What I did for beer today

ESBrewer said:

No, unless you leave the lid open for too long.. But I do wrap the plates in sanitized alu foil during growth & storage which is much the same as Parafilm, although less tight. If you leave those upside down without any cover so yes, eventually you will get some contaminations through the gap between lid and the plate. Parafilm is good if you need to store very long cause it will prevent plates from drying out, too. I have only kept the plates for a week or two and then replate or thaw fresh yeast from the freezer. An additional method would be to store the plates inside a sanitized plastic container.

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honestly it was always yeast that infected my myclium....

do you use a Flow hood or still air box for the plates? or is yeast just easier to grow than mushrooms?

Growing my first hop plants got two sprouted rhizomes from Florida hops! Comet and Triple Pearl.

bracconiere said:

is yeast just easier to grow than mushrooms?

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Yeast probably grows faster than most multicellular fungi. The starting material (bottle dregs in commercial quality beer) is relatively pure/homogenous. So I assume yeast is 'easier' to grow, although I haven't tried with any mycelium. I do not have laminar flow hood at home and I know that some people interested in growing mushrooms grow mycelium at home without such equipment. But the purity of the starting material will be important.

20grams of hop hash tossed in a stainless ball into my ipa. High Krausen dh. Will hit it with pellets about two days before packaging.

Just kegged a birthday beer for my buddy, and a copy of that recipe for me.

I ended up having to actually drive to the post office for that seperatory funnel. sit there for what seemed like a half hour while they looked in back, they finally found it and told me i'd have to pay shipping if i wanted it because the cheap skate guy that sent it used media mail service, and they knew it wasn't media!

so $13.01 later, and back home...It's broken too! not seriously, just has a 24/40 stop cock jammed in the top that the handle broke off, the tip broke half way...

So now i'm going to have to get in a fight about it....

But all is good in the rest of the universe i'm back home with a cold homebrew!

Bled my Oktoberfest keg 2 weeks into lagering to making sure there's not any Oxygen hanging out in there.

Drank more Citra Dbl IPA, cause I got 10 more gallons in kegs almost ready to get the gas.

Brewed an old school IPA. All simcoe and amarillo. Smelled great. Cant wait to drink it.

Kegged my partygyle beer which also means a lot of cleaning afterwards. The hydrometer sample I took looks and smells nice. Just shy of 3.5% which is fine for my first partygyle beer. It will be interesting to taste it in a couple of days and share some with the home brew club.

I did a ebay search for refractometers. And found out they have a lot of different types...Almost ordered one that measures alcohol concentration instead of brix..

And NaCl ones...

Split 2 Gal Hefeweizen into bottles and secondary fermenter with peach purée. 5.75% abv and almost 80% attenuation at bottling. Not sure if 1-Gal in secondary on peach purée will go higher or not.

Mashing in Irish Red now. Aim to cool it down before UEFA Nations League starts, will pitch the yeast from starter late after the match (Greece-Finland).

This is what I put in the mash tun. Pale ale malt, roasted barley, Simpsons rye crystal + some wheat malt to increase head + oat husks. Exactly hit my mash pH target of pH5.4.

Adjusted pressure that got rid of the foam issue on my tap. Bled the keg I'm lagering and another one I'm bulk aging

OG 1.055, red as a cherry it entered fermenter together with Wyeast 1084. Mild notes of EKG and Northdown that will probably disappear during fermentation. A bit higher gravity than expected but didn't want to dilute it .

Another 3L Yeast starter.

Getting ready for Sunday Brew Day.

6.5 gal. Holiday DriPA Brut IPA.
Just in time for Chritmas and New Years

ESBrewer said:

OG 1.055, red as a cherry it entered fermenter together with Wyeast 1084. Mild notes of EKG and Northdown that will probably disappear during fermentation. A bit higher gravity than expected but didn't want to dilute itView attachment 597941 View attachment 597942 .

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That does look beautiful. I'm planning to brew an Irish red soon to be aged in a whiskey cask.
What I did for beer so far today is get some contest entries ready for shipping.

Hoppy2bmerry said:

That does look beautiful. I'm planning to brew an Irish red soon to be aged in a whiskey

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Yes the color is nice, although it is going to look darker in the glass. Brewing for the first time with these grains and didn't know what to expect. It's 4,5% Simpsons Rye Crystal and 1,6% Crisp's dark roasted barley, 3,9% weyermann pale wheat and 90% PA.

The all new cooler (=waterbath) insulation is great. I put some aluminium coated 30mm polyurethane insulation material on top of a sturdy storage box and the temperature has barely changed in 15hrs now although it is 5 deg celsius warmer outside & no ice inside. A big improvement.

