What I did for beer today

Got a fairly early start on a 6g AG batch of Rolling Hills 40 APA w/ my daughter.
All done, cleaned up & yeast pitched by 2:15.

Bottled 5 gallons of Brett IPA and 6 gallons of a blend of saison and golden sour.

Finished cleaning from my brewday yesterday. Had a beer or two.

Haven't yet but once I'm home it's time to dry hop my CDA with some Nelson Sauvin! Then bottles will be cleaned, oh yes!! They will be cleaned..,

I went to work to earn money to support the habit... err hobby...

Re-wired my cigar box stir plate (now the pwr LED works!), and got my WLP001 starter going for a batch of my house IPA I'm brewing this weekend.

Oops! Guess I threw the stir bar sometime in the middle of the night....well, I guess the starter is healthy, anyway! Cleaned up, re-sanitized, all good.

Been awhile since I brewed so I did a marathon the past two days. Brewed a Session IPA and a Two Hearted Clone. Cut down my total brew time from 8 hours when I starts down to 5.5 hours today. Wort chiller definitely helps.

Up next is Cream of Three Crops in two weeks.

Going to brew a stout tonight, and a different stout tomorrow. Also bottling a chinook IPA tonight.

Pissed because I just found out that 5 of my entries to a homebrew competition didn't make it. A local homebrew club shipped them for me and somehow the box ended up in New Jersey (it was going from Houston to Lubbock, in fact it was in Lubbock at one point). It was then damaged in New Jersey and thrown away. Lost my 5 entries and I don't know how many others, but 2 other entrants lost some entries that were in the same box.

I submitted 8 entries in total, and the 4 that I was most confident in were all lost (Flanders Red, Oud Bruin, Sour Saison, and Dubbel). Only an imperfect pilsner, an alright APA, and a boring IPA made it (mainly wanted to get feedback on those).

Going to have to have a bottle or two of what I have left of those beers tonight in sadness.

Visited Burley Oak Brewery in Ocean City and Dogfish Head in Milton, Delaware. Both in one day. Fun day.

Great beer at Burly Oak and the brewer is very cool. He came out from the brewery at one point and once we started talking, he ran in back and came out with a coffee infused cream ale that was really unique.

What can I say about DFH. Holy crap that place is huge. Two buildings each over 100,000 square feet. Lots of crazy stuff going on there (pics). I actually took the tour (worth it!).

Note: that exterior shot with all the "outside fermenters" in it. 600BBLs. Each. Do that math!

Edit: not sure how it quoted the wrong person but whatever.

Burley Oak makes some tasty sours. Every time I head out to the beach now I try to stop by there. Never met the brewer though. Have a few 750s I've had since last summer I'll probably crack open this summer.

Filled in at my LHBS. I always learn from the customers, too!

I ordered ingredients for a Belgian Ale from Rebel Brewer. Even though I selected flat rate shipping, within an hour it shipped!

Brewed a Brewers Best English Brown Ale that I got 2 years ago when I did my first brew. Got fresh yeast and finally tried out my propane burner. Going to keg this one now that I have my shop fridge setup for kegs. I have been wanting to brew more the last 2 years but never made the time. I think this will be the year I brew more. My new boss likes to brew so he may be my inspiration to get off the pot Now the waiting game starts.

Let's see. Brewed 2 batches of stout and bottled a Chinook IPA. Also added red wine oak chips to a porter and sampled a saison and pils to see how they're coming along (saison is done fermenting, pils needs some more conditioning).
Drinking my rye sour right now. Needs to carb some more, but the flavor is great.

Brewed two attempts at Chimay Premiere - only thing the brews share are the base malt and the yeast. Belgian Pils, WLP 500.

Recipes were formulated by AIH and CIS.

Discovered a Picobrew Software issue while I was at it - they ended up taking that version of the software down for the time being.

Just bottled a one gallon smash. It's Marris Otter and Mosaic. Used a random saison yeast. Saved some yeast for use later into summer in a five gallon batch.

