What I did for beer today

Dry hopped my milkshake IPA with 2 oz. Mosaic cryo, 1 oz each of Vic Secret and Lemondrop. Plus 1 vanilla bean and the vodka it had been soaking in.

Collecting up the remaining bottles of the Simcoe wheat beer I made for my unit. It was a big hit and they killed 15 of the 18 cases we brewed. Always nice to get a couple hundred non-craft beer drinkers talking about the great tasty beer. Plus I've got some leftover for the next few weeks here at home.

Cleaned 3 kegs, filled 2 up with a Hopwork Orange clone, cleaned the fermenter and milled the grains for a Falconers Flight IPA brew day tomorrow.

Since a get a report of recents posts in my mailbox everyday, saw this one and thought "why not"...lol

I put half of my barley sprouts in the oven at 170f to kiln, other half tomorrow, and brewing a light lager the day after!

Brewed my first lager today, happened to be national brew day so I attempted the Rocky raccoon honey lager... got my ferm chamber setup earlier this week . Only my fifth time doing AG and first time at a step mash. We will see how it go, I got a really low OG

Kegged my lichtenhainer, and took measurements of my first wild ale.
Lichtenhainer about what I wanted so far, sourness is subtle, but to be expected since I only used acid malt and nothing else for the sourness. Can't wait til it's carbed up, going to be a good warm weather beer.
Wild ale still has a ways to go as far as gravity; I hope it hasn't petered out. Also, the pellicle isn't looking like the test I ran (nor does it smell the same), but I didn't even check on the test for months and it's only been like 6 weeks so far, so still optimistic.

Kegged a batch of my "house" ale I make a lot of.

I replaced the short serving line on my keg with a longer one in an attempt to reduce foaming during the pour.

Tueday night I created my largest yeast starter ever for my first lager in my absurdly large 5L flask.

BrewMan13 said:

Tueday night I created my largest yeast starter ever for my first lager in my absurdly large 5L flask.

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Wut fer? [emoji12]

You said lager, what beer, how big is it?

Yesterday I brewed the festbier, today I pitch the yeast.

Today I cleaned two of my tap lines on my kegerator and sanitized them as well afterwards. Also yesterday I made a yeast starter for my Belgian Patersbier that I am brewing on Saturday.

John

Schlenkerla said:

Wut fer? [emoji12]

You said lager, what beer, how big is it?

Click to expand...

LOL, I thought someone might be curious...since I like to challenge myself, my first lager is going to be a doppelbock using a hochkurz double decoction mash. It's one of the styles that turned me into a beer geek and one I've always wanted to do properly. I spent a significant amount of time reading about it, but you can only read so much, so it's time for doing!

Made some kegerator magnets for the two beers currently fermenting.

BrewMan13 said:

LOL, I thought someone might be curious...since I like to challenge myself, my first lager is going to be a doppelbock using a hochkurz double decoction mash. It's one of the styles that turned me into a beer geek and one I've always wanted to do properly. I spent a significant amount of time reading about it, but you can only read so much, so it's time for doing!

Click to expand...

Be sure to post more about this or post your source info for the decoction method.

Washing bottles for an IPA I’m bottling next week but later tonight (after the kids go to sleep) I’ll be brewing my first Saison.

Getting ready to bottle the latest version of my house pale ale, which was dry hopped 6 days ago.

Getting my grist together for an apricot wheat beer my daughter asked me to brew. Tomorrow it will be ground and Sunday it will be brewed.

Preparing the fruit for introduction to the beer around 10-14 days after pitching. Gonna mash it then puree it then freeze it. Wheee!

Tasted my second lager that's been sitting a few weeks, and am amazeballs at how good it tastes. No diatcetyl like his big brother, just a great tasting beer. Going to keg it up this weekend. And put his big brother back in the kegerator after letting it sit in the warm for a week, hope the diacetyl is gone now but will drink it anyway. Planning a nice Racer clone for my mother's day present to myself as well.

Schlenkerla said:

Be sure to post more about this or post your source info for the decoction method.

Click to expand...

