What I did for beer today

Going to get a 1332 Northwest Ale starter going for Saturday's Rye Pale Ale

Drank a lot of honey ale and rootbeer yesterday.

Planned my next 4 (5?) beers...

1) all grain saison this weekend

2) all grain blonde ale

3) Cascadian dark ale (extract/partial mash)

4) smoked porter (partial mash)

5) Westvleteren 12 clone

I'm still working on #5...

Brewed a RyePA, bottled a Two-Hearted Clone and cleaned a bin of bottles. Drank some Hopslam, delicious.

Received my restaurant bar mat for in front of the brewstand, bring on double batch brew days (brew buddy testing out the anti-fatigue)! View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1421723389.898394.jpg

Got home yesterday to find mold in my racking tubing (is there any good way to get all of the moisture out of tubing?). I had some extra tubing with a too-wide internal diameter for my autosiphon and too-thin walls to feel good racking the RIS that I'll be aging for nearly a year, so I just bottled the Imperial BIPA/CDA (I feel pretentious calling it a Cascadian Dark Ale, but Black India Pale Ale is such a stupid name...).

Measured my old tubing this morning and ordered some beverage grade tubing to replace it so I can hopefully bottle the RIS and Oatmeal Stout before the weekend. Hoping to do a session (4-4.5%) version of my "Can't Believe It's Not Bitter" IPA this weekend to drink during the Chinese New Year at my in-laws' place in the countryside.

Got my buddies lit on my home brew. I had three batches ready for tasting: an octoberfest, a bitter, and a California common. We had one of each to start, then let them drink whatever they chose afterwards. They each had a preference and continued to drink my brews, even though there were commercial brews in the fridge to choose from also.

Ordered another STC to build a ferm chamber

Ordered the Brooklyn Brewery 1 gallon batch book. Have the room for a 1 gallon carboy in my current chamber behind the 5 gallon bucket, so gonna try and always have to brews in there

Had a busy weekend. Cleaned a case and a half of bottled, bottled my nugget nectar clone (should be ready for the super bowl) and then brewed my imperial IPA. Should finally have a good amount of beer in the pipeline again in a few weeks. Oh, I also ordered a monster mill 3 so I can finally start buying grains in bulk and save some money!

FatDragon said:

Got home yesterday to find mold in my racking tubing (is there any good way to get all of the moisture out of tubing?) to drink during the Chinese New Year at my in-laws' place in the countryside.

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Bake it? Worked for me at work one time when a client saturated my clipboard of papers with coffee. They thought I was joking until I put the oven on and tossed it in. Caution: check temperature tolerances and/or flash points before proceeding. Alternatively one could run boiling water through it for a bit, then using a barb fitting seal it up. No it won't dry. But it will be sanitary and sealed up.

What did I do? Not much. Killed a keg and put the 3 month aged chocolate oatmeal stout into the place. Maybe if I'm bored later I'll do the right thing and clean / sanitize the couple of empties I've got kicking around so they're ready for service.

Dry hopped a honey pale ale.

Got a starter going for the hefeweizen I'll make this weekend. First time using the stir plate!

While I was at it, I took my first try at inoculating slants with the 3068 I'm using on the hefeweizen. Before I did that, the LHBS had some expired 1007 dirt cheap and I grabbed some of that so I could do a test run with the slants and only lose $3 if it didn't work. So I now have some questionable 1007 slants which may or may not take off because I made a couple mistakes. But I think I got the kinks worked out by the time I got around to using the 3068.

The other day I was having lunch at BJs and used my AHA membership for the discount. The manager came out and told me that he had just started homebrewing with a kit. He asked for some advice so we chatted for a bit, pointed him to a few books and such.

brewed a 5.5 gallon batch of Saison... drank several HB beers... planned my next brew day which will be next week.

kicked a keg, swapped out a dirty faucet, and cleaned a few kegs.

Also, built a moving cart, for my Keezer, which fits my brew stand too.

FatDragon said:

Got home yesterday to find mold in my racking tubing (is there any good way to get all of the moisture out of tubing?). I had some extra tubing with a too-wide internal diameter for my autosiphon and too-thin walls to feel good racking the RIS that I'll be aging for nearly a year, so I just bottled the Imperial BIPA/CDA (I feel pretentious calling it a Cascadian Dark Ale, but Black India Pale Ale is such a stupid name...).

Measured my old tubing this morning and ordered some beverage grade tubing to replace it so I can hopefully bottle the RIS and Oatmeal Stout before the weekend. Hoping to do a session (4-4.5%) version of my "Can't Believe It's Not Bitter" IPA this weekend to drink during the Chinese New Year at my in-laws' place in the countryside.

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What about soaking it in a little bleach water, might discolor it a bit but it will be clean, and how about blowing it out with a compressor.

Rigged a blow off tube and then swapped out the container like four times View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1421904326.466287.jpg

Uhhh, drank some?

Quaffman said:

Uhhh, drank some?

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^^^^^^^ That.

FatDragon said:

Got home yesterday to find mold in my racking tubing (is there any good way to get all of the moisture out of tubing?).

Click to expand...

The last thing I always rack is starsan. Keeps them little buggies from starting up. I do not rinse it afterwards so they never have a chance to start. Just a little shake to get the big drops out.

I always thought rinsing tubing out with Starsan to be a good thing after scrub & rinse. I hang'em on the edge of my drying rack to drip extra Starsan out before coiling up for storage.

unionrdr said:

I always thought rinsing tubing out with Starsan to be a good thing after scrub & rinse. I hang'em on the edge of my drying rack to drip extra Starsan out before coiling up for storage.

