What I did for beer today

[JAReeves]

Told the fam I AM getting a Brewday over the 3-day weekend. Started planning the recipe, pulled hops out of the freezer, will make a starter tomorrow.

I haven’t made beer since April. It’s a miracle someone ain’t dead.

 

[Jayjay1976]

Told the fam I AM getting a Brewday over the 3-day weekend. Started planning the recipe, pulled hops out of the freezer, will make a starter tomorrow.

I haven’t made beer since April. It’s a miracle someone ain’t dead.

You go fam.

 

[grampamark]

Kegged the Märzen I brewed a couple of weeks ago while brewing an Irish Red.

 

[TheCache]

Got my Octoberfest brewed this afternoon.

 

[VikeMan]

Began souring a wort for a Pastry Sour. Happy Bacteria:

 

[ba-brewer]

Kegged the Alt I brewed about 2weeks back, looking forward to when that comes up for drinking.

Brewed a strong bitter today, if it turns out well I will enter it in a contest come October.

 

[Jayjay1976]

I ordered iodophor so I can finally clean out that fermenter I let get moldy.. hope it hasn't picked up any moldy flavors.

 

[JAReeves]

Baking yeast, 2 kilos, to dispense with spent grain.

 

[VikeMan]

Chocolatey Sour Wort Boil

 

[govner1]

Dry hopped my Mosaic Promise IPA (6g) with 2.5 oz Mosaic. I’ll CO2 transfer to kegs on Monday and cold crash.
Planning to carb on the 12th when I get back from a short vacation.
Also rinsed out a carboy and put on dryer stand and started cleaning a keg.

 

[seatazzz]

Heading to the Fair today to pick up ribbons, buy scones, look at animals, eat junk food, and just have some fun. Results were posted, of four entries I got one First and three Seconds, including my very first sweet mead entry. The First is my American Strong that's been aging on bourbon-soaked oak cubes for four months, sipping on some right now and it keeps getting better.

 

[McMullan]

I picked some wild blueberries for a Christmas Porter

 

[CJ-3]

Brewing my first Brew In A Bag today.

 

[JAReeves]

Yesterday, took a drive to San Clemente to the closest Pizza Port (~3 hour round trip). Picked up pizzas for Saturday dinner and a selection of beers not found in stores for Monday's BBQ. 4 Crowlers and 2 6ers ought to make us forget how hot it is.

 

[Deric]

Kegged up a Hazy. A recipe I’ve been working on for a bit. Sample tasted promising.

Time to plan/prep for tomorrow’s brew day.

 

[Bramling Cross]

The full fury (all 85hp and a worryingly dense cloud of blue smoke) of my hooptie brewery was unleashed today!

I brewed my first IPA of the season. Now that I've gained confidence in my Hopstopper, I decided to dime it and unleash some proper abuse in the form of 16oz of Cascades, Amarillo, Citra, and a bit of Warrior.

Somewhere in that gory mess of cold break and hops there lives a Hopstopper....

There it is!

Here’s the product it was producing

With 6.5 gallons of clean wort into the fermenter, that means I should get enough product into my new 6gallon dry hopping keg to do the impossible: I intend to squirt dry hopped beer out of the PRV on my 5 gal serving keg.

I'll concede that this isn't a good thing to do. Nevertheless, an indisputably full, no more room for anything else, full keg of heavily dry hopped beer has been a white whale that I have chased for decades.

At last, it is within my grasp.

I also kegged another batch of that N. American adjunct lager that I've wasted the prior 2.5 years learning.

With an open lager keg and a happy blob of Diamond Lager Yeast ready to go, I have a decision to make for tomorrow. I could make a Vienna, a German pils, any number of respectable beers, but I'll likely (like a dog returning to its sick) make another adjunct lager.

It'll be amber colored this time, so that makes it respectable....right?

Right?

 

[Jayjay1976]

I spent a few hours sorting and sniffing the honeycrisp brandy collection jars from two weekends back. Conservative cuts left me with 13 pints of really good flavored hearts which I blended and proofed down to two gallons @60%. Half is aging white, the rest is on a mix of medium toasted French oak and untoasted American oak. Two jars in particular were really amazing with a baked apple aroma, pulled those from the flock to age separately with a cinnamon stick each. The remaining heads went into a first run apple butter brandy, a gallon of tails @48% is in a jug waiting to be run again.

