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wingnutbrew

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2 empty carboys, 2 empty kegs, enough grain, hops & yeast to brew about any ale (that I like)....

I have almost a full house in my fermentation chamber and want to keep it at 68F for dryhopping and a stubborn ***** of a Rye Porter (got stuck at 1.024 so dumped onto an S-05 yeast cake 2 days ago...Where there's bubbles there's hope...I hope)

Would love crank out a Black IPA or finish off those Azacca hops :rockin: and do a Mango Pale Ale with the CITRUS yeast from Imperial Organic (never used it yet but me hears of it's tropical fruitiness.)

But alas, with 3 years brewing under my belt I have learned to be patient so all I have left to say is...

If You Can't Brew...Drink!
Cheers :mug:

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Yup! Drink up! I have a coffee stout and biermuncher's centennial blonde in keg 1 and 2 and a new milk stout I have tweaked in conditioning and in the keg queue. I kegged the blonde (hey now) yesterday and I already have an itch to brew yet again my Cascadian Dark Ale. I cant stand having empty fermentation buckets!

My first kid (son) is due anytime now so brewday is on hold. Ill drink till then and watch whats left of college football. Good god is Alabama stupid good.
 
I'm really interested in your fermentation chamber. Guve me some more details on the design. I'm not being a smartass it looks efficient. That's my kinda style
 
Patience really is a virtue in brewing but there sometimes is too much. After about 3 to 5 days in your fermentation chamber your beers are ready to come out to face the world and get themselves warmed up. That warmer temp won't hurt the flavors as any off flavors will have occurred in the fast part of the ferment and at this point warming lets the yeast work better at the cleanup phase. Get the rye porter out of the cold (relatively) and make the yeast work harder at cleaning up any leftover sugars. Dry hopping can happen just fine at room temps too.
 
Patience really is a virtue in brewing but there sometimes is too much. After about 3 to 5 days in your fermentation chamber your beers are ready to come out to face the world and get themselves warmed up. That warmer temp won't hurt the flavors as any off flavors will have occurred in the fast part of the ferment and at this point warming lets the yeast work better at the cleanup phase. Get the rye porter out of the cold (relatively) and make the yeast work harder at cleaning up any leftover sugars. Dry hopping can happen just fine at room temps too.

I am able to control hot and cold in chamber. Actually warmer in there than in the basement right now. That's today's issue as most of my brews start out on the lowest end of yeast temp and raise slowly throughout fermentation. If not for "not" knowing what the flip this rye porter was doing I could have done some type of Belgian that ferments a little warmer.
 
My second kid is due any day now (may not effect brew day because I HAVE to get Christmas beer to people by Christmas). The due date is Dec. 27th but I'm thinking its an early baby.
 
I'm really interested in your fermentation chamber. Guve me some more details on the design. I'm not being a smartass it looks efficient. That's my kinda style

My setup is fairly simple. Installed a salvaged AC unit in a basement window and built a 4' wide 2' deep and 4' tall (32 Cubic Feet) room around it. I'm a superintendent for a small contractor in Nashville so lucky for me most everything was built using salvaged or leftover materials. Metal studs, insulation and 1" blue foam board and most of the structure is against a wall that is 75% underground. Also sets on a concrete ledge so the whole base is insulated well. I've worked in the construction industry for 30 years so at least this was simple for me; I built the whole thing in less than a day. My only real costs were the two items below.

I use the STC-1000 ($10-$15) to regulate the temps and a small heater
Lasko #100 ($16)

This setup works well for Ale temps and I can get it down to around 62F (Yeah I can hear all the people saying, But that's Ambient temperature and not the wort temperature cause when it's fermenting the wort temp rises and blah blah blah) Yeah I get it, but this setup alone has enabled me to get FG's into their targeted range almost each and every time. Except for this complete bastard of a Rye Porter! (which methinks it's the type of yeast I used initially that's the root of my problems) I start cool, a couple degrees under yeast specs and slowly raise temp throughout the week. Summer is great because basement stays about 68-70 but winter is a challenge as it can drop to under 60 so it ties up the chamber. But right now I've got about 20 gallons in kegs and 15 gallons finishing up so I'm good. (Is 9:30am to early to start drinking?)

If I were to bypass the internal thermostat on the AC unit I bet I could easily get this setup down to Lager temps. Seeing I am cooling such a small area I doubt there would be any danger of the unit freezing up.

Also to add, I saw this idea of using an AC window unit somewhere in this forum a few years back and would link to that post if I could find it.

Hope that gives you some insight. Before I moved here I had contemplated cutting a window unit into an old broken chest freezer. You just have to deal with the condensation moisture

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Yup! Drink up! I have a coffee stout and biermuncher's centennial blonde in keg 1 and 2 and a new milk stout I have tweaked in conditioning and in the keg queue. I kegged the blonde (hey now) yesterday and I already have an itch to brew yet again my Cascadian Dark Ale. I cant stand having empty fermentation buckets!

My first kid (son) is due anytime now so brewday is on hold. Ill drink till then and watch whats left of college football. Good god is Alabama stupid good.

Hey, if your wife doesn't have enough respect for you to hold that baby in one more day then who needs her!

Congrats on the kid!
 
My second kid is due any day now (may not effect brew day because I HAVE to get Christmas beer to people by Christmas). The due date is Dec. 27th but I'm thinking its an early baby.

Congrats! And yeah, you'd better get brewing! I've gotta get bottle washing to get my gifts ready.

It's the Most Wonderful Time...to Brew Beer!
 
Congrats! And yeah, you'd better get brewing! I've gotta get bottle washing to get my gifts ready.

It's the Most Wonderful Time...to Brew Beer!

Yeah I got my altered version of Sam Adams white Christmas done tonight and it tastes amazing! I can only imagine what it will be like when its done fermenting. I have a golden ale to go and then ill be done! I started with aging time first and I know the golden ale will probably be great even a week after bottling so they all should be great!
 
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