What I did for beer today

1000 am.. Mashing in! My first IPA.. Here comes da Boom!! X4 View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1432047841.635730.jpg

 

Dry hopped a Citra IPA and a Cascade Pale Ale.

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Bottled off the last of a keg of Centennial Blonde. Switched that tap to a BCS blonde ale that just finished carbonation. Cleaned that keg. Sterilized some mason jars I'll need for yeast collection later this week. Tested gravity on a porter that's on day eight. Inching up on terminal.

A good evening's work in the brewery.

 

Sitting here watching my two fermenters doing their thing with rehydrated S-04 in both. It always amazes me how fast S-04 can be.

 

Just finished putting a starter of washed S-O5 on the stir plate, getting ready for the Saturday brew.

 

Just killed off a keg off Legacy hopped pale ale. It was great while it lasted.

Now I need to dry hop a Calypso hopped pale ale to fill that keg. And I need to keg up a Belgian noidin amber made with 2 lbs. of melanoidin malt in the grist.

 

Milled the grain for a 6 gal AG batch of Belgian IPA for a Saturday club brew day.

 

Cleaned out 2 kegs and filled a 3rd with strawberry pineapple citrus blonde. "Fruit salad". Hydro tasted delicious.

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Built my temp controllers in an old ammo box not the greatest looking but will do the job

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Drank some Coors to allow more time for homebrew to age. Put six homebrewed maibocks in the fridge for the weekend.

 

Stepped up the IPA starter using pressure canned wort (seriously - that is so freakin' easy.) and then did the starter for the Orfy's Mild without pressure canned wort. That took a little while.

I inoculated slants with the 002 I'm using for the mild. It was my first time using the new White Labs packaging and I might have messed up and maybe I didn't grab any yeast. I guess I'll find out in a couple days when the slants take off or don't.

 

Packed away 90% of my brewing stuff for a cross-country move. I left a few things out because I still have 10 gallons to bottle before the move in July.

And, of course, I'm already planning my next brew days...

 

Spent 15 bucks refilling my CO2 Tank.

Bought a 6 pack of Grapefruit Sculpin.

Gave one to a homeless man.

Kegged 5 gallons of my Session IPA for next weeks basketball games.

Drank 5 Grapefruit Sculpins.

 

Checked the temps on both fermenters & took more notes. Cleaning some more stuff in the brewery.

 

6 gallons of Chicken Chap Brown Ale including 3 taster bottles ready for the Karl Strauss homebrew competition

 

Good thing I stopped at my LHBS earlier this week!


Making the hop spider...

2nd brew of this year, BMSimSMaSH (Brewers Malt[Briess], Simcoe SMaSH) to compliment the MOSimSMaSH done a couple of weeks ago...

 

Did my first ever test mash.

I made a metric to American conversion error and wound up with about 26 oz too much grain. At the same time, Bru'n water told me to add a bunch of calcium hydroxide. I saw an AJ DeLange post that said to be suspicious when a calculator tells you to use a lot of alkali and to do a test mash. Eureka. I have extra grain to so just that.

Test mash with the lime came in at almost 6. Tried again without it and it was a perfect 5.45.

 

Bottled my summer saison!

 

Bottled my BM Centennial Blonde, and brewed my second all grain BIAB batch, an attempt at a Blue Moon clone!

 

Brewed a nice 1.052 Brown Ale

 

Built a mega cheap carboy/keg cleaner from a harbor freight pond pump, a bucket and some stainless tubing. Cleaned 3 kegs, racked into them and cleaned 3 carboys in about an hour and a half!

 

bought fresh pineapple to rack my American Wheat onto tomorrow.

 

Brewed 5 gallons of Yooper's FYB.

 

Kegged my American Stout.

 

Bottling my Mosaic blonde...late. Oh well. It's still Saturday.

 

Distributed my centennial blonde to friends and family to rave reviews....sniffed the airlock to my Mandarina hopped ale many times.

 

I'm your friend, didn't get one. Jerk.


Bottling time. I've hired local alchies to do this but they never show. Next time, I pay them after they're done.

 

I went to my lhbs and picked up ingredients for my next 3 batches, kicked a keg, cleaned the line and faucet, and had a few.

 

Racked my wheat beer into the secondary on top of 4.4 lbs of pineapple. Hoping it will be tasty!

 

Cleaned a keg from dry stout that kicked, racked my Grapefruit Wheat IPA to secondary & dry hopped w/ 2oz of Mosaic, cleaned up equipment & cleaned carboys.

 

Pitted and squashed 5 pounds of apricots and got them in the freezer awaiting a 12 gallon batch of Apricot Wheat for the ladies this summer!

Gonna try 50/50 MO and White wheat.....

Cheers
Jay

 

Double brewday. I did a batch of Orfy's Mild and then (after a quick lunch) immediately started a Simcoe Amarillo IPA. I went from 5:30 to about 12:30, which is about what a single batch takes me in the winter (you know, when I can't use the garden hose to clean as I go, can't use the plate chiller because sub-freezing temps will damage it, etc.) So I think I'm going to make this a habit. I just need to do one batch in to two-fer to not require precise temp control because there's only room for one in the ferm chamber. I'm thinking as the weather warms up, I might do things like saisons as the bonus, outside the fermentation chamber beer.

 

Got to bottling two 2.5 gallon smash ales

 

I checked on my Irish red ale in primary. Still bubbling away

 

(yesterday)
Purchased Beersmith2 and updated my ingredients library. Having a more difficult than expected time importing recipes.
Dumped ~30 bottles from two batches that were infected and not improving after 3 months in the bottle.
Washed those and delabeled another 40 bottles I had sitting around.

 

Importing recipes from Beersmith database or other suppliers (Northern Brewer, etc)? Sorry to hear about infections, not a good feeling dumping beer. If you give details on your procedure, maybe we can assist.

 

Other- I'm pulling down the recipes I've crafted (scaled) for my PicoBrew and wanted to give them their own (designated) recipes subfolder. I'm on a Mac and I can drag and drop the .xml recipes into Beersmith and they open, but they don't seem to easily save to a sub folder. I've also looked for the folder I've created in the beersmith file database, no dice.

I know how the beer got infected. I rushed 3 batches and thought I had cleaned all my gear but neglected to disassemble my CO2 breakout block before force carving. It was pretty gross after sitting unused for 5 years. All three tasted a little funny going into bottles but I figured they were a little green. After 2 weeks they were worse. It took me another 2 weeks to track it back to the block after going through all of my other gear again. One of the three batches only got short spurts of pressure rather than staying constantly connected for days- seems it made s difference.

Upside: They all cleared up real nice after being in the bottle that long!

 

I planted 2 rhizomes with help from my son, racked a batch of blonde onto strawberries, and rebrewed the base beer. I'll call it a productive day...

 

I dropped off my bottles of Chicken Chap Brown Ale and Juniskeet Smoked Wheat for the Karl Strauss Pro-Am Homebrew contest.

 

I wrote some more of my 2nd home brewing book. Gotta see if the Irish red's cleared up yet. Maybe take a 1st Fg on the dry stout?