What I did for beer today

Today, I did the best thing anyone can do for his or her beer: I ignored the heck out of it. It's doing just fine on its own, thank you very much. Now, please close the fridge door and mind your own business.

Nice busy day! I brewed up an amber and enjoyed some cali common that just carbed up.

Picked up my grain mill. Its a used JSP Maltmill that I scored on craigslist! Was about to dump $200 on a Monstermill setup but ended up going this route...for 80 bucks! Now I get to buy 2 sacks of grain and a mill for the price of a mill

swapped out a blow off tube, for an airlock. and designed my next few recipes on hopville.

kegged a raspberry wheat and cleaned some gear

Drank a Highlands Black Mocha Stout so that I could have the bottle.

Just drank as much as I could in as little amount of time for scientific purposes. Next, I'm going to observe my state until I can't remember anything anymore. Should be an interesting study... If only could find my pen somewhere around here.

Brewed my first all grain!! Took me about an hour longer then I was shooting for, mashed for 90 minutes instead of 60 and took an hour to cool to pitching temps. Other than that it went perfect, I think...

Gonna mill the grain finer next time, got about 72% efficiency from biab, gonna try a little finer grain next time to see if I can get a little higher. Pretty happy with what I've got so far though!

And.... SWMBO doesn't like me using the stove. Borderline lost her mind at me because of the "smell" in the house. Sounds like tacit consent to get the turkey fryer after all......

LTownLiquorPig said:

Brewed my first all grain!! Took me about an hour longer then I was shooting for, mashed for 90 minutes instead of 60 and took an hour to cool to pitching temps. Other than that it went perfect, I think...

Gonna mill the grain finer next time, got about 72% efficiency from biab, gonna try a little finer grain next time to see if I can get a little higher. Pretty happy with what I've got so far though!

And.... SWMBO doesn't like me using the stove. Borderline lost her mind at me because of the "smell" in the house. Sounds like tacit consent to get the turkey fryer after all......

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I get the same nagging when I brew in the house too! I just don't understand I think the smell of the mash and boil are both better then the fruity candles that are always going all over the house

LoloMT7 said:

I get the same nagging when I brew in the house too! I just don't understand I think the smell of the mash and boil are both better then the fruity candles that are always going all over the house

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I had candles going, windows open and sprayed the hell outta the place with Febreeze...... And still my yummy ESB smell overpowered. Smelled great to me. Even the compost bin smelled great with 5 pounds of spent grain in it.

LTownLiquorPig said:

I had candles going, windows open and sprayed the hell outta the place with Febreeze...... And still my yummy ESB smell overpowered. Smelled great to me. Even the compost bin smelled great with 5 pounds of spent grain in it.

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Don't let that compost bin sit too long. Won't smell good forever.

Boiled water and pre staged yeast washing equipment on the kitchen table for tomorrow. Gonna move sour beer to secondary over cranberries.

Finally got the last few ingredients I need for my next two brews, plus a pound of Willamette hops. Finished weighing out and sealing individual packages of Goldings. Now I only have a pound of Magnums and a pound of Willamette left to weigh out into ounces. I am going to have to start storing some of my hops in my MILs garage freezer - our extra freezer is getting pretty full.

I have also been haunting Craigslist trying to find the right freezer to convert to a keezer since my beer fridge died a week ago - or at least appeared to die. I left it plugged in and today discovered it was chugging along. It has been re-christened as "Frankenrfidge."

Introduced neighbors from our cabin to the awesomeness of home brew. Kept cold in the snowbank of course.

Broke up two pounds of hops (Willamette and Magnum) and sealed them in individual ounce packages. I was going to weigh out and mill grains and weigh out hops for a brew tomorrow until I realized I hadn't made a starter. Went to make a starter and found I had no DME and was too lazy to mash a starter - brew delayed.

Got enough grains to do 5 batches of Altbier... yummy! Study all day on Saturday and brewin on Sunday

LTownLiquorPig said:

And.... SWMBO doesn't like me using the stove. Borderline lost her mind at me because of the "smell" in the house. Sounds like tacit consent to get the turkey fryer after all......

