What I did for beer today

Kegged the blonde on Centennial and Citra dry hops. Hopefully after a cold crash and force carb mid-week I can start tapping it on Friday.

My low-alcohol pale ales seem to be going fast in this heat, so I am putting other beers on the to do list for later and am planning another blonde ale brewday for tomorrow.

Made my annual Labor Day Fresh Hop ale with Northern Brewer. Northern Brewer ripens first, and I picked off 1.5 pounds of the bigger ripe cones. this year tried a simple

Kegged the Baltic porter and shoved into the back of the kegerator where it will lager for ~2 months.

Did an annual Labor Day Fresh Hop recipe with my earliest ripening Norther Brewer. This year tried 4# DME, 1# flaked barley, a couple ounces of melanoidum and a cup of honey with about 1 ounce of commercial N Brewer hops for 30 minutes. At flame out, dumped in the 1.5 pounds of fresh hops and let that steep as I slowly cooled the wort down to 180F. Pitched US-05 for a clean yeast.

Trying this way after seeing a video where someone did this. Maybe a little less vegetal overtone and a bit more fresh hop. Dunno? Initial taste was good. Will try again in a week when it's largely fermented out.

My experience these past few years is I'm never sure what the end product will be like. I have had batches that were sickeningly sweet, so if that's the case, will dry hop or hop tea with commercial hopes. Also planning to pick some cones for dry hopping in about a week.

kmarkstevens said:

Did an annual Labor Day Fresh Hop recipe with my earliest ripening Norther Brewer. This year tried 4# DME, 1# flaked barley, a couple ounces of melanoidum and a cup of honey with about 1 ounce of commercial N Brewer hops for 30 minutes. At flame out, dumped in the 1.5 pounds of fresh hops and let that steep as I slowly cooled the wort down to 180F. Pitched US-05 for a clean yeast.

Trying this way after seeing a video where someone did this. Maybe a little less vegetal overtone and a bit more fresh hop. Dunno? Initial taste was good. Will try again in a week when it's largely fermented out.

My experience these past few years is I'm never sure what the end product will be like. I have had batches that were sickeningly sweet, so if that's the case, will dry hop or hop tea with commercial hopes. Also planning to pick some cones for dry hopping in about a week.

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Sweet Mother if Mary that's a lot of hops! I like hops even though I'm not a hop head but I would think that many hops would burn your taste buds out forever!

Officially started the build of "K3", my third keezer (RIP K1. And K2 is on life-support with periodic r134a top-ups).
It'll be a 14.8cf unit on a rolling dolly like K1 and K2, but rather than run all the plumbing and wiring inside the oem lids as before, I'm building my own this time.

This afternoon I planed and squared up the 8' 2x8s for the dolly in my wee shop...






Was going to keep going but after a close inspection of the bottom of the freezer I spent the rest of the day doing a design revision to account for the way the chest freezer was built - which resulted in a decidedly non-uniform bottom.

Rather than insert the compressor and bolt it to an internal base plate in the conventional manner which would have maintained the otherwise flat bottom from end to end, this compressor was already attached to its plate - which was then attached to the underside of the base chassis. And as the plate has all kinds of bent "ribbing" for strength which project almost 1/4" below the rest of the chassis bottom, I'm going to have to account for that lest the whole thing sit at an angle.

But I have a solution...

Cheers!

Brewed 5 gal of a Sierra Madrid pale ale. Happy with OG, and fermentation is started. Racked a black ipa to second ferment. Adjusted CO2 on a Belgian Dubbel. Tap should be ready to pour in 2 days. Racked a Stout to a 5 gallon bourbon barrel I got from a brewery in MN. First time doing this, we’ll see what happens. Started 6 gallons of apple cider to ferment. Hoping for a quick turn around to put on tap for the Mrs. blew a day on all of this. Ok, gone fishing. Cheers.

Installed a rack and racked all of my Son's birthday beer(turns 21 in Jan 2021)
Per his request, and he helped, it was a 3-year blended gueze with dregs from different year Cantillon(the place where he first ordered a beer).
So quite the project.. All 750s corked and capped.. with some set aside for competition..

@day_trippr , Nice little wood shop you have. And kudos for a lot of shop built accoutrements. You really need a table saw ;-).

Brewed some. A Wheat Pale Ale.

RCope said:

@day_trippr , Nice little wood shop you have. And kudos for a lot of shop built accoutrements. You really need a table saw ;-).

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Thank you for the kind words It's small but more or less functional with the big tools on casters.

