What I did for beer today

kman6234 said:

Bottled some beer for a competition

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What are you entering?

Kegged RIS and session IPA. Sampled all 4 newly kegged homebrews.

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Ordered a refractometer on amazon to help measure my runnings during fly sparging.

Wasn't planning on it, but bought this when I saw it:
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Redirecting my brewing effort to Berliner Weiße. I've never had Waldmeistersirup in the U.S. before, so I never tried.

Transferred to secondary for the dry hop (the only time I secondary, mind you). Everything looks and smells delicious. I also saved some yeast/trub for later.

CJ-3 said:

What are you entering?

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A saison brewed w/wy3711 and 15% oats. The competition is the malt madness comp.

Currently watching my boil on a Saint Arnold Amber clone. A combination of questionable crush and terrible measurement of water means I'm watching this thing boil a lot longer than I anticipated. But I finally hit my pH, so at least I got that going for me...something peaceful about hearing boiling wort and having a nice beer alone late at night. I love late night brewing.

Advantages to working from home. The things you can do during lunch. Four liter starter going on the stove.

Going to gather my grain bill to get it ground, begin my starter and plan for a relaxing brew day Sunday. May bottle tomorrow also.

Had to drink a couple bottles of Jester King Farmhouse beer... a real chore [emoji6]

Had to put in a new kitchen faucet. Dang older one-lever type is a fistfull of leaks waiting to happen. Cheap Moens no more! took since Thursday to get the old one out, especially with the three tubes going into the center hole, rather than left & right with the knob type. Bought a Delta spotless-stainless steel one with the typical hot-cold levers & the tall, curved faucet made for clearing tall kettles. Gotta sneak in a little brewing-friendly hardware where I can...then beers & French bread pizzas afterwards.

Ive started dusting off and cleaning my brewing gear prepping for a much anticipated brewday.

Mashed in!!

Bought some specialty grains (flaked wheat/corn, C10 and C30, Vienna) and ground my pale malt for tomorrow's brown ale. Later I will clean equipment and sanitize for bottling my saison.

Dry hopped my Rye APA with Nelson Sauvin. Gravity sample tasted great!

Brewed an IPA today

Had my first all grain brew day today. Wish I had done it sooner!

Kegged my American Wheat. Tasted pretty good.

Morning started out with a trip to one of my LHBS and then started brewing another batch of an American Pale Ale my wife loves. Didn't have a free fermenter, but I knew something would work out. Started drinking while heating the strike water and kicked my keg of my last extract kit (I am all grain now), NB caribou slobber, that had been hanging on too long. So... cleaned up the keg, transferred my saison from my carboy to the now empty and clean keg, and cleaned the tap lines while brewing. Finished up my APA and put into my now empty and clean carboy.

On top of all that I pitched some champagne yeast into a 1 gallon glass apple juice container I bought at the super market last week. Really I just wanted a 1 gallon glass jug for some experimental batches... SMaSHs and the like, but figured I might as well ferment that apple juice that came with it.

If only I didn't have to clean up...

Made a trip to the lhbs to pick up a wort chiller and 3 gal carboy with wife and kids in tow. Planned to pick ingredients for a Belgian wit. My wife them decided it woul be nice if I tried making a Scottish ale. I agreed not knowing that it involved a reduction boil and would be tricky to accomplish using a BIAB system. Bottling bucket as an improvised mash tun and a two gallon kettle to hold an reheat sparge water to the rescue

Bottling my Dark Saison

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Brewed a 6 gal AG batch of Redheaded Rye Child Amber. Moved my Edmund Fitzgerald Porter to secondary.
Cleaned up.

Finally made my stir plate. My dad sourced the magnet out of an old hard drive for me almost a year ago. I never procrastinate.....View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1439174332.572161.jpg

Thats a sweet looking stirplate. What is that, an old jewelry box?

Washed these. Gonna finish rebuilding them after dinner and make a keg of starsan.

Little bit of work but at $40/ea after the conversion posts and not including shipping, worth it!

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Today I updated my blog.

Then I breathed a sigh of relief because my Strong Scottish Ale finally started to show signs of fermenting. Nottingham Ale yeast was pretty slow to start on this one, almost a 30 hour lag from pitching to showing signs of action. Now it's roaring away!

Kegged my hefe hoping to have fully carbed beer by friday

got my co2 tank and regulator in my (soon to be) keezer freezerator freezeg kegzer keezerg!

Stared lovingly at my bubbling carboy. A few more days until I cold crash both this one and the one I'm dry-hopping. I should keg by the weekend.

DrunkleJon said:

Thats a sweet looking stirplate. What is that, an old jewelry box?

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Thanks! Yea that's exactly what it is. Sweet find at the goodwill store haha got the box and a charger cable as I only have iPhone ones which don't work well for computer fans. Walked out paying $5

Put in an EvaDry Wireless Dehumidifier and computer fan in my keezer and fermentation chamber to help keep it dry and more consistent temp throughout them.

Brewing today, hoppy amber IPA, didn't start out amber but boiled for 90 minutes and it just keeps getting darker

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Sent the Wife to pick up some Lambic Blend after work today. Not her top priority so she needs reminders...

Built a table and stands for my two 15 gallon barrels. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1439347257.477564.jpg

finsfan said:

Built a table and stands for my two 15 gallon barrels.

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Very nice! Where'd you get your barrels?

Since i finally have a batch fermenting ive started assembling my kegerator

Was about to extend the copper pipe heat exchanger in my kegerator til I realized I didn't have the fittings I need. So I just cleaned my CO2 line and prepped my work area for a Saturday brewing session.

So I kegged a couple batches from 2 weeks ago; a Hazelnut Brown and a Blackberry Wheat. Both were LME LHBS kits so at least the grain was fresh. The jump to AG is soon approaching. Stuck'em on 30 pounds of CO2 a piece and wound it down to 10 48 hours later. Here's hoping it comes out to be worth a ****. I take another pull this weekend and report back.

chisena said:

Very nice! Where'd you get your barrels?

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Keystone homebrew.

I just kegged my first batch!!! Sooooo much better than bottling. Waaaaaay faster, def worth the money. Can't wait to taste it in a couple weeks :rockin:



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