Blending and proofing so much product all at once really tested my patience and pouring skills, I'll need to source a ~3.5-4.0 gal stainless pot with a spigot for the next time.

 

[Bramling Cross]

I knocked out a negra modelo-like thing today.

 

[Sunfire96]

I spent a few hours sorting and sniffing the honeycrisp brandy collection jars from two weekends back. Conservative cuts left me with 13 pints of really good flavored hearts which I blended and proofed down to two gallons @60%. Half is aging white, the rest is on a mix of medium toasted French oak and untoasted American oak. Two jars in particular were really amazing with a baked apple aroma, pulled those from the flock to age separately with a cinnamon stick each. The remaining heads went into a first run apple butter brandy, a gallon of tails @48% is in a jug waiting to be run again.

Blending and proofing so much product all at once really tested my patience and pouring skills, I'll need to source a ~3.5-4.0 gal stainless pot with a spigot for the next time.View attachment 780011View attachment 780012View attachment 780013

I just purchased a 7.5 gallon/30 quart stainless kettle for $40 at kegconnection.com. They'll drill it for a bulkhead fitting too

 

[seatazzz]

Brewed up a Lutra Blonde this morning, tapped the Red from last weekend (yum), took delivery of new scale (110lb limit wow), & BBQ injector from Amazon, only to find I had no gelatin to test the injector with. Did get it set up where I can easily inject gelatin into a sealed keg, IF it works; attached the syringe part to a black keg disconnect with a length of tubing and hose clamps. Saw somewhere on here where a guy used JB Weld (!!!) which I wanted to stay away from. Mine is completely sanitizable and takeapartable. Figure all I need to do is release the pressure on a keg, then go to town. Might try it out with the pineapple hard seltzer I've had in the kegerator for a while; it's good, but quite tart. Thinking I could use the injector to backsweeten it with some agave. If nothing else I'll have a mess to clean up, I'm sure. *edit while typing - And it worked! After adding the sweetener (decided on stevia instead of agave, which tends to ball up in the bottom of the keg) I just gave it a blast of co2 through the out-post, and mixed it up very well.

 

[seatazzz]

Kegged the Märzen I brewed a couple of weeks ago while brewing an Irish Red.

I did my Irish Red last weekend, and kegged it yesterday; turned out more amber than red, but it's still pretty good. Care to share the recipe you used?

 

[grampamark]

I did my Irish Red last weekend, and kegged it yesterday; turned out more amber than red, but it's still pretty good. Care to share the recipe you used?

Here’s the recipe-

Here’s the beer-

 

[seatazzz]

Thanks! I think where I went wrong was using C-77 instead of black barley, and a little heavy on the chocolate. Also mine could use more hops. Always room for improvement!

 

[Deric]

Brewed a Hazy Pale …

 

[Beermeister32]

Saw somewhere on here where a guy used JB Weld (!!!) which I wanted to stay away from.

Do not fear the JB Weld. It is a high quality, high temperature, strong structural epoxy. You can sanitize it just fine. Its’ bond to metal is superior, none finer IMHO. 500F working temperature…You can boil it if you wish…. 3960 lb tensile strength…. You will dig it..!

 

[HM-2]

Filtering, cold crashing and gelatine fining my British Strong later.
Might also "feed" some more candi sugar to my Bretted Belgian pale.

 

[HM-2]

Filtering, cold crashing and gelatine fining my British Strong later.
Might also "feed" some more candi sugar to my Bretted Belgian pale.

Managed half of this. Strong in the keg and cold crashing as we speak. Ran it through my 178 micron Bounce which took most of the solid matter out. Still a bit hazy but the gelatine will probably take care of that without issues once it gets down to temp.

Out of Candi so that's on the order list.

 

[seatazzz]

Do not fear the JB Weld. It is a high quality, high temperature, strong structural epoxy. You can sanitize it just fine. Its’ bond to metal is superior, none finer IMHO. 500F working temperature…You can boil it if you wish…. 3960 lb tensile strength…. You will dig it..!

thanks. I've used it before in non-food applications and you're right, there's nothing better. Just a little squalmish about using it in beer. Below is what I cobbled together; I don't have the disconnect screwed on super tight, so I can take it apart quickly to clean it. Probably going to shorten the tubing a bit.