Sure thing; appreciate the interest
I got a lot of help from the braukaiser wiki; poked around other places as well. I wanted to make something vaguely like celebrator but not a clone. I settled in on a recipe, then investigated the decoction options. I decided to us the hochkurz double decoction as it seemed the best option considering the malts I was using and what I wanted to achieve. As is to be expected from a first attempt, neither decoction reached the perfect temp right away, so I had to do a quick pull and boil each time (my setup lost a lot of temp each time, something I anticipated, but not to the level that occurred). All in all, I got amazing efficiency for my system, and the airlock is bubbling away ~7hrs after pitching.

Set up a RIMS, a foot switch for a pump, primed a keg to natural carb, and brewed.

got a yeast starter going for a big, american barleywine

Moved cars around and set up my equipment for an early brew day tomorrow. Doing another version of Racer 5, the LHBS's I frequent don't carry the Belgian Caramel Pils so subbed in carafoam instead just for the heck of it. Grain weighed out, all I have to do in the morning is run the water and heat it up. Will be the first use of my brand spanking new plate chiller too.

Tapped my Belgian Wit that I made a month ago. Wow unbelievable! I can't say enough about this beer. I had a Hoegaarden and compared side by side and this was even better and fresher! Color glowed in the glass, white crackling head citrus and lemon notes, some subtle spice, effervescent on the tongue, awesome flavor. Three weeks to ferment and cold crash and one week in the keg to carb and it is spot on! Glad I have 10 gallons of this one and it will not last long around here. Will brew this in rotation as everyone here was raving about this beer. Gotta love this hobby!

John

seatazzz said:

Moved cars around and set up my equipment for an early brew day tomorrow. Doing another version of Racer 5, the LHBS's I frequent don't carry the Belgian Caramel Pils so subbed in carafoam instead just for the heck of it. Grain weighed out, all I have to do in the morning is run the water and heat it up. Will be the first use of my brand spanking new plate chiller too.

Click to expand...

That's great Happy Mother's Day and good luck with the new chiller!

John

Cooked my wife and daughter (both moms!) Breakfast AND supper for Mother's Day. They had to fend for themselves for lunch because dad was brewing!

Brewday went very smoothly and everything is clean except the mashtun. I haven't even had a beer yet today but that's about to change forthwith.

Took a peek at my festbier and saw krausen, also washed bottles.

Cleaned, kegged my spring lager, prepped for a week of bottling, and packed nine boxes of thank you beers and trades.

Cleaned my new fermentor and new mashtun in preparation for my first brewday in over year tomorrow. Also gave the kettle a nice concentrated starsan soak to get some of the old beerstone off. Used TSP for the first time.

replaced the di resin in my ro/di filter setup

Brewed my cranberry wheat and made cookies from the spent grain.

Bottled 5 gallons of IPA while staring 2.5 gallons of Brett IPA in the face and telling it that Wednesday was its turn.

brewed up a barley wine, my biggest beer to date (1.105 og). mash went way better than i expected but had my first boil over later in the day. i was cleaning the mash tun while the bk was getting up to temp and stopped paying attention. literally two feet away when it happened. saw what was happening out of the corner of my eye and hit the e-stop on my brew panel but alas, too late. not very much spilled over but enough to coat the outside and bottom of the kettle in a sticky goo. ended up taking it out into the yard and using a hose to clean everything up...

i woke up a few minutes early this morning to hit the barely wine with a little oxygen. fermentation was active but the bubbling was pretty slow, not surprising since the yeast had been pitched only about 12 hours previous. so i took off the 1.5" tc blow off connection on my conical lid, dropped in the oxygen wand and started bubbling. all was good for about 45 seconds before an eruption of foam came out the tc port. i quickly got the oxygen wand out of there and frantically reached for some paper towels. after heaving those into the area, i turbo got the blow off back on. pretty fast but not before a nice wad of foam/liquid covered the conical lid and ran down the conical side, all over my glycol tubes, wires, conical base and floor. it could not have ran down in a worse place. twenty curse-filled minutes later, all cleaned up and off to work...

replaced all the beer lines in my keezer and re positioned the manifold... after which I realized I should have bought an even longer gas line and positioned the CO2 tank outside the keezer which would allow me to place two pin-lock kegs on the hump. Oh well... future project.

