What I did for beer today

Planted 3 hop rhizomes -- Nugget, Centennial, Cascade

Contemplated kegging the sahti but made a complicated dinner and got tired.

Had a pumpkin ale I forgot about that's been in the corner of the fridge for four months.

Put together my cooler kits for AG and bought three used Corny’s for kegging.

Dawnhulio said:

Put together my cooler kits for AG and bought three used Corny’s for kegging.

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Those are some big jumps! Congrats

I planted 3 rhizomes last night and I'm going to get some RO water for brewing in a few days.

EllisTX said:

I planted 3 rhizomes last night and I'm going to get some RO water for brewing in a few days.

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My goal for the year is to make the jump to full boils then AG. If I get that accomplished, I'd like to try my hand at growing hops, next year....

I just sampled my Anchor Steam Clone after 1 week in the bottle. Mild to adequate carbonation, very pleasant Northern Brewer hop aroma in a beautiful dense head, nice lacing, slightly less bitterness than desired but no off favors with my well controlled fermentation. All in all I expect this to improve greatly when sampled again next week!

changed out my co2 tank in the kegerater and brewed a batch of ipa with maris otter

Brewing a Saison for the Spring, just waiting for the wort to boil.

Once bittering hops go in, going to keg a 10% Tripel I made a month ago.

If there is time, bottling a oak and cherry aged Tripel.

Ipod shuffle is doing some weird things, just went from Slayer "Reign in Blood", to Sinatra "Chicago" and now Henry Rollins "Earache my Eye".

Bottled 5 gallons of a Vienna/Northern Brewer SMaSH last night. Brewing 5 gallons of Cream Ale with 55 minutes left in the boil.

Laid a truckload of mulch. On the surface, this seems completely un-beer related. This is not true. Time and resources spent on the Honey-Do list is directly proportional to time and resources devoted to beer.

That said, as soon as I get cleaned up, I'll be transferring 10 gallons of chocolate milk stout to secondary and surfing the net for my next brew ;-)

Xtant said:

Time and resources spent on the Honey-Do list is directly proportional to time and resources devoted to beer.

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The fifth Law of Thermodynamics

Went to the St George's brewery in Hampton today. Very nice folks over there. I was asking a bunch of questions and the gentlemen who showed me around was patient with me and went out of his way to show me some specific things if they answered a q I had. Such as their brew sheet with notes (I asked about mash temps and times). I also asked about his brewmaster, his backgorund and history, and that led to him showing me a booklet UC-Davis sends out with their upcoming graduates and resumes. Cool thing for them to do. I also got some education on the mash-out and it's importance.

I got to sample 7 or so of their beers on tap. Their Sctoch Ale stood out to me as it had peat malt in it. A first for me. It was an interesting flavor and I'm not sure what to make of it. I'd need a full pint or two to wrap my mind around it. I really liked their Golden Ale. If I recall correctly, it had an english malt bill (didn't ask what that meant) with American hops. Took home a growler of it. Their English IPA was also good. What surprised me was their Brown Ale. I am impartial to them usually, but this one grabbed my attention. I had mentioned to a friend I might make a brown ale "soon", but this was so good I think i will make it next.

It is good stuff. Check them out if you can.

Bottled my imperial chocolate stout

Finally received my shipment of hop rhizomes, so I'm gonna start doing some planting ;-)

Bottled 11gal of my spotted cow clone & racked my wheat. Hoping to brew 10 gal citra IPA tomorrow.

Brewing as we speak... And making sure equipment is together for next week's first all-grain attempt!

Finally kegged the sahti.

Also cleaned/sanitized a bucket and two kegs. Ah the joys of homebrewing

Bottled a brown ale and brewed up a wheat beer using harvested yeast, and made a bulk grain order from Morebeer so I can do some more BIAB in the coming weeks - gotta keep the pipeline moving along....

organized my beer room. what a mess it was.

Made 5 gallons. First brew day in far too long.

kicked two kegs. change out tomorrey...

Moved 10 gallons of Biermuncher's Centennial Blond to the keezer to cold crash.

Brewed up about 6 gallons of a Guinness clone. First AG brew!



Pre-sparge


Sparge!


