What I did for beer today

Cleaned a couple of kegs, kegged my 30 Below Amber Ale, brewed v2.0 of my Galaxy Pale Ale, pitched it onto half of the BRY-97 yeast cake from the amber.

Made a double IPA and tasted my robust porter.

Bottled a brown ale and washed the yeast.... Drank a few tall boy PBR.

Transferred swmbos sauvignon blanc over to secondary freeing up a 6.5 for something much more important. Took a 12 month sample of a sour saison that has been begging me to bottle it. (Going to give it a few more months.) Cleaned out the wine trub, sanitized, mashing an Irish stout right now. Sipping at the sample, thinking about warmer outdoor brew days.

Currently heating sparge water for an imperial Belgian IPA. Hit my mash temp which makes me happy. The new thermapen is awesome. Can't wait to see how this turns out.

About to dryhop my IPA with cascade and opal.

Bottled a 1 gallon blueberry cider, a 6 gallon hefe, and brewed up a 6 gallon cider.

Bottling my 5 gallon batch of Sweet Stout.

Bottled my Frog Porter. It's just a wee bit hoppy.

Between today and yesterday, picked up a stange glass, picked up a handful of commercial beers (The Bruery Rueuze, Firestone Walker 16th Anniversary (I got really lucky with that one), Dupont Foret, Williamsburg Aleworks Caledonia, Weihenstephaner Vitus), and will be bottling the Robust Porter tonight I meant to bottle 2 weeks ago. Will be bottling my Black IPA and Cal Common some time between tonight and Monday.

I love this thread on the weekends. Always so much more activity!

Pretty productive day. But unfortunately no brewing done. Bottled my "not so San Diego" IPA, de labeled and cleaned a bunch of newly procured 22oz bombers and am now in the middle of overhauling and organizing my brew cave (small corner of my basement)

Cheers

Renewed my BYO subscription.

About to hear the results of my first homebrew comp... come on belgian tripel please win the specialty category

Wow, what a day.

Started by bottling a PM Revvy's Vienna Stout. Tasting good, though it has some bitterness and perhaps diacetyl issues. Hopefully they'll age out in the bottles.

That freed up a better bottle, so I washed and sanitized it and racked my dry mead over. Gravity is around 0.996, and it tastes great, even judging by a lees-laden sample from the dregs.

That freed up a better bottle, so I washed and sanitized it and racked my Bock over. Gravity is 1.016, a bit below the expected 1.017 FG, and it tastes fantastic. If I didn't know it was going to get better when I lager it, I'd bottle it right now.

Busy day, and now nothing to do until January when it's time to brew a Maibock. Didn't even have to open a beer this evening, I had plenty of samples to drink. The great thing about rich, malty beers is that they barely suffer from not being carbonated. I'd drink that Bock all night long even as it is!

LoloMT7 said:

About to hear the results of my first homebrew comp... come on belgian tripel please win the specialty category

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Good luck! And if you don't win that competition you can always mail me a bottle and I'll mail you back a 1st place ribbon in whatever category you want.

Tasted a Porter that I brewed a while ago. Tasted like crap. Needs lots more time.
Hung a new 48" florescent light in the brew cave
Bottled a Belgian Triple

I pitched a nice big yeast starter for a helles lager I did yesterday....

Dried and ground some spent grain from yesterday's brew day and made a loaf of bread and two pizzas with said spent grain. I'm now enjoying a couple glasses of my recently kegged California common. It's going along quite nicely with dinner. And doubling as dessert.

kscarrington said:

Dried and ground some spent grain from yesterday's brew day and made a loaf of bread and two pizzas with said spent grain. I'm now enjoying a couple glasses of my recently kegged California common. It's going along quite nicely with dinner. And doubling as dessert.

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I'd like to hear more about the grain and recipe.

Ordered a mini fridge and dual stage temp controller, both to be here before Christmas. Lager clones on the horizon!

jtkratzer said:

I'd like to hear more about the grain and recipe.

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Same here

Dave37 said:

Good luck! And if you don't win that competition you can always mail me a bottle and I'll mail you back a 1st place ribbon in whatever category you want.

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I ended up taking 2nd in both categories that I entered. My honey ipa for the ipa category and my Belgian tripel for the specialty category.

It wasn't any professional comp or anything just one my lhbs threw together with a local microbrewery. They had 4 categories; light beer, amber, ipa, and specialty. They only had 48 entries total but I'm still happy they enjoyed my brews.

Pm me your address

Hosted a club competition for Barleywines. Good times!

Checked on my oatmeal stout I just brewed yesterday. Yeast are busy! Also re-tried my Irish Red Ale. I tried it at 3 weeks bottle conditioning and was very disappointed in the taste and carbonation. Today at almost 4 weeks it was delicious and fully carbed! I was very surprised at how much it changed in about 5 days.

I used the basic pizza and bread recipes from the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I'm sure you could adapt the basic principles to any existing recipe, but I can get you exact particulars if you'd like.

The bread recipe calls for 2-3/4 cups of flour, I ended up cutting the flour back by 1/4 cup, and used 1/2 cup of the dried/ground spent grain. I used a similar ratio with the pizza. My wife and daughters went for seconds on the pizza, and they have all been cutting off slices of the bread throughout the day - that's a pretty good measure of success in our household! Previously I've used the moist spent grain, which added a little too much texture to both the bread and the pizza. The last time I tried pizza with the family I used the spent grain from a porter, which didn't meld well with the pizza. The pale ale and a blonde ale grain seem to be a good balance.