Over the last two days I purchased a 10 cuft chest freezer, built a collar and installed my two faucets.

Picked up various odds and ends to assemble the stc1000 into a proper box.

Started building my brew stand. So far I have the base layer built, 6 ft long by 2 ft deep, rolling on heavy duty locking castor wheels.

Got to get some cement board for the burner to sit on, start building up the second tier and get a sheet of plywood or something to make up the surfaces.

What a day: Brewed the Cottage House Saison, got a starter going for the Nugget/Centennial IPA I'll brew later this week, and then kegged my simple Centennial pale ale. Whew!

Yesterday, continued my biab stand construction and ordered the parts to finish it. Also ordered tulip glasses to drink the saison I'll be kegging today.

Kegged a blonde ale and cleaned an empty keg / tap line. Also, used some beer line cleaner to remove a white residue that was developing on my conical.

Added some gelatin to my American Wheat to clear it up a little. Cleaned out the keg I kicked yesterday. Ordered a ton of hops.

I assembled the top tier of my brew stand and got a sheet of MDF ripped down to the approximate size for the two levels. Later I'll be setting at it with a jigsaw to cut notches for the lower shelf to fit around the uprights and for the upper shelf to fit around the electrical panel mounting.

I also added some reinforcing braces to the upright struts on my FastFerment stand.

Pitched a starter in a lager I brewed yesterday. Bottled a hefe. Brewed a house ale recipe I've been tinkering with.

And went to a water class at a local brewery (sponsored by a local LHBS)

Brewed an English ESB today. Still can't crack under 5 hours though which sucks but it was a good, easy brew day. Ended with 4.5 gallons at 1060. Not too bad. Gravity sample was sure bitter lol!

Brewed 5 gallons of a grapefruit IPA. second brew on my Grainfather.

Kegged ten gallons of Rye Pale ale. The aroma from the dry hops is pretty sweet. Looking forward to this one.

Bottled the red rye DIPA last night that I used gelatin on. I don't think it did anything for me. I will try again, this time doubling the amount of gelatin, i.e., using the same amount in my 2.5G batches as people do for their 5G batches. Now to let it sit for 3 weeks to carb up.

Dry-hopped the double rye-PA with Mosaic and Amarillo.

Got tired of using co2 to clean beer lines so I built on of these
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1459822772.484075.jpg

And tried it out. Works great.

Put the mosaic hop pellets I got from Farm House Brew Supply in the freezer. Plan to brew a sMash with it soon.

Wandered into the shed and checked that the STC1000+ I programmed 5 days ago when I dry hopped had begun to cold crash my India Red Ale.
Felt kinda sad my beer doesn't need me anymore.

I pressure canned a bunch of starter wort. While I was transferring the jars from the canner to a milk crate, one of the jars had a blowout - the bottom came completely off, which means I spent a good chunk of the afternoon washing the floor, cleaning the stove, washing the rug, etc. I guess it could have been worse, but what a pain in the butt.

I cleaned the keg from a Munich Dunkel I kicked last weekend and kegged a English Pale Ale. The EPA is now in the lager chamber cold crashing along with a keg of Vienna Lager. I'll add gelatin in a cpl days then a few days later get it on CO2.

Gelled a Robust Porter that I had crashed on Monday. Friday will be keg day!

I just cracked the fermenter fridge to get a status check on last weekend's ESB progress. It's still in there!

Brewed up a batch of an English Pale Ale. It is based off of Brulosopher's Tiny Bottom Pale Ale. Smelled great going into the fermentor.

starsman20 said:

Got tired of using co2 to clean beer lines so I built on of these
View attachment 348932

And tried it out. Works great.

Click to expand...

I like it!

starsman20 said:

Got tired of using co2 to clean beer lines so I built on of these
View attachment 348932

And tried it out. Works great.

Click to expand...

So that's an aquarium pump with a ball lock outpost attached? Pretty cool...I may stick with the CO2, but still, pretty cool!

Went to the my lhbs and picked up ingredients for two batches one Abbey weizen and a dipa View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1460229380.750708.jpg