Warming up ingredients for another batch of Cooper's English bitter I'll be brewing up quick in awhile. Gonna make malt vinegar out of a gallon of it in a couple weeks.
Installed a new peg board for storage and drying OG all my pump
Tubing w/ cam locks.
Tapped my Back in Black clone.
Set up for brew day tomorrow w/ my daughter. Doing an AG batch of Ninkasi True Believer Double Res.
Worked on dialing in my new system using Biermuncher Centennial Blonde recipe. Worked my ass off but had encouragement of friends - 1 extract brewer and 1 AG brewer. Moving up from 5 gallon BIAB to 1 bbl 3V. Cleaned alot and sanitized alot. Just got done cleaning up.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T for all the nano and micro brewerers out there.
Note to self - by more tri-clamps, silicone hose and gaskets. Color code everything for each step of the brewing process.
Feeling tired but accomplished
Got my 7cf chest freezer/ferm chamber cleaned and sanitized so I could put the dunkelweizen I also brewed today in there and get it ready for Oktoberfest
Labeled 55 bottles of beer for my college reunion next week. Halfway through I had a bit of a beermergency when a half full case of freshly labeled bottles tipped over and smashed all over the floor. Five good soldiers down and beer and glass all over the floor including under the kegerator. I believe I may have committed verbal sin at that point and loudly as I am quite without voice still.
In the lessons learned department though: I now understand the reason for the installation instructions for the kegerator that I didn't follow about sealing the kegerator to the floor with a healthy bead of silicone. It's a real bitch cleaning under there after a spill.
Yesterday kegged up a couple batches to free up fermenters and harvest yeast. Thinking of brewing again today but never built up a starter. Been a while since my last dual brew weekend I guess I'm out the swing of things.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1442164695.112263.jpgfillin the fermenters. 5.5 will be a straight Flanders red with roselare blend, the other 4 gallons was added to 1 gallon of a year old soured saison. Gonna do a quasi solera blend and let the resident bugs and Brett snack away
Scrubbed my Bk & strainer yesterday. Gotta put away a bunch of bottles I cleaned & clean the flask. I just wish my battery hadn't died on me...
** Just saw this on facebook. An antique bottle opener... http://bit.ly/1M0dMdb
Transferred IPA using homegrown hops into keg for cold crash and secondary dry hop. No idea why but there is a lot of phenolic flavor to this beer, I fermented a big starter and fermented at 66. I guess it happens sometimes that a batch doesn't turn out great, hasn't happened to me in years and years. I am hoping a cold crash will drop out some of the yeast and I can make the flavor
Drinkable.
Emptied the two kegs into bottles. Cleaned and sanitized the kegs and lines. Racked the Thunderstruck and Bit R Done to the clean kegs and put them on gas. That was all yesterday. Today I'll harvest a bunch of yeast slurry from the Bit R Done because you can never have enough S-04 on hand.
Side note: this was my first time using harvested yeast. Sure, S-04 is cheap and all but at $4-5 a batch this is starting to save a little cash. Within 4 batches I'll pay for the jars.
Kegged 10 gallons of wet hop IPA, put 3.5 oz of the same whole hops in the SS dry hoppers, threw em in the kegs, and turned on the gas.
First time dry hopping in the keg at the same time as carbonating.