What I did for beer today

Reserved some centennial hop rhizomes

 

Cleaned 3 kegs & my brew pot since I'm not brewing this weekend.

Now, i gotta bottle off the rest of my CAP, drink the last of my IPA and "scotty" of Porter, rotate in my APA, keg and put on gas my Belgian IPA, keg the other 5gal of my saison & Black IPA, clean & sanitize the empty kegs mentioned above, clean out my big mash tun for a buddy to use on Monday, and drill out a hole for the ball valve on my new HLT.

 

Just finished up brewing 6 gal of Spotted Cow clone.

Cheers

 

Brewed 6gals of Centennial Blonde. The wort tastes and smells so good!

 

Put a test bottle of Phat Tyre in the freezer to chill but accidentally froze it solid.

 

Supported a new local micro brewery Rushing Duck brewing co. Picked up three growlers of a saison, rye red ale, and a amazing pale ale.

 

Drinking a beer I've never had before (Uerige Dusseldorf Alt), brewed a Cream Ale, and wrapping up the mash on a Northern English Brown.

 

Bottled up a Cream Ale that my son helped out on... Best bottling day yet!





Yes, that's him on the label.

 

Moved 5 gallons from 62* to 72* for yeast cleanup and then moved a different 5 gallons from 72* to 35* for cold crashing.

 

Weighed out grains and hops for an Irish Red I am going to brew tomorrow or Monday.

 

Got a hydrometer reading on my Pumpkin Ale that's been fermenting for 15 days. Sitting at 1.010 right now, gonna check it again for the next couple of days to make sure it's stable to be bottled on Tuesday. Tastes good from the little bit I tried today!

 

Cleaned and prepped four kegs, filled one with a three week old porter and started carbing, cleaned the fermenter and the tap lines. Tasted the porter, think I'm gonna like it.

 

Got my NZ IPA in the fermenter a while ago. It's a good kinda tired with some of my home brews as a reward.

 

I finally got my rhizomes in the ground - cascade, centennial & nugget!

 

Prepped brew water, calculated hop measurements, measured and milled grain bill for Avery Kaiser clone. Brew day tomorrow afternoon.

 

Dumped my experimental 1.125 OG brew. Racked the Mojave red ale to secondary and dry hopped. Racked the Kiss Yer Cousin Kentucky rye common ale to secondary and brewed an alt beer.

 

Washed a fresh batch of yeast (1056) and cleaned out 2 of my fermenters for a double brew day tomorrow ( mild, and roggenbier, which I plan to harvest more yeast from). Also worked on kicking a keg for next batch, which seems to be the bottomless keg. All this after working for 14 hours at my regular job...

 

Brewed a Bohemian Pilsener yesterday, and it did not go smoothly. It was my first brew with my new Hop Stopper. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to get the coupling adjusted so that it would actually hold onto the pickup tube snugly. Then during draining, no one had told me that you have to slow the flow waaaaay down once the screen becomes exposed, and I lost prime in my pump. I couldn't get it restarted and assumed the pickup tube had become plugged. I left at least a gallon of beer behind in the boil kettle.

Then I learned what a nightmare that thing is to try and clean. I spent 15 minutes or so running water over it, scrubbing it with a scrub brush and tooth brush, even removing the pickup tube from the screen to try and get all the trub and hop matter out, but at some point, I had to just say "good enough." There's still gunk stuck in the creases of the screen.

Then I accidentally dumped my stir bar down the drain while cleaning my flask.

The good news is, I got my wort chilled down nice and low (45° F) within 5 minutes, and the yeast didn't waste any time getting to work.

I'm still optimistic about the Hop Stopper, but at the moment, that thing is on probation. I've got to figure out its proper care and feeding.

 

I'm still waiting for my PM NZ IPA to start fermenting. It'll be really different for an IPA...

 

Racked my big blonde to kegs yesterday and washed the yeast. Should be good mighty tasty.

 

Gotta finish cleaning up after brewday yesterday. Finishing up drying a ton of spent grains in a warm oven till about noon. Also got some bottles to scrub & rinse.

 

You making a ton of bread?

 

My test jar decided it no longer wanted to be an enclosed cylinder and split into two peices today, so I cleaned up a bunch of beer from the counter and didnt get a another gravity reading. Oh well, bottling tomorrow anyway. ILL SHOW YOU!!!

 

I'm finishing up drying 6lbs of grains from last night. Got a bunch of recipes to try at this link; http://brooklynbrewshop.com/themash/category/spentgrainchef/ The pretzel buns would be nice. Make a double batch of burger size ones for pit bbq'd cheese burgers! Or the focatia for sandwhiches in the electric grill thing. Lots of good ideas...
After drying/cooling them,they can be stored in an airtight container till needed. An herb grinder is needed to make flour out of them. Gotta get one anyway,since we dry hot peppers & grow herbs.

 

Racked my vanilla pumpkin porter to the secondary. Wow was there a lot of trub left in the bucket! It smelled great - am definitely looking forward to this batch.

 

Fermentation is ramping up on my PM NZ IPA with US-05 yeast. Finally done cleaning up after yesterday's brew day,including 4 hop socks & a bunch of empty bottles from the last couple days. Also,I finally got that 6lbs of spent grains dried out. They're cooling down before packaging now. It's def home brew time!

 

Had first ferm explosion.

 

Not much today,Had to work.Got home had 3 of my Blue Moon clones,1 Hefe
and now gonna have 2 of my Chocolate Vanilla porters, eat some tuna
casserole that SWMBO made.Oh I did check gravity on my Cream of 3 cops.I`m at 1.01 0 after 9 days.Tomorrow goin` to Brew-n- grow for my 4th batch of Blue Moon clone of the year.Cant keep enough of it around here.

Cheers

 

Brewed

5 gallons chocolate cream stout
5 gallons coffee stout
5 gallons of who knows?

It was a big grain bill so I re-mashed while I brewed and used the runoff. Hell, it came out to a 1.062 so I guess it will be something. Split the 10 for the first two.

 

Bottled my first three batches... An Amber, a Wheat and an American Light.

 

Woke up to a funny sound, had to contain a stout spout in the fermenter. If nothing else, it was a nice air freshener. My house now has the mouthwatering scent of stout and cinnamon.

Still can't figure out where the cinnamon smell came from, but it smells delicious!

 

Bottling my pumpkin pie ale in a few minutes.

 

Making my 1 liter starter for a session able 5% pale ale hopped with chinook and Simcoe.

 

Started with this, it washed up on my river bank last year it's been rotting because I won't burn pressure treated wood and I'm too lazy to take it to the dump.


Repurposed it to this.





Funny it's the same exact color paint (on the clean side) as my deck

A nice recycle/late earth day project

 

I ordered a weld less cooler, mash tun conversion kit, from bargain fittings.

 

I wrote some product reviews at midwests' site. I'll have some 501 points toward my next order from them.

 

Tonight and for the rest of the week i am being forced to finish off the beer left in one of my kegs so i can use it to make another 3 gallon batch to bring to a friends BBQ in a month and a half.

Oh how i suffer.

 

Sipping the last glass of a keg of Yooper's Ruination clone as I type this. I already miss it. So, in addition to brewing 5.5 gallons of Irish Red, I killed a keg of Ruination. While I can still move today, I also plan on dry hopping a 5.5 gallon batch of pale ale.

 

Ramped the temp on my Tafelbier up into the high 70s

 

I just ordered a 12" false bottom, from adventures in homebrewing, to deck out my 10gal mash tun cooler...
I've also been out in my garden, tending to the hops. I'm planning on building a really nice trellis this year, about half the way done so far.