What I did for beer today

CornyKegs 728
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bracconiere said:
you just gave me the idea to use zip ties....if my worm clamps ever actually do start leaking.....
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I've used zip ties for years. They're just as good, never rust, never cut you, never stab you, they never make you ponder "When was the last time I got a tetanus shot?," they're cheap, you always have the right size, they don't require a fillister screw driver* or a nut driver, and if one fails for some reason, you have a sack filled with 87 other zip ties.



* As the first order of business, fillister screw drivers should've been banned when our ancestors first decided to climb down from the trees. Fire, while important, was given priority and we've suffered the dire ramifications of this ruinous choice ever since. I think we all can agree that this calamitous lack of foresight resulted in people that insist upon standing on the left side of an escalator.
 
Big day in the brewery!

I finally sat down and mixed my LODO trifecta blend, with help from member @Brooothru . I decided to test my full LODO rig (well, near as full LODO as I'm willing to go, still using my copper chiller--it's excellent and it's paid for). Throughout my adoption of LODO practices, I've been surprised at how little time and effort they take. I have noticed a difference. I'll concede that it is along the margins, but as a homebrewer I'm never satisfied. If I can get slightly better beer out of ten or twenty minutes of work, you bet I'll do that.

Nevertheless, I ran my low and long/warm and long mash schedule on today's LODO test subject, another Panther Piss adjunct lager. I really like the 145F for 90min followed by 158F with the recirculation rig going for 45min mash schedule. It really highlights the malt in fizzy yellow swill type beers. Yeah, I know this is a violation of LODO scripture, but I don't much care for Helles, and I intend to pirate what I can from LODO and use it for my own stupid ideas. Anyway, the LL/WL mash schedule resulted in a 1.058 fizzy yellow monster.

I kegged a German Pils to free up the fermenter.

All in all, it was a fun day in the brewery and the mop remained dry.
 
bracconiere said:
glad it was fun! as far as the mop....i think that's sci-fi.... :mug:
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You don't know how close I was to complete catastrophe today. When I forced the tubing onto my fermenter's weldless bulkhead, it moved inward toward the wall of the fermenter. I have no idea how that bulkhead was keeping 6.5 gallons of green beer inside and not all over the inside of my fridge and floor.

I gave it a good think before I opened the spigot and decided that the weight of the beer must be holding the O-ring in place. Okay....maybe I can get half a keg out of this?

I grabbed all my towels and spent 20mins staring at that bulkhead while the fermenter drained.

I have absolutely no idea why my fermenter didn't gush 6.5 gallons of beer onto the floor. Absolutely nothing was holding that O-ring in place. It took 2.5 turns to snug it up.

It was a good day and a lucky day.
 
Bramling Cross said:
I've used zip ties for years. They're just as good, never rust, never cut you, never stab you,
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I…challenge that statement. I’ve had a good number of zip ties cut and stab me in the past. Lesson learned, don’t be lazy cutting off the tails.
 
Bramling Cross said:
Do you seriously think I enjoy doing chemistry for the good of the community?
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actually most home chemists do it to screw kids over....but this is a homebrew forum, and saving a half keg is important. otherwise you'd end up drinking the devil's brew....putting a hole in the counter....
 
bracconiere said:
actually most home chemists do it to screw kids over
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My father is a chemist. When his mother died, we both flew back to Nevada and spent a few days putting her house in order. During that time we spent some time getting to know each other again, healing old wounds, and speaking more honestly to each other than we had ever done before. We really bonded during that time.

On our final night in Lovelock, Nevada, my father let it slip. He admitted that chemistry wasn't real and it was a prank that the Alchemists decided to pull on high school students.

He swore me to secrecy, but with a trained soothsayer as a son, he should've know better.
 
Bottled a 1939 Fuller's Old Burton Extra. Harvested its Pub. Bottled a peppermint session mead.

Now all my primary fermenters are empty. Basement's at 60°F. Getting antsy, this here's no time for empty fermenters.

20220213_130732.jpg
 
Cleaned a keg and filled it with my old school IPA, hydro sample tasted good looking forward to it once carbed.

Made a batch of slants, started with 49 but one of the jars tipped over inside the pressure cooker so only got 42. First time this has happened, either had too much water or not enough jars to keep thing stable while boiling.

Been behind on slant maintenance so waking up three different stains this time, WLP006 Bedford Alle, brewlabs CC and F40. Have not figure out what to do with the yeasts yet but will probable do one batch and split it three ways.
 