Gathering up a christmas present to a US friend that will also include a beer brewing kit. Quick check, anyone know if homebrewing is legal in Virginia?

BikerMatt said:

Gathering up a christmas present to a US friend that will also include a beer brewing kit. Quick check, anyone know if homebrewing is legal in Virginia?

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Yes it is. http://straighttothepint.com/state-homebrewing-laws/virginia/

Added yeast to my ciders and finings to a lager.

Just added the day 5 second dry hop to my mosaic smash. Half a pound of sugar dissolved in one cup of water poured into the fermentor with four oz of mosaic pellets. Stirred the bucket gently and already it smells divine and is chugging away.

My Stout keg kicked so I washed it out and hooked up my IPL. Also, added some more soil to my hop plants, rearranged, and watered them.

my mash paddle ramping up the temp from a protein rest to sacceriffication(SP? big words are hard) temp



transferred to cooler for a rest



and lifted the heavy a$$ thing onto the island!



but this is more of what i'm doing for beer at the moment, i plan on adding another 10 gal's to the tally for 2018 once i add yeast for beer today later!

Kegged my Christmas ale, gonna let it cold condition for a few weeks.

Removing old sparge pumps and replacing with new larger sparge pumps. BIGGER = better?

Oh yea, and drinking plenty of beer in the process.

Just bottled a Munich Helles, transferred a Scotch ale and a RIS to 2ndary. thats right, i do 2ndary ...

Put my Oktoberfest marzen lager on gas at 20 psi. I'm planning to leave it in there for about a week or two before taking another sample it's been lagering for almost 3 weeks now at 38. Took a quick sample to check clarity looking pretty good taste even better!!

Working on my yeast collection in the fridge. I have some tubes I've saved that are getting closed to 6 months old. Brewed a bunch of wort using DME and tossed my remaining tube in so revitalize it!
Seems like a lot of work, but with smaller batches buying yeast every time was a significant part of my brewing costs. Much cheaper to overbuild a starter and save off yeast for next time.

Now going to mill the grain and mash in a strong bitter (Fuller's ESB clone revisited).

Bottled 1 gallon of Tart Cherry Mead and brewed up another batch of Tart Cherry Short Mead, a little less ABV and hopefully a quicker turn-around. Used the last of my sushi rice and Chinese yeast balls to start another batch of Rice Wine. Will check the gravity of my Mosaic SMaSH tonight to see if I can bottle in the next day or two, I want to package it as fresh as possible. I also racked my lambic from the primary into a glass carboy to age.

I bought 10 feet of silicone tubing and a garden hose faucet adapter to use on my new RobrewV3. I brewed outside the first time but during the winter, I will brew in the kitchen.

Cleaned my Kegerator line and cleaned out two kegs. Next week my Oktoberfest lager should be carbed up and ready. Leaving it slow and low on co2;while I'm out of town for the holiday.

Now listening to the constant flow of bubbles from the ESB fermentation. Also bought some demerara (raw cane sugar) and citric acid in order to prepare a test batch of invert syrup.

Added my first, first place ribbon to the mash paddle.

Made a starter of Scottish cider yeast WLP something

I bottled up my Mosaic IPA last night. Smells like a friggin' tropical cocktail and the hydro sample tasted good already, no strong hop astringency or hot fire in the back of the throat. This makes me happy because it is only 9 days from brewing this and I am going to try to get the carb to go very quickly (daily rolling the bottles etc.), I will sample the first one exactly 14 days after brew and see if it has that hop pop and color still. Then I will drink them like crazy before they go brown and the hops fade away.

Also picked up 13lb Marris Otter to do a Galaxy SMaSH to compare the Mosaic SMaSH with. And degassed my tart cherry short mead.

Damit! I cleaned and sanitized what I needed to prime and bottle 2.5 gallons dunklewiessen ( half the batch was kegged, because I only had a small keg empty) only to find a thin furry pellical across the top. I was going to do this today so I'd just have to move the sanitized bottles from the dish washer once. Oh well, put the lid back on and deal with it another day. Back to prepping for turkey day. BTW, I just tasted a sample from the keg and it tastes fine, thankfully.

Bought the ingredients for Sunday's Brew Day when I will: Bottle the Smoked Old Porter, Bottle the Wild-Fermented Cider, and cook up an IPA with Mosaic & Citra.

Went to LHBS and bought ingredients for a Berliner Wiesse.
Bought 4 cases of Belgian Bottles, Corks and a Corker for bottling a batch of Lambic.