What I did for beer today

Purchased ingredients to brew a brown ale.

Released a few hundred ounces from their metallic confines

Brewed a 5 gallon batch of wheat beer and purchased ingredients for a barleywine and some kegs

Cleaned up some equipment the last couple days, ordered 55 pounds of Gold Promise malt and 4 packets Notty yeast today, swapped the empty IPA keg for a full one...

Tomorrow is wash fermenters and 2 kegs and keg a batch of house ale that has been in the fermenter for 2 weeks. It was fermented out 10 days ago but let it finish and clean up a bit since I did not need it kegged right away.

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Won a couple of awards. Kettle soured Berliner with passionfruit. Quite the crowd pleaser, lost to two big boozy beers

Checked on my stout again. Fermentation is still stuck.
Raised the temp and added some priming sugar to get the yeast going after stirring it yesterday.
Looks like it's going again now.

Kegged 10 gallons. Now brewing 5 gallons then going to sit back and drink a gallon. Good Sunday.

Kegged a nicely spiced pumpkin ale for the holidays......


John

Bottled my first 5 gal. AG batch. What a learning experience. Gravity sample was okay tasting, though I picked up on a bit of a band-aid flavor that plagued my last batch. Different recipe, equipment, yeast, etc. so not an infection. All brand new gear, all meticulously sanitized. As I'm capping bottles I was sipping on a goose island fest beer and I swear I can detect a similar flavor in that beer too. Maybe it's not an off flavor, but some aspect of maltiness that doesn't appeal to me. It's kinda grassy and green tasting, follows the malty twang, and fades as the residual sweetness takes over. Starting to realize I don't like some beers.

Rack a Nutcastle Brown for fermenter to keg then placed it in the cold crash/conditing side of my side-by-side

Bottled mildly spiced pumpkin porter

Had the wife reset the Temp Controller for the Diacetyl Rest for my Bohemian Pilsner

Kegged 11 gallons of my house ale, weighed grain for the next batch... have to scrub fermenters but I will do it tomorrow. Ran out of energy!

Apparently I seem to have bought a wort cooling spiral on a whim. At lunch hour waiting for my soup to heat up I looked at a few net stores in the impression the spirals were in the 150 range, then bam I stumble onto a 20L SS spiral with hose connectors for 49 eur, before the microwave went dinnng my phone did, noticing me from an email saying "thank you for your order".

Well, at least I don't have to worry about what to do with the little bit of extra cash I was left with after the bills cause now I need that gas bottle and some grains!

Today I ordered a new heat pad for under my fermenter.

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Raided my LHBS, got whatever they had in ready 1kg bags that could work together.

3x pale ale
1x münich
1x vienna
1x caramel 100

Gonna split the bill, brew two batches, one with S-04 and one with US-05 and see if I can detect a difference. No clue what to call that though if not the "kitchen sink"

^

Continuing to get very poor very quick.

Bought a 25L pot with a tap, a 1,7L electric kettle, a stainless bucket and two cobalt drill bits. I was in the market for a bigger pot next month but the local Biltema (car/recreational parts/supplies shop)/happened to have them pots on sale for 69 eur. It doesn't have a double bottom, just a thin one but I don't reckon that'll be an issue since I got a 6mm SS plate on my burner for heat distribution already. Now I don't have to stay up both nights to fill a fermenter! Done a back to back double boil once, not gonna repeat that. Was done at 3am.

Oh well at least I don't have to think about what to do the remaining month, cause other than brewing the Answer is nothing that requires any capital

Sanitized 28 22oz bottles in prep for bottling my Weizenheimer hefe tomorrow...

Riding the inspiration Bought a new gas bottle, modified the burner flame guard to accommodate for the tap on the new cooking pot, drilled the new SS sparging bucket bottom full of holes, shortened the hook that hangs the bucket over the cooking pot to accommodate the higher pot and bucket, wire wheeled the heat distribution plate on the burner clean & hoovered the garage floor. When the kids go to bed gonna have a dish-a-thon so everyting will be clean and ready for tomorrow.

Racked a beer (Electric Hop Candy Jr, a New England style Pale Ale)



Kal

Engineering the fittings needed and placement for a sampling port after my chugger pump to get easier samples at various times... First runnings, end of sparge, pre boil, post boil etc... Its gotta look pretty and be super easy.