Bottled about 5.75 gallons of Red-X SMaSH ale today, 58 12oz long necks. OG was 1.050, FG 1.013, for ~4.9% ABV. Hydro sample tasted great, nice malt backbone, just enough EKG to balance. Got 74% attenuation from S-04. The sample had a bit of a floral aroma, not in a bad way. Not sure where that came from. I don't recall ever getting that from S-04 and I had kept ferm temps around 64. Maybe the hops?

It's not a true-to-form Irish red, but don't care. That's going to be my St. Paddy's brew anyway.
 
Transferred the beer to the serving keg. Tonight was the smoothest closed transfer I’ve had to date, so I’m excited about that. Set the regulator to 45psi to quick carb it to fill a bottle to take to the homebrew club meeting tomorrow night.
Cleaning the transfer lines now but I’ll wait till tomorrow to clean the fermenting keg & the keg that just kicked as well as the faucet & line too. I don’t feel like being up all night plus tomorrow it will be warmer weather to do the cleaning in the garage.
 
Not much today, other than sipping on some homebrew and listening to the lager (on Imperial Urkel, sitting at 54 degrees) currently in the ferment fridge happily blorp away; you know it's a good one when you can hear it blorping through a closed refrigerator with some good Celtic tunes going loudly as well. We need to add "blorp" to the list of brewing words, I'm thinking. Also it's fun to say. Blorp blorp blorp.
 
Dumped and cleaned a fermentor, pretty sure it was a mead. It smelled nice, but was sitting on lees for idk how long, and didn’t taste good, nor did I think I could fix it or blend it with something to make an enjoyable beverage. Freeing up vessels for new brews.
 
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aharri1 said:
One of my buddies was nice enough to let me borrow his 20 gallon SS Brew tech Mash tun to do it!
View attachment 759934
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How did you get to 88% attenuation with that yeast and without using Corn Sugar please? With that grain bill I'm guessing you did a 5G batch to hit that OG? Also only 1 package of yeast or did you do a starter? And Finally what was your target water profile? Thanks!
 
HazyBeer said:
How did you get to 88% attenuation with that yeast and without using Corn Sugar please? With that grain bill I'm guessing you did a 5G batch to hit that OG? Also only 1 package of yeast or did you do a starter? And Finally what was your target water profile? Thanks!
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Escarpment Labs Cali ale yeast with a 4L starter and 3 grams of wyeast nutrient blend at the last 10 of boil. I also use 1 gram of nutrient in the starter. It was a 5 gallon batch. I use ward labs and sent my water off that was filtered with a carbon filter from home and matched that to the dark ale/beer water profile in beersmith. Hope that helps !!
 
Set up samples for the young man dating my oldest to taste. Since he grew up on Bud Light, I wasn’t sure how he would fare.

1. He wasn’t afraid to give his honest opinion of how he thought things tasted.
2. He really liked the wild cider and the stout, two widely divergent flavor profiles.
3. His taste buds are still maturing, so he gets a pass on the others that he found too mucho.
4. She likes him a lot, so my opinion really doesn’t make much difference anyway, lol.
 
JAReeves said:
Set up samples for the young man dating my oldest to taste. Since he grew up on Bud Light, I wasn’t sure how he would fare.

1. He wasn’t afraid to give his honest opinion of how he thought things tasted.
2. He really liked the wild cider and the stout, two widely divergent flavor profiles.
3. His taste buds are still maturing, so he gets a pass on the others that he found too mucho.
4. She likes him a lot, so my opinion really doesn’t make much difference anyway, lol.
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He likes a stout so that's a good sign. J/K
 
Brewed a batch of my WF lager recipe that is currently fermenting in the house; just checked, has a very thick bread-dough looking krausen but airlock isn't bubbling (yes lid & airlock are on right). Hoping this one lives up to the hype and is done quick; nothing currently in the kegerator that isn't hoppy or cider.
 
Stared at my new brew still fermenting / clarifying for over 1.5 months. Found a Czech Dark Recipe. Tomorrow will be the day for a taste. Only ingredient I added was Belgium Candi. I am REALLY not sure about what flavors that sugar might infuse. The original recipe didnt call for sugar at all but its Czech and sugar is no big deal to those people. I know, I've been there. They really enjoy JUST the beer grains, hops and prob the yeast. Anyway, tomorrow ill have a better idea. Bottoms up folks.
 

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