 

[Beermeister32]

Looks good, I used a white coupler to shorten the distance to the beer. Your upper stainless looks like Boeing Surplus to me.... Confess!

 

[seatazzz]

Looks good, I used a white coupler to shorten the distance to the beer. Your upper stainless looks like Boeing Surplus to me.... Confess!

Nope, just the lid to my BrewBuilt kettle! Only thing I could find quickly to photograph on.

 

[Beermeister32]

I meant the stainless -4 AN coupler nut.... Don't play coy with me.... !

 

[grampamark]

Kegged the Irish Red I brewed a couple of weeks ago and brewed the “light” version of my Blonde Ale recipe to try out a different arrangement of my brewing rig. We‘re moving to our city house full time in a few months and I’m trying to find a way to make my 3 vessel setup fit in the limited space which is available there.

 

[grampamark]

Paused for a moment to consider that, for the first time in 11+ years of brewing, I have a remarkably full pipeline. Split between two locations I have three brews in primary and five on tap. And I’m sitting here wondering what I’m going to brew next.

 

[ba-brewer]

Paused for a moment to consider that, for the first time in 11+ years of brewing, I have a remarkably full pipeline. Split between two locations I have three brews in primary and five on tap. And I’m sitting here wondering what I’m going to brew next.

Full Fermentor Blues

I think pipeline management is the toughest part of brewing

 

[Jayjay1976]

Full Fermentor Blues

I think pipeline management is the toughest part of brewing

I like to keep a couple extra fermenters on hand beyond what I usually have in use, that way I can always just push one out when the urge strikes. Nature calls, so to speak.

 

[Section1]

Got some kegging and bottling done today.

 

[Bramling Cross]

Paused for a moment to consider that, for the first time in 11+ years of brewing, I have a remarkably full pipeline. Split between two locations I have three brews in primary and five on tap. And I’m sitting here wondering what I’m going to brew next.

Funny you should mention that. I was, once more, pondering the opposite problem. I really should fabricate a dedicated kegerator. Currently, I have room for four kegs. It would be great if I could have an extra two kegs. But, a kegerator build would leave me with an extra two slots beyond the two that I want...and that would put me in your situation.

I'm too cheap for that.

As ba-brewer noted, it's all about pipeline management--very likely one of the truest statements that has ever been typed on this forum.

Instead, I bought a third vittles vault. My LHBS ran into cash flow problems last year so I wasn't able to get my annual sack of Otter and I skipped my UK season last year. Instead, I bought a sack of N. American malt, then proceeded to have gobs of fun with it. I had so much fun that I decided I should add an additional bulk grain vessel--it took me 30-years of brewing to reach this very basic milepost.

I also ordered a sack of Warminster Otter from the LHBS (hurray! they have money again!) because an empty vittles vault is space wasted.

I am currently psyching myself up for yet another hair-raising adventure into the automotive hellscape that is Northern Virginia. Having missed one season of UK brewing, I'm more than willing to risk my life for that sack of malt.

 

[ba-brewer]

Cleaned a keg and filled it with a strong bitter. Was hoping to enter this beer into a contest but not so sure about it now. I somehow got higher than expected attenuation from WY1469 then I was expecting. I was hoping for maybe 73 or 75% but ended up 82%.

Also working on reslanting some yeast. First step of 10mL was shaken yesterday and today and appeared to alive so I made 3 more slants and stepped up to 100mL.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

I ordered iodophor so I can finally clean out that fermenter I let get moldy.. hope it hasn't picked up any moldy flavors.

I don’t know if it is true, but I’ve read that sitting full with starsan will eliminate smells. I haven’t experimented myself yet, but I bought a used Spidel that smells a little like grandmas attic, so I hope it works!

 

[Cellar_Dweller]

We brewed a Best Bitter on the electric system while drinking a Marzen we made a few weeks ago. Started planning an Oak Aged Cherry Quad that will hopefully be ready for the holidays.