What I did for beer today

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Spent the weekend punching holes in my 20 gal kettles, then rigging electric heating elements, temperature probes, ball-valves and the SS HERMS coil. I was dragging my feet on that for weeks because I was nervous about screwing up those beautiful kettles.

I just went slowly, measured twice (okay, maybe four times), and then cut away. Everything worked out very well. Didn't hurt to have Kal's step-by-step instructions handy the whole time. That site is a godsend.

One thing though, those damned Blichmann kettles are tough. I was freaking out until I figured out you have to drill a 3/16" pilot hole first, and you have to bear down pretty good on that drill bit. After that, the rest were easy.

Ended the weekend water testing the HLT. All good! This week it will be odds and ends and more water testing in the evenings, but I aim to do the inaugural brew in the new brewhouse next weekend for sure.
 
Started looking for a simple brew, finally feeling good enough to attempt a brew day... haven't brewed or done a thing since June. I am looking for suggestions. The brew needs to be an extract for simplicity and weight. This is going to be the only chance I get to brew the rest of the year and the first month or 2 or 3 of next. The brew also has to be kegged by the end of October or first week of November. If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it I love brewing Belgians and stouts but those are probably way to much for me to try to do right now. I want to do 2, 5 gallon batches but may not get the fermenter empty in time to do a second brew. Send any ideas my way. Just keep it simple.
 
Ordered another vittle vault, for grain storage, and a second stc1000, for the keezer.
 
ubnserved said:
Started looking for a simple brew, finally feeling good enough to attempt a brew day... haven't brewed or done a thing since June. I am looking for suggestions. The brew needs to be an extract for simplicity and weight. This is going to be the only chance I get to brew the rest of the year and the first month or 2 or 3 of next. The brew also has to be kegged by the end of October or first week of November. If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it I love brewing Belgians and stouts but those are probably way to much for me to try to do right now. I want to do 2, 5 gallon batches but may not get the fermenter empty in time to do a second brew. Send any ideas my way. Just keep it simple.
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Northern Brewer has a petite saison d'ete extract kit that is really good and quick. Not very autumnal, but definitely simple and tasty. The French saison yeast adds a bit of tartness, and I found it was fully fermented in less than two weeks.
 
Got a batch of Christmas Ale wort in the FV, thoroughly being enjoyed by the billions of yeast cells. :)
 
Set my STC-1000 to zero degrees to cold crash an IPA. That's some heavy lifting
 
Trippel-A said:
Northern Brewer has a petite saison d'ete extract kit that is really good and quick. Not very autumnal, but definitely simple and tasty. The French saison yeast adds a bit of tartness, and I found it was fully fermented in less than two weeks.
Click to expand...

I brewed that one for summer. Not bad at all, but the French yeast didn't give much of that peppery ester?

Washed some bottles yesterday & re-arranged the brewery/man cave. Got more bottles to wash today after finally being able to have some beer again! So more to do today...:mug:
 
Looked in the fermenter at the 10 day old Cream Ale and 3 day old Honey Bee American Ale. And bought a 24 inch stir spoon :-D
 
Ordered parts yesterday so I can build HLT and mash tun with the beverage coolers I bought today
 
Had the first two bottles of my latest batch mmmm beer


--------------------------------------

Where do you place your probe?
 
Kegged 10 gals of IPA, Made a 2 L starter for Saturday's brew. Drank a few beers. (Last night counts, right?)
 
unionrdr said:
I brewed that one for summer. Not bad at all, but the French yeast didn't give much of that peppery ester?

Washed some bottles yesterday & re-arranged the brewery/man cave. Got more bottles to wash today after finally being able to have some beer again! So more to do today...:mug:
Click to expand...

I have never even tried a french beer.... what is the taste profile like? I did find this one https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/15-minute-cascade-pale-ale-210253/ and will probably make it on Sunday. Does this french have a recipe somewhere? I still want one more to brew.

I continued looking for recipes for those of us who have been injured and still want to brew and i started a new thread on hbt just for it. (Never started a thread before ) https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/one-armed-brewing-493268/
 
Cleaned a keg and sanitized it, and sanitized another keg and filled it with beer. Should be fully carbed and cold when I get back home in a week.
 
ubnserved said:
I have never even tried a french beer.... what is the taste profile like? I did find this one https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/15-minute-cascade-pale-ale-210253/ and will probably make it on Sunday. Does this french have a recipe somewhere? I still want one more to brew.

I continued looking for recipes for those of us who have been injured and still want to brew and i started a new thread on hbt just for it. (Never started a thread before ) https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/one-armed-brewing-493268/
Click to expand...

