What I did for beer today

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Over the past week... calibrated my iSpindel, replaced the plastic vegetable bin top floors of both fermenter fridge and keggerator with plywood, kegged the dry Irish stout, and started eyeing the hops trying to figure out when the pale ale should be made.
 
Racked a London brown ale onto some pecans I've had soaking in bourbon for the past week.
OG - 1.054
Racking gravity - 1.010
Pretty close to FG but we will see if the bourbon pecans have anything to give. Also had a very good taste. If anyone wants the recipe let me know.
20180730_201431.jpeg
20180730_201436.jpeg
 
CerealKillerStout said:
Lol, jealous of my beer room/wife's guest room. I just like to keep my beer comfortable while fermenting
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I would be in mortal fear that one of the cats would jump up on the bed and cause the carboy to tip. Racking happens on hard stable surfaces here.... on the other hand, if it works for you, good on ya.
Beer looks amazing, btw. I’ve been wanting to try a pecan porter for a few years now.
 
Dry-hopped an IPA and took a gravity reading/taste test.

First brew in a new kettle and new hoses (was starting to suspect my old keggle/hoses/fittings were contributing to a few not so great batches even with what I thought was proper sanitation) and the flavor is great so far. The aroma is the best I've ever gotten in a beer so I'm pumped and still have another dry hop to go.
 
i need a goddamn ScrubMaster 3000. I realized today that my procrastination sucks and I need to just go ahead and put one together.

Had an pretty intense fermentation from some trappist high gravity yeast and it made an absolute mess inside and out.
 
air lock.jpg
I made an extract Belgian Tripel today based on the Westmalle Tripel Trappist Ale. Filled the airlock about four hours ago so I'm happy to see the Starsan foaming like this. I've learned to keep a cup or two of Starsan on hand to refill the airlock as needed. The room where it's fermenting (the work room because I don't want my cats jumping on it) is at 70F.
I sprinkled two packs of T-58 directly onto the beer after getting the temperature down to about 75F.
This one has an OG of 1.087. I'm hoping to see it finish at 9.3% ABV. I've made it before so I know I'll really like it. Surprisingly (or maybe not) this style is preferred by almost all of my relatives.
I tried the actual Westmalle but can't say I was very fond of it. I drank it (of course) and tried to see the good things about it.
Anyway, this is my first photo.View attachment 581779
 
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Got my lhbs to grind up my grain for my 3rd attempt at Da Yooper's pale ale (using comet and 007 hops). Also had him hold a pack of wy1450!
 
Kegged up my American Strong yesterday that will go as an entry to the Washington State Fair this weekend. Entries are only $3.50, so I'm going to enter that, my last lager as an International lager (doesn't fit the American lager style from what I can tell), my stout as an American Stout, and what I call my Bastard Lite as an American Amber. Finally got around to reading the BJCP style list, holy poopy there's a lot of styles out there. Now I've just got to make labels and dig up eight 12's from all over the house....
 
beermanpete said:
Labels for a competition entry? I thought that was not allowed.
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Good point. The rules they posted didn't say no labels, just to have the entries rubber-banded to the bottles. Darn it now I have to go look again. I know I probably won't win a ribbon (maybe the lager, it's truly spectacular in my biased opinion) but I'm looking forward to the scoresheets. I've only entered one competition so far, and I entered before the entry beer was finished. It turned out crappy but I went ahead and sent it in anyway. Horrible score. The four I'm going to enter are very good so I should at least get decent scores.
 
G'day, I'm running out of grog. So, I will start another batch in a day or so. What do I do? Will I have 3 x 25 lire fermenters. They each get filled with 21 litres of water, 7 kilos of white sugar and the packet of yeasr. I try to keep my starting temp to around 30 degrees which is recommended by the yeast package. Then I let it do its thing for about 10 days. When the time is up, I fill my 50 litre boilier with around 35 litres of wash - that is 1 and a half 25 litre fermenters, and I start the boiling process. After about 1 hour the temp of around 78 degrees has been reached and I let her boild for around 1/2 hour longer. Then I start my production process. 50 to 100 mlitres of the first lot goes into the drain. The next 100 mlitres is stored for the next time, and then the 4 to 5 litres which is collected is the Keep it LIQUOR.
It has been comming out at 95 percent ever since I first started brewing which is about 10 years ago.
The Vodca is fine, and it mixes well with the essences I purchase.
Cheers.
 
