the gravity is low enough.

Caught up with a friend I haven't seen in,10 years over multiple glasses of hefe. Yesterday I brewed 3 10 gal batches. An IIPA, IPA, and an APA. got the pacman working overtime tonight while we kick this keg of hazy unfiltered goodness.

Yesterday: Cleaned out a carboy.. gave my Belgian yeast starter a good shake, cracked open the first Heffe.. Already tastes great after only a few days under cap..

Channel66 said:

Caught up with a friend I haven't seen in,10 years over multiple glasses of hefe. Yesterday I brewed 3 10 gal batches. An IIPA, IPA, and an APA. got the pacman working overtime tonight while we kick this keg of hazy unfiltered goodness.

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Wow, 30 gallons! I raise my glass to you!

Yesterday I avoided a near catastrophe. I had brewed up 12 gallons of my “Brown Trout Stout” on Sunday (which isn’t really a stout, more like a mild with a little extra roasted malts). Once I got them cooled to what I thought was a reasonable temperature (68ish), I popped the two fairly full fermentors (one 6.5 gallon carboy and one 7 gallon bucket) into my DIY AC unit-cooled ferm chamber, and set the temp at 64F. Split a cake of US-05 from a 2-week old pale ale and pitched/oxygenated and went to bed.

The next morning before work I go down in the garage to check on the brews and it feels noticeably warmer than normal in there. Go over to the chamber and see that the temperature is reading 69F – that’s no good….5 degrees over set temp. So I open up the chamber to see ice all over the units coils, and both fermentors had popped the airlocks and were overflowing with krausen.

I quickly cleaned up the mess (and added blowoff tubes), shut the AC unit off, and hooked up a fan to blow on the coils to try to get some airflow to help them melt the ice.

I guess the combination of the high humidity and ambient temperature plus the higher wort starting temperature was too much for the unit to handle on its own. I reset the temp controller to 68F in order for it to work a little and last night when I got home everything was hunky-dory!

Im not too worried about it since I don’t think the temps ever went above 69F, within range of US-05, especially for such a low gravity brew.

Checked the FG of my accidental hi-grav APA and found it to be done enough to keg. Started 1.074 and sits now at 1.014. Love fresh yeast from brewpubs. Kegging it this evening.

Does anyone here keg early and use a ball lock fitting with a 0-30 psi gauge to monitor natural carb progress?

duckredbeard said:

Checked the FG of my accidental hi-grav APA and found it to be done enough to keg. Started 1.074 and sits now at 1.014. Love fresh yeast from brewpubs. Kegging it this evening.

Does anyone here keg early and use a ball lock fitting with a 0-30 psi gauge to monitor natural carb progress?

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Never done exactly as you describe, but if you are looking for a fun project do a search on here for “spunding valve”. Takes the ‘monitoring’ part out of your idea. You can also use it to pressurize ferment the entire process, replicates the big breweries head pressure on large fermenting vessels, allowing warmer ferments with less off flavors.

This was yesterday, but brewed a PM Octoberfest ale that I came up with on my own. Very exciting for me! A buddy brewed Cheese's Vanilla Caramel Cream Ale. A great evening!

I'm cold crashing my starter now. Gonna do a step up to 1L, then step up again to 2L for a cascade/citra Pale Ale I'm doing this weekend. I also checked my Hefeweizen and gravity is almost where I want it, probably 3 or 4 more days to keg. And lastly, re-cleaned one of my primary fermenters so I'm ready for next brew day. Now to boil some starter wort.

Went to homebrew club meeting. The brewer from the Frankenmuth Brewery was there and discussed each of their brews as we tasted. Great night. Those meetings are a great way to learn.

Channel66 said:

Caught up with a friend I haven't seen in,10 years over multiple glasses of hefe. Yesterday I brewed 3 10 gal batches. An IIPA, IPA, and an APA. got the pacman working overtime tonight while we kick this keg of hazy unfiltered goodness.

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Now THAT is a brew day. Well done!

Switched the blow off tube for an airlock. One day closer to being able to taste!

I dry-hopped my chinook/centennial IPA. I also decided that I need to mash at a higher temperature when I use US-05. It fermented down to 1.006.

Made a starter for my all Galaxie IPA I'm brewing tomorrow! Never used Galaxie or even tasted them for that matter. At least not that I know of.