I'm definitely pleased with the new process, and I will most likely take the existing ground grain and run it through the food processor to make it even more fine. Looks like I'll be doing some more baking this week for some early Christmas gifts. Also from another thread, I soaked some hops in a bottle of olive oil for the past week, and will be distributing small bottles of the hop-infused oil to those who will appreciate it.

Channel66 said:

Same here

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kscarrington said:

I used the basic pizza and bread recipes from the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I'm sure you could adapt the basic principles to any existing recipe, but I can get you exact particulars if you'd like.

The bread recipe calls for 2-3/4 cups of flour, I ended up cutting the flour back by 1/4 cup, and used 1/2 cup of the dried/ground spent grain. I used a similar ratio with the pizza. My wife and daughters went for seconds on the pizza, and they have all been cutting off slices of the bread throughout the day - that's a pretty good measure of success in our household! Previously I've used the moist spent grain, which added a little too much texture to both the bread and the pizza. The last time I tried pizza with the family I used the spent grain from a porter, which didn't meld well with the pizza. The pale ale and a blonde ale grain seem to be a good balance.

I'm definitely pleased with the new process, and I will most likely take the existing ground grain and run it through the food processor to make it even more fine. Looks like I'll be doing some more baking this week for some early Christmas gifts. Also from another thread, I soaked some hops in a bottle of olive oil for the past week, and will be distributing small bottles of the hop-infused oil to those who will appreciate it.

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What's the process for drying and grinding the grain? We've made quite a bit of bread with the grain right out of the mash run after it was drained and it makes a very dense, hearty bread I like having lived in Germany. It's also really good to mix cranberries (dried) or other fruit with it.

I'd like to make a lighter, more airy bread as well and it sounds like you've for something like the since it's working for pizza dough.


And what I did today - bottled my six pack of experimental/accidental sour and finished my fermentation fridge with heat.

Ordered a chugger pump

I set our oven to the lowest temperature it would go to, layered the spent grain on a rimmed cookie sheet, and just kept tossing it until it was dry. I initially put too much on and it was taking too long. Once it was completely dried, I ran it through my Victoria grain mill a couple of times to break it up. I was in a bit of a hurry with several other projects, so I wasn't quite able to get it to a flour-like consistency. That's where I'll try the food processor later this week.

I haven't yet tried any fruits - looks like I'll be trying some dried cranberries later this week. Thanks for the tip!

jtkratzer said:

What's the process for drying and grinding the grain? We've made quite a bit of bread with the grain right out of the mash run after it was drained and it makes a very dense, hearty bread I like having lived in Germany. It's also really good to mix cranberries (dried) or other fruit with it.

I'd like to make a lighter, more airy bread as well and it sounds like you've for something like the since it's working for pizza dough.


And what I did today - bottled my six pack of experimental/accidental sour and finished my fermentation fridge with heat.

Click to expand...

kscarrington said:

I set our oven to the lowest temperature it would go to, layered the spent grain on a rimmed cookie sheet, and just kept tossing it until it was dry. I initially put too much on and it was taking too long. Once it was completely dried, I ran it through my Victoria grain mill a couple of times to break it up. I was in a bit of a hurry with several other projects, so I wasn't quite able to get it to a flour-like consistency. That's where I'll try the food processor later this week.

I haven't yet tried any fruits - looks like I'll be trying some dried cranberries later this week. Thanks for the tip!

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Makes excellent toast with a bit of butter or cheese.

Agreed!! My toast with 2 eggs this morning was as good as it could be with cheese and bacon!

jtkratzer said:

Makes excellent toast with a bit of butter or cheese.

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kscarrington said:

Agreed!! My toast with 2 eggs this morning was as good as it could be with cheese and bacon!

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Wait until the cranberries are in there.

Cleaned my kegerator from a leak
Cleaned all of my kegs
Racked 3 beers to kegs
Started dry hoping an IPA
Put whiskey oak chips on another beer

Just signed up for a 1-credit Intermediate Brewing and Fermentation class for next spring. Figured it's a great way to meet another segment of the local homebrewing population, increase my brewing knowledge, and it's free, so why not!!

Last week I brewed two 5 gallon batches which will be ready just in time for me to give birth to my son and celebrate with a home brew. Haven't brewed or enjoyed beer in 8 1/2 months!

Wrapped my grain mill as a Xmas present to me from my stocks dividend I got haha

NicoleBrewer said:

Last week I brewed two 5 gallon batches which will be ready just in time for me to give birth to my son and celebrate with a home brew. Haven't brewed or enjoyed beer in 8 1/2 months!

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AWESOME Brew Mama. Congratulations on your new baby brewer.
RVB

Thanks!

This afternoon, in preparation for brewday tomorrow & holiday consumption:
*clean 2x mash tuns
*clean & sanitize 5x5gal corny kegs
*keg 2x5gal batches of beer (Best Bitter & Patersbier I)
*clean & sanitize 4x5gal fermenters
*make 2x 1L starters to wake up yeast before pitching tomorrow night (wlp001, West Yorkshire)
*measure & grind grain for brew tomorrow
*measure, sort, & label hops for brew tomorrow
*split gas lines in kegerator to carb/serve 4 kegs at once
*chill/carb Apfelwine & Best Bitter


oh, yeah... and DRINK HOMEBREW!!!

NicoleBrewer said:

Last week I brewed two 5 gallon batches which will be ready just in time for me to give birth to my son and celebrate with a home brew. Haven't brewed or enjoyed beer in 8 1/2 months!

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I hear brewer's yeast is supposed to help some women with breastmilk supply...my wife is trying it, usually going for the lower alcohol hefe's or Belgians where consuming the yeast is either the preferred method of drinking or a common practice.


I kegged the second carboy's worth of Bell's THA clone to make space for the two upcoming batches of beer.