What I did for beer today

bottled my Irish Red, and put my Dry Stout on the IR yeast cake

 

Stained my keezer collar and painted the top with two coats of chalkboard paint

 

Just pitched my yeast, man it feels good to be done. Later on today I'll be doing some yard work and then setting up again for another brew day

 

Spent about 4 hours buliding and setting up my raised bed and trellis design for my cascade and centennial rhizomes.

 

Bottled beer for my friend yesterday and brewed a baby wheat beer for a party late next month!

 

Set up to brew a dipa about to collect my second runnings. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1460335167.375354.jpg View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1460335183.819551.jpg View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1460335195.242917.jpg

 

Well it was yesterday, but put my last batch in the keg for the first time. No more bottles for me. Today I drilled the fridge for the shank and handle. Should be drinking in a day or so.

 

I researched how to make a hop spider for my eBIAB system. Lotsa of good ideas on HBT.

 

Just put away the IPA I brewed today 10 gallons this weekend that's a first for me and I over shot my og by 10 points yikes!!! View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1460346923.155177.jpg View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1460346939.234219.jpg View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1460346949.888022.jpg

 

Pitched the slurry from a 2 liter starter of 3068 to my Dunkelweizen. Never used this yeast before. Looking for some pronounced clove aromas from a 62 degree fermentation. Bubbling gently after only 4 hours. Put up a massive blow off bucket because I'm told to expect a very vigorous krasening.

 

Just reset the gap on my mill to a more recirculation friendly 0.045, previously it was gapped using a credit card, so a nominal 0.038, and some pre-RIMS recirculation tests showed that the mash stuck after about ten minutes.

Not wanting to eyeball the gap, a set of feeler gauges was five bucks from Amazon. Erred on the side of too wide than too narrow, now a nice consistent gap all the way across the rollers

 

Tried my hand at making some Invert sugar for an upcoming stout recipe, looks and tastes like it came out pretty close to what I was shooting for.

 

What does inverted sugar add to the stout?

 

Kegged up my 9% amber IPA. And took a look at a friends kegorator he picked up for free. He got quite the deal! A little TLC and its gonna be cherry.

 

A few gravity points...first time I've tried using it, may not add anything noticeable but just one of the ingredients of the bill. May not be traditional, but
The color turned out like I wanted, didn't burn, and didn't crystallize when I cooled it so I'm satisfied.

 

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

 

Kicked my first keg!

 

Congrats!

 

Brewed up a 5 gallon batch of an American Wheat with coriander and orange peel. Have to throw in a brew for the SWMBO every once in a while.

 

Checked on my roggenbier in primary (still smells like beer!) then hooked up my new nitro system to pull the first pint of snoatmeal stout. It needs a little more CO2 but it's promising

 

Works great you can recirculate, pump from bucket into bucket. dont have to make as much cleaner

 

Had a rather adventurous brew day today (well, I'm calling it today. I haven't gone to bed yet)

I was super excited to try out the new Edelmetall Bru Burner, which overall I'm pretty pleased with. Also had added a valve, dip tube, some camlock fittings and silicone tubing to my keggle.

It was a rainy day but I wasn't going to let that stop my plans! Got the mash started, did a 20 minute protein rest - was super fast getting the water to temp with the new burner. Stepped it up to the Sach rest (I use a cooler, so I just add more hot water to the cooler). First, overshot the infusion water temp. Added some cold water, well, too much cold water; heated that back up. Ended up undershooting target sach temp by 20 degrees. Added enough hot water to the tun to get the 150 that I wanted.

Came back to it at 30 minutes to give it a stir and check temps.... it was back down to 130!? Ran off a gallon to decoct and bring the temp back up, hit around 140. Gave up on temp management and decided I'll just iodine test to make sure there's no starch left.

After first runnings and sparge, I was a little over 2 gallons short on my pre-boil volume. Thinking I ground the grains too fine and got too much flour, it looked quite doughy. So guessing I just lost more water to that than normal.

