What I did for beer today

Brewed 5g batch AG Wee Heavy style ale with traditional kettle caramelized wort for friend's birthday in April.

Bottled my Hefe and racked my Kolsch to secondary for "lagering".

kegged an american brown and a fizzy yellow beer, and racked an ipa into my bourbon barrel

I have been busy and posting in this thread a lot the last couple of weeks. Last night I made a yeast starter after running to the closest LHBS for dme (and picked up some corn sugar for another batch of Edwort's Apfelwein while I was there). Today I picked up two more ball lock corny kegs with gasket replacement sets (thanks Tom), weighed and milled grains, and weighed out hops so I can brew tomorrow. And, probably most importantly, remembered to empty the water out of the hose so it is not frozen in the morning!

Took a gravity reading of the gingerale/cider I put together a couple of weeks ago. My heavy hand when I mixed it up made this a 10.1% brew, when it was supposed to be sessionable.

I will be diluting with more boiled ginger root water, apple cider, and water. That way I can get it down to a more reasonable 5.05%. I had planned to move it to the bottling bucket and just dispense from there, but my bottling bucket is 6.5 gallons and after dilution I'll have 8 gallons of this stuff.

I smelled the airlock on my sour cranberry ale (smelled great btw...) and did a scheduled sampling of a pumpkin ale I have bottle conditioning. So what if my sampling size is a bomber?

Pre-measured 15 gallons of my water from a carbon filter and added Campden tablets for the brew tomorrow.
Crushed my grains for the brew tomorrow.

Brewed my version of SN's Ruthless Rye... American IPA all grain. Hoping for the best - really enjoy SN's brew...

Brewed 5 gallons of IIPA!

Bottled the rest of my Winter Warmer and cleaned out that keg, cleaned 2 carboys and bottled 18 bottles of my Chocolate Espresso Stout to give away / age before moving that on tap. Pliny clone from MoreBeer isn't ready for secondary yet, temperature fluctuations have slowed down the primary. Hopefully ready to move in a few more days.

Planned my brewday for this weekend and figured out my water adjustments. Brewing an Irish Red I'm naming Patrick's Red Arse :cross:

Pimped out my mash tun so I don't have to use a bag during my mash any more.

$12.95 - Faucet hose - sawed off and pulled rubber hose out
$9.89 - Brass Valve
$9.00 - additional pieces - washers, o-rings, rubber washers, etc.

It actually turned out really well although I couldn't find a Cross piece as I wanted to go around the sides of the tun then through the middle. Oh well, my braid goes perfectly around the side. Hopefully this will improve my efficiency.

Sampled my Hefeweizen, it was my first all grain brew. A little cloudy since it was the first pour off the keg, very flavorful made me thirsty for more.

Swapped out some swamp cooler ice.

Brewed my Peachy Queen Pale Ale

It's small, but I went and bought a fifth of the cheapest vodka I could find. That stuff is probably nasty, but I'm not going to drink it. It's for the airlock.

BarefootFriar said:

It's small, but I went and bought a fifth of the cheapest vodka I could find. That stuff is probably nasty, but I'm not going to drink it. It's for the airlock.

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I forgot the other day I started an experiment to make graham cracker extract with vodka

I have to admit I've never heard of that.

I have 2 750ml bottles full of kola nut and everclear. They are about 5 months old now, and making good extract.

One has a base of what amounts to a kola nut gravy. This one is a dark red. The other is kola nut powder, and is amber. The kola nut powder is spicier. I can't really describe the flavor. Nothing really tastes like kola nut. It is a bit dry on the tongue, like tannin.

Oh, what did I do for beer? I drank some wine instead.

BarefootFriar said:

I have to admit I've never heard of that.

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I hadn't either but I had both on hand so I figured I'd give it a go lol

Brewed a hoppy wheat based/inspired by Blvd's 80-acre recipe.

Cleaned out two dirty 2 gallon frosting buckets to use as primary fermenters for my small batch setup. The rest of the supplies (new airlocks, grommets for bucket lids, mini siphon, etc) should be delivered tomorrow and then I can get down to brewing!

There's still a lingering frosting odor though. Anybody have recommendations on how to get rid of that? Oxyclean soak?

I fell off a ladder yesterday. Does that count?

JetSmooth said:

I fell off a ladder yesterday. Does that count?

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Only if you drowned your sorrows in some suds.

JetSmooth said:

I fell off a ladder yesterday. Does that count?

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Haputanlas said:

Only if you drowned your sorrows in some suds.

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... or you were drunk at the time.

... or you were installing brewing-related items.

... or you were installing brewing-related items while drunk

Reno_eNVy said:

... or you were drunk at the time.

... or you were installing brewing-related items.

... or you were installing brewing-related items while drunk

Click to expand...

Maybe he was pushed off the ladder by a drunk dude?

But then I guess that would mean that HE didn't do anything for beer that day. That would be on the thread "What beer did for ME today".

Cleaned kegs and kegged up some more Oatmeal IPA
Currently tearing down and cleaning the heat exchange

Brewed my 100 Year War IPA

Hit 72% efficiency with my first switch to crushing my own grains (also had a boil over while in the restroom...oops)

Was gettin 65ish with the lhbs crushing for me

Called the hardware store that has a 72,000 btu burner for 60 bucks to see if they actually had any in stock. Might have my burner tomorrow. Then to upgrade the pot and get a chiller built and I'll be ready for 5-10 gallon batches. This summer hopefully.....

Improved my mash tun.....significantly.

Let's see, got in a half pound of citra hops.

Rick

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Diluted the overly powerful gingerale cider, whatever. That made a four gallon batch an eight gallon batch. Added more unfermented cider, water, some syrup made with the same cider, and some kola nut powder. I had almost forgotten I had that until I had to move the extract the other day.

It's now a nicely balanced sessionable, though it could use a couple more weeks to mellow out a bit.

Started the 2nd of 3 'steps' to stepping up a starter in prep for a 10g batch of dead guy this weekend...

4oz of dry hops went into a 12 gallon batch

Brewed a porter.

I should add that I am drinking beer now, but I bet most of us are!!!

Removing labels from about two cases of beer. Working up the recipe for tomorrow's Black Coffee RyePA.

Tried my "galaxy is still here" (brewed on 12/22/12) galaxy Maris otter SMaSH. Need some more Time to carb. Other than that a nice hop aroma and flavor profile. Looking forward to see how it changes with more time to carb.