Who's brewing today?

I know I am. I work half-days every Friday, so it's my brew day. I must say that today is particularly good. It's 80-something out, I'm in the back yard in the shade with a laptop and a bottle of my last batch next to me. I can't think it gets much better.

I'm having a brew weekend! I am making two beers and bottling a third (well, I need to bottle the one so I can dump the other on the yeast cake!)

I'm excited for my weekend already!

wingtipz said:

I know I am. I work half-days every Friday, so it's my brew day. I must say that today is particularly good. It's 80-something out, I'm in the back yard in the shade with a laptop and a bottle of my last batch next to me. I can't think it gets much better.

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I envy you. Can't wait until my next brew day...not this weekend...maybe next but it looks like rain (can they really tell?).

What you brewing?

I'm brewing a mild IPA/Pale of my own design. Something I can enjoy on hot summer days and something my friends who are not hop-heads can enjoy as well.

Beerrific said:

I envy you. Can't wait until my next brew day...not this weekend...maybe next but it looks like rain (can they really tell?).

What you brewing?

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Got my starter started today, should be brewing on sun.

I too am brewing on Sunday...

I think I'm brewing today. Need to run to the Depot first to pick up a few things, then I'm firing up.

Whoo Hooo, good weather. I'm brewing my Kolsch that was rained out last weekend. I made a new starter that I just stepped up for 11 gallons and I stepped up last weeks starter to a gallon so I can divvy it up in 4 22 oz. Corona bottles to save for future batches. Time to fire up the water.

Tomorrow. I'll make a starter today sometime, but doing a big Belgian (a wholly different beer than anything else I've ever done) tomorrow.

the_bird said:

Tomorrow. I'll make a starter today sometime, but doing a big Belgian (a wholly different beer than anything else I've ever done) tomorrow.

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Good luck! I've never done one of those yet either. I've stuck to my standby classic good beers and one Stone IPA Clone that's still aging. I may branch out to experiment after I've built up some stock in the big chest freezer/keg chiller.

I'll be brewing Sunday and again on Wednesday. Doing a Cream Ale and my first ale grain shot at my Dead Guy clone. I'm going to keg at least my Kolsch this weekend too, maybe the Pilsner if I get the time.

Headed for 90F again today, so I think not. My evaporative cooler should be here next week, so I'm working on the electrical and plumbing.

Brewing a Pliny the Elder (or Bastid if you prefer) clone, although it might be a short session after a rather spectacularly bad mash-in.

-D

This is odd. I overheated my mash water, then let it cool. When I mixed in the grains, I was too cool - 146'. So I added 2 gallons of 180' water and that only brought me up 2.5 degrees. So I did a decoction and now I'm in the mid 150's. This is a BIG beer. It's gonna be great, if I get the yeast problem solved.

Can't send the wife out to the HBS with strict instructions on what to buy?

I am cooling my wort right now. It is a honey brown ale recipe I designed. It is my first recipe that I did onmy own so I am hoping it turns out as good as I would like. Everything seems to be in order for now. I pretty smooth session, knock on wood.

A little later today I'll be racking an English Barley Wine into the secondary then brewing up an English Bitter to go into the primary. It's getting too warm so I used that as an excuse to pick up a Sanyo-4912 to keep the fermentor cool. At least until I can't stand looking at it without a tap and do a conversion.

Currently, as i am posting this i just finished cooling my APA and put it downstairs and now working on my Bav. Hefe. Ohhhhh it's going to be good in a few weeks around here.

I brewed orfy's HobGoblin yesterday, and Im doing my house pale tomorrow.

This Weizen is going to be interesting. I mashed with a lot of water, and sparged with more. I yielded close to 10 gallons of wort that I'm boiling down to 5 gallons. I'd BETTER get good efficiency finally.

Cheesefood said:

This Weizen is going to be interesting. I mashed with a lot of water, and sparged with more. I yielded close to 10 gallons of wort that I'm boiling down to 5 gallons. I'd BETTER get good efficiency finally.

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Damnnn! Im about to start heating my sparge water. :rockin:

Changed my mind; this Belgian is gonna need a BIG starter, not something I just brew up tonight. I'm gonna want to step that up a couple of times.

Plus, I know I'm going to kick myself if I don't get the right candi syrup...

Won't be brewing again until Wed (Kölsch) and next Sunday (Hoegaarden clone on a yeast cake), but I bottled my stout Friday night and need to bottle my wee heavy tonight and start to take sg readings on the Belgian and Hefe that I have in Primary from last Sunday.

the_bird said:

Tomorrow. I'll make a starter today sometime, but doing a big Belgian (a wholly different beer than anything else I've ever done) tomorrow.

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Don't forget your friends when it comes time to sample...

Yesterday went pretty well except I came in about a gallon short. I need to find a better solution than the Bazooka T for hops straining. I probably had at least a 1/2 gallon left in the kettle, but the screen was clogged with hops.

I wanted to end up with 5.5 gallons in each bucket, but ended up with only 5 gallons each at 1.052 OG.

Man 4 oz. of hops makes a big mess. Anyway, both buckets are fermenting happily away with WLP029 Kölsch yeast saved from a massive starter made in March. Lag time was less than 6 hours thanks to a good starter.

I put the 20# of spent grain out on the hot rocks in front of the house and it only took 10 minutes before I had a customer. It's all gone this morning. I love it. Instant grain disposal.