When my father passed I brought his table saw over to see if it would work out in place of my radial arm saw but there just isn't enough room to really use it well. My shop is barely 15 x 12 with a chunk of that taken up by the benches, and that 15' means I can't rip a full 8x4 panel no matter the saw table. For stuff like that I use horses and a saw guide with a Skil-style saw. Best I can manage...

Cheers!

Got the basic dolly fabricated today. After cutting the squared stock to size I ran it through the router to cut a rabbet on the inside that the freezer carcass will rest in.



Here's what I was up against: that stupid compressor mounting plate attached under the cabinet. The tops of the ribs project 7/16" below the cabinet rails, so I had to accommodate that by cutting that area of the rabbet deeper.



The extra relief is shown here...



I'm home alone this week and my go-to neighbor is camping with his kids, so I had to come up with a way to get the ~150 pound freezer on top of the dolly for a test fit. Took awhile but I figured it out, and was pleased to see all my math worked









As the dolly will be painted (white) I didn't try to get cute ending the rabbets before blowing out the ends of the long rails. The pine end grain wasn't going to stand up to a bunch of chisel work anyway. I'll cut and glue fillers for those gaps and once painted nobody will ever know

Tomorrow I'll be adding the electronics drawers, corner bracing and casters...

Cheers!

Brewed the blonde ale as planned. Broke up some 1# bags of hops into 1oz vac-sealed bags.

seanjwalker1 said:

Sweet Mother if Mary that's a lot of hops! I like hops even though I'm not a hop head but I would think that many hops would burn your taste buds out forever!

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fresh hops are not the same. First, plan on 5-7 ounces of fresh hops as the equivalent of dry hops. Second, wet hops in my experience are different and not as strong tasting (could be my location in Seattle?). I'm no hop head, but 1.5# of wet hops is not "too" much.

Will see as it ages....

Cleaned some more bottles. Might just have enough to bottle this coming weekend. If not then the cider sits another week till I do have enough.

Used my homemade gravity closed transfer system on my ebbegarden kveik hazy pineapple IPA!

Bottled MO/EKG smash.
Brewed Idaho 7 smash.
Compulsively checking and logging my tilts maiden voyage in last Fridays Calista pils.

Put the Blonde on 30PSI@36F to fast carb and cold crash. Made up a 5G batch of Pellegrino-style mineral water and giving it the same treatment as the Blonde Ale. Tended the yeast farm. Sniffed airlocks every time I had to go into the garage for anything. If Heaven smells in any way different than a hoppy fermenting ale at high krausen, I don't want to go.

JAReeves said:

Put the Blonde on 30PSI@36F to fast carb and cold crash. Made up a 5G batch of Pellegrino-style mineral water and giving it the same treatment as the Blonde Ale. Tended the yeast farm. Sniffed airlocks every time I had to go into the garage for anything. If Heaven smells in any way different than a hoppy fermenting ale at high krausen, I don't want to go.

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should be a Airlock Sniffers Anonymous treatment program for us! My wife thinks there's something wrong and disturbing when I keep sniffing the airlock!!

I had my wife sniff the airlock yesterday and she was like, "so?" But then, she always asks me if I have time to brew (or make wine or cider) each weekend, so she's a keeper.

Ordered a TILT and dug out an old cell phone to use as a wifi bridge.

Kegged a Zombie Dust. First batch all-grain batch, first keg. (Found a $170 Hotpoint 4.1 chest freezer at Lowe's last week.) Excuse the tiny juice glass. I was testing carbonation but I wasn't done working for the day and I knew that if I brought over a pint glass I'd 100% fill it.

Mishap 1: Hooked up the C02, tested connections, and put it in the freezer. Checked two days later: Zero pressure in the tank.

Mishap 2: Swapped in a new tank. Got a face-full of beer from a leaking beer-side quick-connect.

The cheap clamps that were used on some ends of the hoses weren't sealing right. Must have missed this during Mishap 1. I took the clamps off and put on hose clamps. Seems fine now but I'm keeping an eye on it. First pint this evening was great. Goodbye bottling.

johndan said:

Kegged a Zombie Dust. First batch all-grain batch, first keg. (Found a $170 Hotpoint 4.1 chest freezer at Lowe's last week.) Excuse the tiny juice glass. I was testing carbonation but I wasn't done working for the day and I knew that if I brought over a pint glass I'd 100% fill it.

Mishap 1: Hooked up the C02, tested connections, and put it in the freezer. Checked two days later: Zero pressure in the tank.

Mishap 2: Swapped in a new tank. Got a face-full of beer from a leaking beer-side quick-connect.

The cheap clamps that were used on some ends of the hoses weren't sealing right. Must have missed this during Mishap 1. I took the clamps off and put on hose clamps. Seems fine now but I'm keeping an eye on it. First pint this evening was great. Goodbye bottling.

