What I did for beer today

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I thought it was a requirement to drink from the measuring tube? Promptly quaffed this after recording this value today!!!

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Racked to keg today. This one sucked...I ended up having to switch out the lid with floating dip tube because...I did a #*\>#£¥]*#% job tightening the bulkheads, which decided to loosen a bit after the FDT decided that it didn’t want to sink and only suck down beer from the surface, resulting in a lot of transferred foam, co2, foam...crappy gurgling noise...over...and over...tilt fermenter, ok good...nope..tilt fermenter more...ok that only gave you 15 seconds sucker....🤬 All that work to keep o2 out and had lapse for a bit during transfer...bah.

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Sitting here after an 11-hour day at work thinking out my New Year's Day recipe. Asking for opinions here; going for a nice APA with a strong malt backbone, and hops to hold it up.

10lbs two row
2lbs light Munich
1lb Carapils
1/4lb Crystal 40

Mashed about 150. Hops would be 1oz Cascade at FWH, then 1oz Cascade at 10, 5, and possibly flameout, dunno yet. Whadda yall think about this? I've got lots of Cascade and can up the amounts if needed. I don't want it to be a hop bomb, just a nice balanced ale. I did a similar recipe a few months ago without the Munich and liked it, although it was initially quite bitter but mellowed out into a nice one. Thinking the Munich addition would add some maltiness to counteract the hops.
 
Immocles said:
Also forgot the wife had a zoom appointment at 11:30. Apparently that’s a bad time to be blasting RATM in the basement?
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I dunno I can see it working! Meeting with the boss and just happens to be “**** you I won’t do what you tell me!!!” in the background. Perfect passive aggression! 🤣
 
Immocles said:
Brew day. Back to work next week so I figured I’d get one last one in 2020.
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Also forgot the wife had a zoom appointment at 11:30. Apparently that’s a bad time to be blasting RATM in the basement?
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Could be worse-I had to explain Tool to my boss one day while I was grading student work.
 
working from home due to covid I have started listening to music to make up for the isolation. On a call with one of my account reps and he asks “is that Janes Addiction in the background.” +1 for astute ears :)

kegged my spiced saison today (coriander and peppercorns). was concerned I may have pulled it a bit early but gravity reading had me down to 1.005 where recipe was predicting it would finish around 1.01. Means I have a nice 6.7% saison to warm myself with once it carbs up.
 
A little late to the party on this one... Last night we had a couple pours of my latest batch from my first run at kegging. I don't know how I could ever go back to bottling. The batch tasted great and was even greater to have it without having to wait several weeks for bottle conditioning/carbonating. This batch was a chocolate coffee stout. I used whole beans from a local orchard (Delicious Orchards for anyone in NJ). Their maple nut crunch coffee sounded and smelled too good not to incorporate into a beer and it surely delivered. This batch will not last long.
 
gbbeer said:
I don't know how I could ever go back to bottling.
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Congrats! If you’ve never used one before, pick up one of those Blichmann beer guns and a double-valve regulator! You can hook the beer gun up to the 2nd side, connect it to keg’s out, and use it to purge then fill bottles with already-carbonated beer. Super easy and no sediment! I love mine!
 
Nick&Worty said:
Congrats! If you’ve never used one before, pick up one of those Blichmann beer guns and a double-valve regulator! You can hook the beer gun up to the 2nd side, connect it to keg’s out, and use it to purge then fill bottles with already-carbonated beer. Super easy and no sediment! I love mine!
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Any chance you could post a picture of what you mean? I have a beer gun but have not used it yet.
 
JAReeves said:
Any chance you could post a picture of what you mean? I have a beer gun but have not used it yet.
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Sure thing! Here's the gun all connected. The line on the back of the gun connects to the keg's out side, and the bottom of the gun connects to the 2nd CO2 valve. When you use it, you just put the gun all the way down in an empty bottle (all sanitized of course) and use the thumb pad (located near where a safety would be on a real pistol) for a few seconds to purge oxygen from the bottle, then pull the trigger until the bottle overflows, then cap. Done! When you pull the gun out of the overflowed bottle, it will create the perfect amount of headspace in the bottle. Sometimes m'lady has friends that want a 6 pack. This makes it easy. :) . Most of the problems people tend to have with too much foam = over-carbonated kegs. In my experience, if my CO2 is at the right level in the keg, it works beautifully.
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I've had a busy 48hrs.

Yesterday, I kegged a Czech Pils (or whatever Gordon Strong wants us to call it these days, I can't keep track anymore) and made a Vienna Lager. Today, I did a repeat of the thing I made last month: 70% Barke pils, 30% corn, an oz. of Clusters split between 90 and 5min, with WY2112. I don't recall the last time I slaughtered a keg within three weeks. Suffice it to say, I found it to be rather pleasant so I turned around and made it again.
 
Is there a name for the beer you make when you look upon shelves of random leftover grains from various brews, and decide to hooch it all together with leftover hops and whatever random yeast is surviving in the fridge? Is there a name for that?
 
Nick&Worty said:
Is there a name for the beer you make when you look upon shelves of random leftover grains from various brews, and decide to hooch it all together with leftover hops and whatever random yeast is surviving in the fridge? Is there a name for that?
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A "kitchen sink beer," sir.;)

In this case, it's not a kitchen sink beer (although I can certainly see how you might arrive at that conclusion). I've always had a soft spot for Anchor Steam. I love the beer, I love the Fritz Maytag story, as a West Coast native living on the East Coast, I love the idea of hardscrabble 49ers figuring out a way to make beer in less than ideal conditions.