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Yea I hear you on that.

That's how I convinced her to let me buy a burner and an extra propane tank lol

Just brewed my first barley wine, and highest OG beer I've ever attempted. I did a 3 gallon BIAB batch (since I couldn't mash enough for 5 gallons), with an OG of 1.103, and around 90 IBUs. Excited to see how it turns out (in a year or so!)

Carbed my hefeweizen and put the porter in the keezer

Started carbing my session IPA

Sniffed my airlocks and drank some grapefruit wine...

Hulud said:

Yea I hear you on that.

That's how I convinced her to let me buy a burner and an extra propane tank lol

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She was still chewing about the smell last night, Dude help her....

Bottled my Cooper's Pilsner, which I decided to treat as a pale ale. Fermented at 58-60. Tasted great when I bottled it, should be a nice light beer.

Bottling was an issue though, the nipple thing on the bottling wand wouldn't seal, so there was a constant slow stream of beer escaping. Probably lost two pints to it, but they mostly went in my belly while I worked.

Last night received my package of goodies from Northern Brewer, courtesy of my SWMBO Christmas gift card. Today, I'm making a starter, and refilling my propane tank for tomorrow's brewday. Also, cold crashing my ESB today and sampling my first bottle of my Vanilla Oatmeal Stout. It's only been 2 weeks bottle conditioning but I always taste a sample at 2 weeks.

Edit: Just sampled my Vanilla Oatmeal Stout....damn...this is going to be an excellent beer!

Busy day today - finished working on my IIPA recipe; went to the LHBS to get the grains, yeast and another fermenting bucket so I can make the IIPA this weekend. Then came home and finished putting my Igloo cooler mash tun together (waiting to see what the heat loss is over 75 minutes right now.) It dribbles a very little bit, but I'm happy with it overall. Then on Monday I'll brew this sucker up!

Dry hopped my batch of Janet's Brown.

Made a mash paddle out of some spare cherry wood.

Then traded with my neighbor a couple home brews for a Lagunitas Sucks and a Duck Rabbit Baltic Porter

Brewed 6 gallons Of Blue Moon clone,just pitched the yeast.

Cheers

Just finished cleaning and drilling holes in my HLT. About to get the grinder out and finish the project... I've had all the fittings since Christmas so I've been waiting to wrap this sucher up. Going to brew a düsseldorfer altbier tomorrow.

Finished the build and putty on my keezer collar. My primer was ruined (can was older than I thought), but hope to have it primed and sanded tomorrow.

cleared out my 2012 leftover hops with an "everthing but the kitchen sink APA"

Brewed 5.5 gallons of a Irish red and cleaned bottles.

Finished my HLT keggle build!!

Made money to brew with. Worked my 5th 9.5 hour day this week.

Leadgolem said:

Made money to brew with. Worked my 5th 9.5 hour day this week.

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Thankfully someone else works the extra hours to get supplies! Every extra hour is always "penny's in the bucket" if you will! Fermentation bucket!

Over the last week we moved into our new house, which was pretty easy considering it's across the street. The best part is that I now have a Cellaring area and a huge shop on the back of the garage for all my brewing gear...I think it's about time I upgrade to AG!! The shop is insulated, plumbed, and heated! I have all the stuff for my first batch in the new house, a Russian Imperial Stout.

Just have to finish unpacking and whatnot, so I can get a beast of a starter going.

Made Candi Sugar for my dubbel.

Ordered a immersion chiller, 5L flask, and bottle caps.

Bottled my Pineapple Ale (48) bottles. It was my first bottling day in 3 years and it didn't go all that well.

Created two new recipes to brew in the next month.

I filtered my Cream ale and kegged it. I also ordered a stir plate, 2000 ML starter, lager kit, and various other odds and ends.

Brewed up 5 gallons of Caribou Slobber all grain today. Just can't keep this stuff in stock!