For the first time ever, I dumped a starter.

I've bottle harvested yeast from Bell's beers many many times and always with great success. So the other day, I tried to harvest from a bottle of Special Double Cream Stout. It's dark unlike Oberon or the Amber or something, so it's harder to see the yeast, but I figured I knew what I was doing. But the starter lever looked right and last night I decided it was dead. It wasn't cloudy, didn't smell like beer, no CO2 burn when smelling it and, when I dumped it, I took a taste and it was nice and sweet. It's dead, Jim.

So I bit the bullet and actually paid for fresh yeast at the store. (Usually I build up from a slant or bottle harvest - no time for either now if I wanna brew this weekend.) Made up a new starter, pitched it about 7:00 last night, and 10 hours later, the starter is absolutely rocking.

Put up 27 bottles of my Weizenheimer hefe-weizen. It looked pretty good, smelled great, tasted true-to-style with slight clove and banana flavors and came in at a healthy 4.4% ABV.

Moved 55 pounds of Golden Promise to storage buckets...

^ 25kg?!!! I've brewed close to a year now and I don't think I've used ONE.

Turned the entire house+garage upside down trying to find the lid for the third fermenter bucket, to no avail. Where can a white round disc closer to 40cm hide so well I can't find it anywhere?!

EDIT: found the damned thing!

EDIT2: dummy me golden promise is a malt not a hop...

Yesterday, actually...cleaned out the boss' 200 gallon mash tun and hopback, got soaking wet and cold in the process but got 'paid' with enough adjunct grain to brew my Holiday Ale today. 14 pounds 2 row, 4 lbs Cara 40, 4 lbs dextrine, and 2 lbs dark Munich are making fabulous smells in my garage this morning. First 10 gallon batch in a few months.

Kegged 5 gallons of Bells Two Hearted clone

Kegged 10 gallons of Hopwork Orange, cleaned out the 14g conical, cleaned some kegs and had a beer.

Cleaned a keg and keg lines in my kegerator. Ready for my pumpkin saison currently fermenting.

Cleand and delabeld some bottels and cleanded a 1 gallon fermentor.

LOL I go through a bulk sack of GP every 6 weeks in warmer weather!

BikerMatt said:

^ 25kg?!!! I've brewed close to a year now and I don't think I've used ONE.

Turned the entire house+garage upside down trying to find the lid for the third fermenter bucket, to no avail. Where can a white round disc closer to 40cm hide so well I can't find it anywhere?!

EDIT: found the damned thing!

EDIT2: dummy me golden promise is a malt not a hop...

Click to expand...

First time doing all grain. Batch sparged, wasn't much more work than extract. We'll see how it turns out. Two-hearted clone from AIH.

Today I changed out both of my vinyl tubing beer lines in my kergerator that was close to 2 years old. I installed Silver Ultra Barrier beverage tubing. It was a little tricky going though my tower having to hold the nuts and washers in one hand so they wouldn't slide down the tower, while pressing the tubing on the shank, and clamping down the Otiker clamp, with the other hand. And then holding it in place while securing the nuts and washers! Now I know why people don't like to change their beer lines. They work great though and it is a high quality product! Very glad I changed them out!

John

Took care of bottles that were soaking and getting things organized for a brew day tomorrow.

Pitching yeast on Scottish ale I brewed yesterday, also making a little something with the sparge (SG 1.054 after the boil) Czech saaz and an Abby ale yeast.

Brewing 15 gallons of Brett Saison to fill my 25 gallon barrel. I brewed 15 gallons last week as well. I also put a coat of wax on said barrel to slow oxygen ingress since my plan is Brett Saison Solera.

Defrosted the kegerator yesterday (big mess) and today dry-hopping the IPA I brewed 13 days ago with a LOT of Amarillo. Also sneaked a taste of the Holiday Ale I brewed last weekend and decided to bottle half of it this weekend in order to have Xmas presents for the sister and the daughter. Already down to 1.020 and tastes great. Now to find the bottling wand somewhere in the garage....

I finally assembled my two kettles for my new electric build. Just need to wet test them, build a ventilation system, and hook up a plug for my panel.
So excited to brew indoors. Hopefully in the next two weeks.

Kegged a Centennial IPA I brewed 3 weeks ago.

Bottled 5 gallons of pumpkin ale