Checked in on my belgian tripel still sitting in the fermentation chamber. The gravity is stable so decided to begin the cold crash so set the stc1000 to 3C so should be good to bottle Saturday.

My bad knee has settled compared to last week so hopefully I will not upset it too much carring the 23L in for bottling.
I will rack it out of the fermenter into the bottling bucket and sugar before carrying it inside on Saturday. If its a warm dry day i could bottle outside to save the carrying but being autum its getting cooler snd damper so im not confident in an outdoor bottling day.

The hydro sample tasted good. Bananaey and some spiceyness so the mangroves jacks M31 dry yeast and the 3L starter did the job. Just over 9.5% as it dropped to 1.002 instead of the target 1.005.
I kept the yeast at the cold end of its range then slowly raised thr temp agter 3 or 4 days. Im curious how different this yeast is at the high end of its range. Plenty of esters etc from a dry yeast which is good since liquid yeast is expensive here.

Saturday is 3 weeks in the fermenter.

The sample tasted good and not too much alcahol taste so this one is a little sneekey...

Its actually the first belgian style beer I have tried (never tasted even a brought one before) but it seams to taste like the descriptions.

I used the gladfields german pilsner and a bit of their their aurora aromatic malt so both malts grown and malted in New Zealand so nice and fresh. Just based it on a couple of other recipes and came up with my recipe in beersmith.
The hops are czech sazz.

Now i have about 18Kg of german style pilsner malt left as I brought a 25KG sack to get the malt for the brew so I guess I should do a few more brews with pilsner malt but being uncrushed it will keep well so no hurry.

I'm thinking one of these with motueka hops might be quite nice but being my first of the style i used hops closer to the style.

Of course along with taking the sample and disposing of it correctly into my stomach I had to check and taste my nelson sauvan smash in the kegerator and its carbing up nice but a bit further to go, Nice and clear though.
I took my motueka toffee pale ale off the gas and shook the keg releasing gas a few times to reduce the carbonation as i managed to over carbonate it. Its been in the keg quite a while but hasnt really cleared up but i did forget the whirlfloc on that one. I took it from over carbed to just under so should be ok.
3 glasses of 5.5% plus the 9.5% sample tube was probably a bit much on a week night especially when i took my nightly pain killer. The one with a limit alcahol label... Oh well they just make each other more effective.

Gave a solemn burial at sea to the Racer 5 clone and Caribou Slobber that both got nasty infections for some reason that escapes me (not sure but think the cat knocked the airlock off of one, and the unseasonal heat the last two weeks helped as well), and brewed up a batch of american strong to replace them in the pipeline. It's in a swamp cooler in the coolest room in the house with a fan pointed at it so should be fine.

Checked gravity on festbier it is nearly done at 1.014

Cut the pine board for my keezer collar.

Ordered 3lbs of hops for my next Neipa Simcoe, Citra, Mosaic

Getting frustrated my my aching knee needing a rest so i played arround in beer Smith with my next brew, a porter based on a recipe i found on the net for a speights old dark clone.

If it wasn't for my knee it would have been brewed today.
After a bad week knee wise i really needed to rest it and let the inflamation settle but did manage the bottling of my belgium tripel yesterday, my first bottling in 9 months after buying kegs. Less annoying when you only need/want to do it for some brews.

Still looking good for my highest ABV brewed yet at 9.5%. Sitting at about 20C a light dusting in the bottom of some bottles already at 24 hours so hopefully it carbs quickly. Threw out some nice yeast from the fermenter but no immediate need for more belgium yeast when i cleaned the fermenter.

I'm a little concerned as i brought new 330ml bottles for this and am carbing to 3vols which i think is probably ok given the glass thickness...

The extra dextrose for carbonation really made me extra cautious about making sure it was well mixed without splashing of course.

Besides the porter i need to get another pale ale of some sort done. Just annoing when pain prevents brewing. Oh well in one month my knee gets nore cortisone so then back to brewing at full speed then.

Definitly want to get another lower abv beer on the go to keep my pipeline flowing and sane.
The belgium is more of a special beer than normal pipeline.
Some might get taken to my brothers for a house warming if its good when carbonated. All aamples tasted great so far.