Boil went okay, immersion chiller did it's job. Time to try out the new valve, dip tube and fittings!! For the most part, that went okay. I didn't use any sort of hop bags, so I got a lot of junk in the carboy. The wort is also waaaay darker than I expected it to be (5 pounds of red wheat and 4 pounds of 2 row, but looks like an amber ale). With a new burner comes a new learning curve. I think I'd be better off with a slightly slower heat-to-boil instead of putting the spurs to it.

But the yeasties are chugging away at it, has a slight krausen going already!

 

Took a gravity sample of my dipa second gen wlp 515 took it down from 1.082-1.012 and added 4 oz of el dorado pellets. Man this thing is goooooood can't wait to keg this beauty View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1461207514.621314.jpg View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1461207525.375921.jpg

 

Kegged and bottled my Cream Ale recipe last night as well as drank a few in the process.

 

Ran an open taproom night. Had a half dozen guys from the neighborhood over last night to sample the four beers I have on tap in the basement taproom right outside the brewery.

 

Sample i.e. Finish off... ;-)

 

Got my panel wiring finished, so did a couple of calibration runs for the eHLT and RIMS tube.

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Got to figure out the pump mounting location and power, then start cutting hoses to length and see if I need to get any more camlocks

 

Finally got around to mounting that keezer fan. Running a computer fan at 5V (usb adapter). Wasn't sure if it would be enough, but it's already doing wonders to keep CO2 pockets out of my lines.

 

Just bottled an Imperial Belgian IPA, which had an insane 89 percent attenuation with the Ardennes strain, finishing at 1.006 and 8.6 ABV. I guess that's what you get when you mash @ 146 and pitch a lot of yeast. Will also brew a hoppy table saison in a few hours.

 

Just moved a Vienna Lager from Lager chamber to serving fridge and put on gas for low n slow, set it and wait carb for a Cinco de Mayo tap.

I need to brew a Kolsch or Yellow Fizzy beer next

 

Picked up ingredients and got some pointers on improving an APA I'm brewing for a wedding tomorrow.

Also did some tasting and was gifted some hops rhizomes from @brizzo. The dude brews some awesome sour beer!

 

Wow 24 hour grain to glass, that is impressive...

 

Made a bee Cave Pale ale today, The first keg
kicked to fast. I think my Step sons might of helped that happen. lol

 

Kegged up a Wit brewed with WLP 090 instead of a traditional wit yeast. Also put a dent in my two beers on tap right now.

 

Just finished up first Kolsch Style.
All grain BIAB.
Will not be true to style, I had to hop it up a little.

 

Picked up a sanke keg from a buddy of mine and ordered a conversion kit from brew hardware going to be my sour solera.
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I cleaned a keg that kicked and filled it with sanitizer, then run a little thru the lines. The bee cave pale has huge krausen but has not started blowing bubbles yet.

 

Holy crap, busy evening in the brewery...

• Gravity tested the DIPA. Done at 008 and crashed to 60F for yeast collection. Next step: 2 stage dry hopping
• Sample and gravity test a Dunkelweizen. Done but pretty thin. Pleasant banana aroma but not much going on for flavor. This might have fermented out too low at 008
• Sampled a Robust Porter that's aging in an Bouron oak barrel. So far so good. Could stand another few days.
• Decanted, warmed and pitched yeast to the wedding APA
• Developed a big bitch about refractometers (separate thread)

 

Put together a brew day kit of sorts. I've been looking for ways to organize some gear. Had a tool box sitting around that wasn't doing anything, so I put a bunch of stuff in that. Mostly stuff that I would use on brew day: tubes, hydrometer, refractometer, assorted additions, other test kits/strips, scissors. As well as some other items I just want to keep track of: air locks, stoppers, a bulkhead that will eventually go in a kettle, spare keg o-rings...
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