Nearing last runnings


Getting up to boil. Thank god for Fermcap

Bottled an extract Saison DuPont clone! Need to get the next beer going in the pipeline. Nothing in primary or secondary right now. I've got 3 batches bottled though!

malevolent said:

Brewed up about 6 gallons of a Guinness clone. First AG brew!

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Love the F.C. Bayern hat!

Moved DME (for bottling) into mason jars to preserve freshness.
Cleaned the brew room.
Created list of supplies needed for next visit to LHBS.
... kind of a boring evening, but necissary.

KaiserBierMann said:

Love the F.C. Bayern hat!

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That would be my buddy. He brewed up an extract with specialty American Pale Ale

Well, technically yesterday now, but I added gelatin finings to my strong pale ale in cold conditioning. Cleaned two kegs and sanitized them after adding epoxy mixer inserts to the liquid dip tubes, sealed them, passed sanitizer through the liquid lines all in prep of upcoming transfer of two 5 gallon batches from cold conditioning to keg.

Organized my bulk grain purchase!

kpr121 said:

Organized my bulk grain purchase!

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are those lowes bucketts food grade ? I'm looking for more storage space but I'm neurotic about everything being kept in food grade containers. thanks !!!

Aschecte said:

are those lowes bucketts food grade ? I'm looking for more storage space but I'm neurotic about everything being kept in food grade containers. thanks !!!

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Yes they are! That big yellow sticker on them says Food Grade, Safe for Liquid, BPA Free, Blah Blah Blah (sorry about the blurry phone pic), and the plastic recycling triangle is labeled 2.

I think they ran me about $5 each for the bucket and lid (buy more than 5 at a time and you save on ‘contractor pricing&#8217. The lid is really nice, has the rubber o-ring and is a real pain to get off which I assume means it’s a good seal. Haven’t fermented or secondaried in one yet but I assume they will be real nice for that purpose assuming you have the correct headspace. I think I will be using 3 of these when I do 12 to 13 gallon batches. Also will be nice for apfelwein and skeeter pee so I don’t have to tie up my beer/wine primaries.

Today I am going to buy at least 6 more so I can split up those full sacks as well. I don’t like or advise leaving those bags out, especially once they are opened.

Talked a buddy who has been out of brewing for a couple years to come over for brew day on Saturday.

kpr121 said:

Yes they are! That big yellow sticker on them says Food Grade, Safe for Liquid, BPA Free, Blah Blah Blah (sorry about the blurry phone pic), and the plastic recycling triangle is labeled 2.

I think they ran me about $5 each for the bucket and lid (buy more than 5 at a time and you save on ‘contractor pricing&rsquo. The lid is really nice, has the rubber o-ring and is a real pain to get off which I assume means it’s a good seal. Haven’t fermented or secondaried in one yet but I assume they will be real nice for that purpose assuming you have the correct headspace. I think I will be using 3 of these when I do 12 to 13 gallon batches. Also will be nice for apfelwein and skeeter pee so I don’t have to tie up my beer/wine primaries.

Today I am going to buy at least 6 more so I can split up those full sacks as well. I don’t like or advise leaving those bags out, especially once they are opened.

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That's awesome !!! One guess where I'm going in a little bit. How pounds will each container hold ? I have about 100 or so lbs to store.

Aschecte said:

That's awesome !!! One guess where I'm going in a little bit. How pounds will each container hold ? I have about 100 or so lbs to store.

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Just by looking at the 2 buckets stacked on eachother next to the sack it looks like it can hold around 20 pounds.

I sampled and dry-hopped my Citra Pale Ales. I made a 10 gallon batch and split it between a bucket and a carboy. I used rehydrated us-05 in the carboy and a washed WLP001 in the bucket. The carboy smelled like orange-grapefruit juice and tasted wonderful. The sample from the bucket smelled like bubblegum, but did not taste like bubblegum. I'm not sure if this is a quality of Citra hops or a result of poor yeast health/underpitching.

Aschecte said:

That's awesome !!! One guess where I'm going in a little bit. How pounds will each container hold ? I have about 100 or so lbs to store.

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Yeah melevolent was pretty close, its usually closer to 25 lbs of grain. Excess goes in ziplock bags and gets used first.