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This is what I do and it seems to work real well too. After cleaning everything on the cold side with Dawn, and rinse, then into the Starsan and hang to drip dry. Seems to dry quicker too.

TrustyOlJohnson said:

This is what I do and it seems to work real well too. After cleaning everything on the cold side with Dawn, and rinse, then into the Starsan and hang to drip dry. Seems to dry quicker too.

Click to expand...

unionrdr said:

I always thought rinsing tubing out with Starsan to be a good thing after scrub & rinse. I hang'em on the edge of my drying rack to drip extra Starsan out before coiling up for storage.

Click to expand...

I think the original question was what to do about cleaning the mold out of the tubing after it's already in there, not how to prevent it, like I said in an earlier post, soaking it in a little bleach water would take care of it, then take these other steps to keep it from happening again, also a blast of compressed air to blow it out

FatDragon said:

Got home yesterday to find mold in my racking tubing (is there any good way to get all of the moisture out of tubing?).

Click to expand...

I generally make the final rinse in Star-San, then hang all the tubing over a nail or pole or something so whatever can drip out will, and hopefully the Star-San liquid left behind will inhibit mold growth.

I got the starter going for the English Bitter I'll be brewing come Monday.

Picked up some some rice hulls for a Weizenbock brew this weekend. Also grabbed some Safbrew Weizen yeast.

Things are getting crowded in my "fermentation chamber," aka the hallway closet. 6.5g carboy, Ale Pail, and a 2.5 gal carboy, all in varying stages of bubbling, all needing occasional SGs checked, it's a hassle moving them around one another to do what needs to be done. So today I got started making myself some carboy/bucket dollies. I figure they'll help save my back moving primaries and secondaries around, as well as help (at least somewhat) minimize sloshing as I do so. I was emboldened by the DIY thread about using furring strips to make crates, and after a couple of those it seemed natural to use the same cheap wood.


Each one is about $1 worth of wood (two dollies per 1x3 furring strip) and I found some appropriately small casters on Amazon for $5 a set. So, six bucks or so each. I'll post a full writeup in the DIY forum when they're done. I was all the way to the last step, attaching the casters, when I realized a friend hadn't returned my power drill yet. Oh well, there's always Sunday.

Stopped by my LHBS (St Louis Wine and Beermaking) and picked up a Kolsch extract kit. Having a late night extract brew session while the wife is out at a work event and I'm home with my daughters and friends (they're teenagers and generally interested in what I'm doing). Doing a full 5.5 gallon extract boil with late addition malts. Grabbed some Wyeast Kolsch 2565 and will pitch from the bag (no starter this time).

I have a big party coming up in Feb and have a NB IPA carbonating in a keg, a MoreBeer Pliny clone fermenting and preparing for dry hop, and will soon have this Kolsch fermenting (the Kolsch is for the non-"hoppy", non-"craft beer" people who will inevitably be here . I'm definitely excited about the Pliny clone as I've read great things on here about it and really spent some time working on my process and equipment for it.

We are just finishing a renovation/bar in our basement and these particular three beers will be the first three on tap (plus something from a local brewery like Schlafly or urban chestnut). Have a behind-wall keezer setup which will hold 8 Corney's and 4 through wall taps with chilled lines. Got a ton of info from these forums for it. Will post lots of pics at some point as I've been documenting the build somewhat and left myself with a ton of nice brewing amenities behind the bar.

Fortunately a full boil on my stove leaves lots of time to post/read on the forums here

Kegged my Cascade Orange Pale Ale and planning my next brew day which will be my best friend since I was 5 first time brewing!

Bought my first 55# bag of grain, Maris Otter! My brother and I split the cost in order to save some $.

I need to start making some batches as I have been accumulating ingredients like crazy! I currently have enough for 6 all grain batches and 2 malt extract batches. Tomorrow I'm brewing my first saison and this will be my third batch of the year. Wow.

Forgot the pic...View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1422136778.106745.jpg

Jeez, what DIDN'T I do?

Got up at the crack of dawn to brew a hefeweizen.

Then I had a vision for how to build a pump/Therminator combo, which involved cutting up a milk crate. I'll post pics soon, but I think it's going to be pretty ingenious, if I may say so myself.

Then I kegged my robust porter. Hey - know what it looks like when you dump out a cake from a very, very flocculant yeast like 002 when it's been used in a black beer like a robust porter? Yeah - looks like an elephant dropped a deuce in your laundry sink. `

Just checked the gravity only chocolate tangerine stout before racking to the secondary fermenter.

Visited my LHBS and picked up the ingredients for a Vanilla Stout.

Bottled my latest saison. It's been bulk aging with Cantillon B and Chardonnay soaked oak for six months.
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Ended up dry,
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But the Chardonnay still gives it a sweetness in the finish.

Very clear - very happy with this one!
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Also put some toasted red & white oak in Elijah 12 year that will go into my Hunaphu clone soon.
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Good day in the brewhouse!

Brewed and dry hopped my SMaSH ipa. Now I'm eating cookies, for homebrewing of course.

Brewed 10 gallons of Scottish Ale, with a separate long concentrated boil of first runnings.

Got hooked up with a free 15 gal keg system... just, awesome.

Had plans to bottle my cream ale but I haven't got the bottles yet, so I made the executive decision today would be a brew day! Got my mash complete and beginning the boil on my first attempt at a saison.

I had Belle Saison yeast, so why not, right? Lol

Popped open a Wit from another hbt member. Scott12160. Great beer.. Thank you Sir.. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1422208077.680072.jpg