Drank the last bottle from my very first brew. It was good. LOL

Just washed 110 bottles for tomorrow...

Talked to two non-drinkers about homebrewing - gave them some realistic insight to what they considered a 'sin'.

NineMilBill said:

Talked to two non-drinkers about homebrewing - gave them some realistic insight to what they considered a 'sin'.

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Curious how this went? I just don't see it, but have a sister/Brother-In-Law that won't even taste my homebrew because drinking'd a 'sin.'

Man, I got my NIL to try one of ny home brews at a grad party. She is of the churchy no drinky crowd. Even snapped a photo of her. Black mail time. LMAO

Wife (about beer in fermenters): You look longingly and lovingly and admiring at it. I wish you'd look at me that way.
Me: If you had a bubbling airlock I would.

Put a heating pad between an apfelwein carboy and BDSA bucket to hurry up fermentation. I might fridge some Saisons to have.

over the past few days:
bought 3g carboy to secondary barleywine, and promptly decided to use it to rack half of my belgian table beer batch over peaches
bought yeast and hops for my spin on black widow kolsch and summer citra wheat
made starter for kolsch

tonight will be bottling half of the belgian table beer and racking the other half over the frozen peaches
tomorrow i will be brewing some kolsch while grilling steak and fish for tacos

Bottled my first batch of Skeeter Pee. After this journey, I'm never using anything but EC-1118 on SP again.

Working on getting 60+ bottles cleaned and sanitized for tomorrow. Also received and unpacked 2 cases of 16 oz Ez cap bottles. Next up; boil 2L of wort for a starter I harvested from SNPA bottles, and start harvesting yeast from Marshall Atlas IPA for a Citra/Summit/cascade IPA next brew day.

Brewed my first 10 gallon AG batch and mashed with my new homemade mash paddle.

SeanMcClellan said:

Curious how this went? I just don't see it, but have a sister/Brother-In-Law that won't even taste my homebrew because drinking'd a 'sin.'

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Well, I reminded them that Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine - so he was a homebrewer himself. They countered with something about public drunkenness, and I explained to them that homebrewing is an art and the vast majority of homebrewers aren't attempting to get trashed, otherwise I'd just got buy a bottle of the cheapest Vodka I could find. They seemed pretty set that I was an exception to the rule, and that most homebrewers were functioning alcoholics.

It's really not productive to "argue" an issue with someone when you're the only one with personal experience in it.

Whatever.

Tonight I kegged a strawberry blonde and an IPA. cleaned out my rootbeer keg and associated lines. Took delivery of some hardware from Bobby for my keggle build. And helped some guys out by lending my bottle opener at a music in the park event here in town.

NineMilBill said:

Well, I reminded them that Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine - so he was a homebrewer himself. They countered with something about public drunkenness, and I explained to them that homebrewing is an art and the vast majority of homebrewers aren't attempting to get trashed, otherwise I'd just got buy a bottle of the cheapest Vodka I could find. They seemed pretty set that I was an exception to the rule, and that most homebrewers were functioning alcoholics.

It's really not productive to "argue" an issue with someone when you're the only one with personal experience in it.

Whatever.

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Just tell them that, by that logic, ALL people who COOK, would be gluttons. That means everyone, including themselves.

A week later than intended, just bottled two batches of Bitter. Now for a double header brew- Dry Stout and Scottish 60/-

Overhauled a keg fridge that I got off Craigslist. Also kegged my (accidentally over-efficient) 8% ABV APA and put it to bed in the keg fridge.

Split 5.5 gallons of Centennial Blonde ale between 12 bottles and the remainder into a keg.

First time saving the yeast for a future batch.

Decanted 2 2000ml starters and transferred to mason jars for tomorrows kolsch. Picked up some extra hose to add a pre chiller to tomorrows batch since it is going to be in the triple digits . Today was 106!!! Stay cool!

Bottled two gallons of wine. One of my 750ml's bombed (clean split along bottom rim) shortly after corking. Really didn't think this batch needed a decant with all the racking I did. These were recycling center bottles, so their strength is probably a tad diminished anyway. No biggie - puts me out less than a dollar.

Bought ingredients for my Red Irish Ale brew session tomorrow... Also enjoyed a buddy of mine's schneider weisse clone and a fantastic English style bitter he made recently

Bought some Better Bottles, racked the Dubbel to secondary.