One thing I've learned in almost three years of brewing, it's a constant learning process. Today I learned that I don't need to add salts to my already good tap water. I've been doing it for the last several brews, and my efficiency has been crap. Mashing on my House IPA this morning, and didn't use them...gravity at 40 minutes into the mash a very nice 1.065. Since I kinda overdid it on the strike water (I like a thin mash) I should wind up with a Double IPA out of it. Also running the recirc pump at full blast rather than ramped down, seems to me it should pull more sugars out and it is. It's a great brewday!!!
 
seatazzz said:
One thing I've learned in almost three years of brewing, it's a constant learning process. Today I learned that I don't need to add salts to my already good tap water. I've been doing it for the last several brews, and my efficiency has been crap. Mashing on my House IPA this morning, and didn't use them...gravity at 40 minutes into the mash a very nice 1.065. Since I kinda overdid it on the strike water (I like a thin mash) I should wind up with a Double IPA out of it. Also running the recirc pump at full blast rather than ramped down, seems to me it should pull more sugars out and it is. It's a great brewday!!!
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Wound up with 1.072 going into the fermenter. Dumped a crap ton of hops in for flavor and aroma, and will get dry hopped as well in about 5-6 days. Learning is fun!!!
 
Got my grains ground and ready for next weeks brew session, and it's a bastardized version of my California common. Had a slight mixup at the lhbs with the final grist being 8# pale, 1# Munich and 1.5# C-60. It was planned at 1.5# Munich and 1# C-60. Should end up good, regardless.
 
Made preparations for brewing tomorrow: yeast starter, ground the grains, etc. Gonna do a honey rye saison.
 
Club mead day - mixed up some honey and pitched my yeast in the morning.

Corked a gallon of 5 month old Flanders on blueberries

Brewed 5.5gals of the Rare Barrel golden sour to start up the next long term aging project. Used the dregs from the Flanders as my starter.
 
Made my first ever starter last night. It boiled over, and I need to come up with a better way to cool it than an ice water bath, but it's propagating nicely now:
1533489579924~2.jpeg
 
Looked at my brew notebook and saw nothing brewed since 5/28. Freaked and grabbed a gallon of apple juice, added a cinnamon stick and 3/4 cup of brown sugar, 1 tsp boiled bread yeast and tossed some Notty from a couple months back. We will see how long the yeast takes to get 'er goin'. At least something may be fermenting now.
 
jiMithing83 said:
Made my first ever starter last night. It boiled over, and I need to come up with a better way to cool it than an ice water bath, but it's propagating nicely now:View attachment 582283
Click to expand...
As far as the boil over goes, fermcap is your friend :)
Same thing happened to me when I started using flasks, and the fermcap helps immensely.
 
BrewMan13 said:
As far as the boil over goes, fermcap is your friend :)
Same thing happened to me when I started using flasks, and the fermcap helps immensely.
Click to expand...
unfortunately I didn't have any, canola oil did the trick pretty well though... thank god for google, I would have been scared it would affect flavor but after seeing a bunch of people who have used it with no off flavors I went for it.

Threw the starter in my saison last night around 10, already had airlock activity 90 minutes later and this morning it is easily the most active I've ever seen my airlock. How did it take me so long to start using starters?
 
Today I stopped by Morebeer Homebrew Supply in Concord, CA on my way home from Santa Cruz. Been to this store a few times now and it always has everything I need and the people are always very helpful. Anyways, picked up some
2-row, Vienna, flakes Oats and other stuff. Can’t wait
To brew my next batch of beer.
 
I cleaned some bottles, getting ready for tomorrow. One was a bear! Just one. I used Oxi-Clean and that took care of it. My setup is--well, take a look! It's boring unless you make beer. I got them done in less than an hour.
dirty bottles cases.jpg
clean bottles.jpg
 
Rearranged my misc equipment (extra gaskets, spigots, airlocks, etc., hopspider, hop bags and such) into a container to free up cabinet space for my new vacuum sealer and stir plate.
 

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