It's Northern Brewer's Petite Saison De ete' kit with French saison 3711 yeast. After a couple months in the bottles, I got'em quite cold & poured into a warm (room temp) glass. It had a tiny bit of peppery flavor on the back with the atypical barnyard thing. Both were subdued & the beer is actually pretty good. But there are likely better saison kits/recipes out there. I just bought this one to try it on for size. I like how the barnyardy thing is on the back & not that strong. I just ordered another ESB, E/SG kit from more beer. It has a great balance between malts & hops with a color that's spot-on for the style. http://morebeer.com/products/extra-special-bitter-ale-extract-beer-kit.html I also used S-04 dry yeast re-hydrated which worked great! The flavor is toasty/bready with the EKG hops giving their characteristic herb/lemon grass contribution that's perfect for the style, in my opinion. I brewed the Cascade pale ale PM kit from Midwest as my 1st partial mash brew over a year ago. Great beer with good balance even my son loved.
ESB;

Held nice cap after a couple sips.

cascade pale ale;

Very nice flavor where the cascade hops weren't overpowering. Cheap price & easy PM kit.
 
Today I got the details worked out in my kegerator so I can fit 3 corny kegs and the 10# co2 cylinder in there. I have pin locks and ball lock kegs so I have worked out interchangeable parts. My tower only has two taps so I have a Perlick jury- rigged inside the door to tap the third beer. It seems to work OK.

On tap- robust chocolate porter

Kegged and carbonating- a hoppy pale ale

Fermenters- "Tuesday's Ruby," an Irish red with a bit of extra hops
 
Apparently my drill will only allow me to drill 1.5 holes in my keggle each night before the battery is dead.

So the ball valve is installed. The thermometer hole is still 1/8" too narrow.
 
ImageUploadedByHome Brew1412218348.632279.jpg
Finished the base for my mother of fermentation chamber
 
Gotta love those old school craftsman drills...plug in the wall and will never quit. Can I say "They don't make 'em like they used to?"
 
Last night I put a brown ale in the fridge for a quick cold crash then going to keg it tonight. On deck is drilling shank holes in said fridge to finally mount my taps. After that it's time to brew again. Whew, life is sure rough!
 
I spent last night running control panel, water and heating element tests in the brewery. First time I've had everything actually plugged in to the control panel (Kal/Spike).

Everything fired properly (after I figured out a little wiring problem on the boil kettle - DOH!), and there were no leaks. Amazing - there must be an even dozen brand new holes in those brew kettles and not one of them leaked!. It was pretty encouraging.

I still don't know what I'm doing with some of the control panel components, but hopefully I'll figure that out tonight. The damned PIDs and the timer are really process control engineer oriented and not very user friendly.
 
I flew out to Denver for GABF. Then proceeded to have a few beers :)

Brought out an old school faucet and shank for my brother (in my carry on, which led to two tsa secondary checks[at least the first time the guy was a fellow homebrewer and knew what it was right away]) and gonna help my bro build his keezer during the next few days.
 
Midwest stopped carrying all but one of their PM kits, so I got the ingredients list for their Traditional stout kit I used for my whiskely last year. Plugged it into BS2 & tweaked it per the dry stout category. Gotta get the ESB going this weekend.
 
Took another stab at calibrating my new thermometer.

Instead of trying to calibrate it at freezing and boiling, I decided to calibrate it against my old mash thermometer, which I never had a reason to dispute.

New thermometer now has perfect correlation with my old thermometer at mash temps. So, even it it isn't perfect, at least it will be consistent with my old data.

(I did check the old thermometer at freezing and it was perfect.)
 
Got a small batch of basic cider going - just 3 gallons so I can try something new for backsweetening.
 
Just kegged my Priceless Pup brown ale. Made in honor of my lab. He's pretty awesome so I made a pretty awesome beer in dedication to him.
 
Built a grain table, out of wood. It's pretty barebones, just a top, legs, and a shelf for the bucket.
 
Beernik said:
Too true. Sometimes making things more convenient also makes them less reliable.
Click to expand...

My battery powered drill is crap. Not the drill so much as the NiMH batteries. Not good for home use, as they don't like being left untouched/unused/uncharged longer than a week or so.
 
I installed a thermometer on my Keggle. Getting ready for a brew day on Sunday. It is my sons birthday and he is coming over. We are brewing an Irish Death clone. (His choice). I am excited to be brewing outside again.
 
Checked on (and wiped down) my overflowing yeast starter for Saturday's brew. :(

Also transcribed some notes from the starter into Google Drive and started adding some documents for Saturday (checklist, shopping list, recipe, etc.).
 
metanoia said:
Checked on (and wiped down) my overflowing yeast starter for Saturday's brew. :(

Also transcribed some notes from the starter into Google Drive and started adding some documents for Saturday (checklist, shopping list, recipe, etc.).
Click to expand...

Fermcap-AT works great to avoid this. Love that stuff!!
 
I got a starter rolling real early for a Pils-Ale I will be brewing tomorrow afternoon.
 
Put together my new brew kettle, set up the garage for brewing my first all-grain, and just chilled a couple of bottles of my most recent creation so there is a ready supply of "inspiration" on hand for this afternoon. I think it's gonna be a great day...
 
I just bottled a batch of ESB. I used S-04 and the yeast cake was really compact and stuck nicely to the bottom of the fermenter. Hydro sample tastes great. This one won't last long.
 

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