View attachment 697628

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Others probably know more than I, but don't we get better results if the CO2 is outside of the keezer/kegerator?

<Kettle of Fish, Opened>

JAReeves said:

Others probably know more than I, but don't we get better results if the CO2 is outside of the keezer/kegerator?

<Kettle of Fish, Opened>

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IDK--it's in there now because I haven't actually modified the freezer yet and the C02 line seemed to big to try to tuck under the rubber gasket on the lid without causing a lot of cooling loss or restricting the C02 line. Maybe I'm wrong--I could experiment. (This whole thing has been an experiment.)

Went to bottle a dunkels weissbier, but discovered a pellical. Soooo, Dopplebock was bottled.

Opened a package with a ball valve and ss braided hose for my mast tun cooler.

Finally got to brew! Made an oatmeal brown ale and then made dog treats out of the spent grain. Haven't brewed since March so it feels good!

JAReeves said:

I had my wife sniff the airlock yesterday and she was like, "so?" But then, she always asks me if I have time to brew (or make wine or cider) each weekend, so she's a keeper.

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I keep making my wife come down to sniff the airlocks or watch the changes in the fermenter as the krausen develops then drops. To some extent she humors me, but in others she is interested in it.

johndan said:

IDK--it's in there now because I haven't actually modified the freezer yet and the C02 line seemed to big to try to tuck under the rubber gasket on the lid without causing a lot of cooling loss or restricting the C02 line. Maybe I'm wrong--I could experiment. (This whole thing has been an experiment.)

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As long as you have beer on tap, it can't be wrong.

Tried my hand at labeling some of my beers. My cutting skills need honing, but overall, I'm pleased with how they turned out! I desgined them on beerlabelizer.com, painted milk onto the back of the labels, and then smoothed them onto the bottle. We'll see how they hold up!

Hoppy2bmerry said:

discovered a pellical.

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Ouch.

day_trippr said:

shop is barely 15 x 12

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"LUXURY!"

All "Four Yorkshiremen" aside, that is nice setup. My shop area is longer but more narrow and all operations must be painfully planned out in advance.
(not a great shot of the shop)

balrog said:

Ouch.

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Luckily a small batch, but yeah, not happy.

balrog said:

"LUXURY!"

All "Four Yorkshiremen" aside, that is nice setup. My shop area is longer but more narrow and all operations must be painfully planned out in advance.
(not a great shot of the shop)
View attachment 697757

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"Ah, but we had it rough..." Love Monty Python!
Anyway, this picture and discussion got me thinking, so here it is, another zombie thread reborn...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/pic-of-your-homebrew-workshop.44958/
Cheers!

Hoppy2bmerry said:

Went to bottle a dunkels weissbier, but discovered a pellical. Soooo, Dopplebock was bottled.
View attachment 697483

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All good Hoppy. I transferred what was supposed to be my British Golden but color suggest more a British Brown...Its got English malt, English hops so I'll just be hoppy..ah, I mean happy....to settle on English style type beer....ale....as long as it's drinkable!

Tuesday was "Vaccination Day" - in the afternoon I got whacked with both this year's flu shot in one shoulder and the second round of Shingrix in the other, both IM. Woke up Wednesday morning, both shoulders unhappy. Did what I could but it wasn't a lot. Much better today, thanks

First to-do was cutting openings for the electronics drawers in the back. Made a template and routed them out. Big fan of 1/4" MDF for templating - basically cut a rectangular frame sized for the largest opening, then fill it in with custom symmetric size pieces to match the task. I used this template four times so far on this job and it'll get used at least three more times before the build is done.



Et voila.



I've been a huge fan of the Kreg pocket screw system since Rockler first carried it forever ago. It's so freakin' handy.



I used it on the cross-members with full-extension drawer slides attached and used my backup system controller to check the fit.





Next, corner-bracing and casters...



Finished the day cutting and gluing plugs to fill in end gaps from the various rail routings. Tomorrow I'll sand and prime the beast and probably get one finish coat on it before the day is done. Then it'll be on to building the lid...

Cheers!

fwiw, y'all have only seen my shop from the door end, so here are a few shots from the other end.
Including the wood racks and air scrubber mounted to the ceiling there isn't much unused space...









Yeah, that's all pretty OC right there

Cheers!

just looking at that second shot, I feel like I could be in a local hardware store...yeesh!!

Knightshade said:

just looking at that second shot, I feel like I could be in a local hardware store...yeesh!!

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That's definitely a fine selection of grollings and fleeling wire that @day_trippr has there*.

*

My motto is "If you can name it and I have one I can find it in less than 60 seconds"