Half way through my boil with the Cream Ale I'm doing. Humid as all hell today here in NY.

Hmm, have a day off wednesday so if my wife lets me I'll be brewing my first onw recipe beer. By the way, my second batch turned out really good!

Just finished with a Wee Heavy. Racing the storm clouds as the fermenter was filling. My hose water was 64F so I had to run the kettle real slow to get the CF chiller to get the wort down under 70F. Finished filling 30 seconds after the downpour began.

Got terrible efficiency this batch, around 60%, when I am normally about 72-77%. Added some DME, but barely got to 1.070. I ordered crushed Golden Promise from AHS and I think it could have been crushed better. Also could have boiled it down a bit more, but that storm just looked too menacing.

I had a productive weekend - bottled my Honey Do Blonde Ale yesterday and then bottled my Happy Ass Hefeweizen today and if that wasn't enough I brewed R&J's Triple T Dunkleweizen and pitched it on the hefe yeast cake. If all goes well I'll have 7 cases of fresh and ready home brew for my 4th of July / 42nd birthday party July 7th!!!!!!! (birthday is the 5th but sew watt?).

10 more gallons of my Blue Balls Belgian Wit.

Just ordered for another 10-gallon batch of my Nierra Sevada for next weekend.

I need more cornies....

Bottled 5 gals. of Old Ale into the wee hours of night Sat. Got up early Sun. morn to mash and boil Brewpastor's Water to barleywine. How I got 8.5 gals from 10 total gallons water, I have no idea!?(new to All-graining) Anyways, a long boil it was to get back to 5 gals.
Oh yeah transfered a Belgian wit, with some help from SWMBO in between to make room for the Barleywine.

All in all a very satisfying day

ok, I lied. Jingle Hell is ready to rack to secondary (I normally don't rack wheats to secondary, but this one is a bit darker than I would like so I'm going to let it clear for a week or two), so I'm brewing (as I type) a much more tame Hoegaarden clone to pitch right on the yeast cake.

Kolsch will probably have to wait until Friday, and I still have to find time for that honey porter.

I bottled my Wee Heavy, which I'm calling 'KiltLifter', with help from BrewBabe and the BrewGirls. You can never start them too young. They all actually love helping me bottle. I'm even thinking that the oldest BrewGirl (who's almost 8) is ready to help me with a boil.


BrewBabe (yup, she helps me brew sometimes and although it's a bit hard to tell, she's bottling in this pic) and the BrewGirls



BrewGirl #1 (almost 8 years old)



BrewGirl #3 (3 years old)



BrewGirls #1, #2 (5 years old), and #3 (#2 helped bottle also but no pics that weren't all blurry - BrewGirl #4 is only 3 months old so she was unable to participate - that slacker! )

Beautiful family. I have four girls of my own including twins.

Course, their all over 21 now but I still have a 13 year old at home. You have quite a journey ahead of you.

Most dad's take pride when their kids can "go get them a beer from the fridge". We can take pride in saying "help me brew some beer this weekend sweety..."

BierMuncher said:

Beautiful family. I have four girls of my own including twins.

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Thank you, sir.

BierMuncher said:

You have quite a journey ahead of you.

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I know. I have no idea how I'm going to deal with the teenage years. I own guns, so that may help. :rockin:

BierMuncher said:

Most dad's take pride when their kids can "go get them a beer from the fridge". We can take pride in saying "help me brew some beer this weekend sweety..."

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Amen. I can't wait until they are all old enough to get involved. Of course by that time good ol' dad probably won't be very cool any more

the_bird said:

Changed my mind; this Belgian is gonna need a BIG starter, not something I just brew up tonight. I'm gonna want to step that up a couple of times.

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I'm intrigued, Bird. How exactly do you do this? I've thought of doing this for high gravity brews by doing my starter about 10 days in advance and adding a boiled DME mixture 1-1.5 quarts at a time 3-5 times to even further build the yeast population.

I was a bit worried about the AHS Hoegaarden clone that I kicked up a few notches (I had to since SWMBO came up with the name 'Jingle Hell' for it - I can't make a beer called Jingle Hell and have it be anything under 8% ), but I made my standard starter 2 days beforehand and after an OG of 1.080 it was down to 1.018 today (7 days later) so the WLP400 yeast that I used seems to have been able to handle the high gravity so far.

I'm very interested to hear about how you 'step up' your starters (PM if necessary).

Brewing my kolsch now. I couldn't get around to it last weekend. I had starter problems with the yeast. It was a little old and the starter was taking it's time. I had another strain, and the smack pack didn't swell up very fast. So I took this week to build up the cell count.

sterilsing some bottles (3 30l barrels full of them!) ready for next weekend.

moving my IPA to secondary. Hopefully will be brewing Walkers IPA 2mrw.

Just about to pick up a new (free!) fridge. Wife thinks that it is for food! Ha ha ha

dibby33 said:

Just about to pick up a new (free!) fridge. Wife thinks that it is for food! Ha ha ha

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I own 4 fridges now...

Damn. No brewing at all this weekend. My folks asked me to help extend there patio with cement pavers. Of course it had to be 36C or more.

Hoping to brew an ale version of my check pils tuesday and maybe an IPA on thursday.

Trying to get up the courage to do 10 gallons of dry stout while watching a 3-1/2 year old and a 1-1/2 year old at the same time...