Bluntly, I'm a dewy-eyed Anchor Steam fanboi.

Nevertheless, I'm a bit skeptical that those hardscrabble 49ers were quaffing expensive 2-row and (imported?) C40, much less enjoying a hop variety that wouldn't be created for a further 85 years. I've always thought it much more likely that they were guzzling something that was 6-row and corn based with a light (due to expense) touch of Clusters. I haven't done any serious research on this topic, so this is mere conjecture. And that's okay, because I have done enough research on steam beer to be comfortable with the notion that 99% of steam beer's history is conjecture and outright BS. All the same, I'm sure my entirely anachronistic recipe, while being very far of the actual mark, is substantially closer to the real thing than Anchor Steam.
 
I like “kitchen sink”. 😁 I’m curious cause I’m about to make one! After the next stout... and that sour. I’ve got a bunch of random grains just sitting around.
 
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Grabbed 10# of maris for some bitters and 8# mix of Vienna/Munich for hacked lagered Czech-ish brew from my HBS today. I don't feel like brewing tonight but before I get back to work on Monday, I expect to have filled 3 fermenters with goodness.

Yesterday ordered 3# of Bramling Cross (on sale), some odds and ends, and 1# of invert #3 to benchmark my homemade oven version.

Today started my first try at converting beer to malt vinegar. Used about 10 oz of Mac&Jack's Amber plus an ounce of Bragg's Organic Apple Cider vinegar, and letting that sucker sit.
 
Brewing up a nice Cascade Pale today, and reflecting on the year past. Really sad that this whole covid crap has put the kibosh on competitions; yes I know 1st world problems, but Mr Murphy is laughing his a** off at me. I'm brewing some of the best beers of my life the last 5 months, and nowhere to compete. Last year at this time I was ramping up for the biggest competition in WA State (2020 cancelled, won a silver medal there in 2019) and had just entered my best IPA in an all-IPA competition (this one came off, and I won my division and 2nd place BOS). I know there are mail-in competitions but I like to stay local so I can be there.
 
kmarkstevens said:
Haha, don't mean to be a shill, but it is your namesake. Check out adventures in homebrewing and $11/pound
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Thank you! It's not getting any easier to find the stuff in the States, so I really appreciate your help :bigmug:

Edit: Nuts!!!!! They're out of stock on the 1lbers.
 
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The day began as predicted -- cold, rainy and miserable. With a cold-crashed flask of yeast just waiting to be pitched, I had to go thru with the plans... and so began New Year's Brewday in the Garage.

Having moved most of the inflammables out of the way (the cars, the lawn mower, gas can and the like), I set up the burner out by the driveway and turned on a fan to fully circulate carbon monoxide. With the burner roaring like a freight train, we brought 3.5 gallons of water up to 160 degrees and added the 2-pound bag of crushed carapils dextrine malt for a 30-minute soak.
Brewday.jpg


Then it was time to boil. Gently this time, to avoid darkening, the burner went back up in increments. Once there, we added an ounce each of hallertau and hersbrucker for the hour boil, fought back waves of green foam, and watched time tick away to the half-hour mark. It was time to add .75 ounce of Cluster hops, 3 pounds of Pilsen light LME and 6 pounds of golden light LME, along with half-a-gallon of water to make up for the boil-off. We had to stop the timer for a bit to bring the wort back up to a full boil. Note to self: boiling wort in 33-degree weather generates clouds of steam, making it difficult to see if the wort is actually boiling.

At 45 minutes in we added Irish moss; at 50 minutes, we added yeast nutrient, and with 5 minutes to go, we plopped in an ounce of Saaz for good smells.

After transporting to the utility sink and running our 40 degree cold water through the copper immersion wort cooler, we strained the cooled wort into the fermenter to remove most of the spent hops and break and managed to get most of the pot into the 6 gallon tank. After adding two more gallons of water to bring the total volume up to almost 6 gallons, we took the temperature (65 F) and the OG (1.070, six points higher than predicted, even with the added water).

Since the wort and the yeast were within 2 degrees of each other, we pitched the slurry after decanting most of the starter goo (which actually tasted pretty pleasant, just a bit yeasty). But we're hoping for light golden color in this batch, and had made the starter with dark DME (all I had on hand, a situation I've already corrected).

So, after clean-up and stow-away, it took about 3.5 hours in total to get this batch into the fermenter. Thanks to my Assistent Braumeister, Atlantic Brew Supply and UPS for their parts in this thus-far successful brew.
 
Bramling Cross said:
Thank you! It's not getting any easier to find the stuff in the States, so I really appreciate your help :bigmug:

Edit: Nuts!!!!! They're out of stock on the 1lbers.
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Apologies as it looks like I might have hoovered up the last of the supply. If you're in the seattle area, be happy to share a pound with you. Or hell, I'll help a brewer out and mail you a pound. PM me with your details.
 
That's incredibly kind of you and I appreciate your offer, but I'm in pretty good shape. In fact, I picked up a few of the 1oz packets, so I should be in good shape for quite a while.

Thanks kindly for offering, though. That was over and above! :bigmug:
 
Nick&Worty said:
Is there a name for the beer you make when you look upon shelves of random leftover grains from various brews, and decide to hooch it all together with leftover hops and whatever random yeast is surviving in the fridge? Is there a name for that?
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I just bottled a batch I called Frankenbeir
 

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