What I did for beer today

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Been brewing a wee bit lately :mug: When I have a spark on something I tend to get pretty obsessive about it then one day drop the whole thing completely uninterested til teh next wave hits, which is why this hobby suits me so well since there`s weeks between phases. Would really want to brew one more but I`m pretty much at capacity bottle wise and have no room to buy more.
 
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Been brewing a wee bit lately :mug: When I have a spark on something I tend to get pretty obsessive about it then one day drop the whole thing completely uninterested til teh next wave hits, which is why this hobby suits me so well since there`s weeks between phases. Would really want to brew one more but I`m pretty much at capacity bottle wise and have no room to buy more.
Buy them anyway! It’s what we do, just keep buying. You’ll be glad the next time you fill to capacity!!
 
Bottled my UBRK 'Homegrown Cascade' (5 2/3 ltr, black hop-hat caps) and 'Juicy Kolibri' (6 2/3 ltr, orange caps) Pale Ale today in 1/3 ltr bottles.

Carbonated to 5.4g/l by adding 7.5g sugar per liter or 19.5ml as a 2:1 water-sugar syrup.
Now a good week before they move to the fridge for conditioning. I'm running out of space in both fridges. As I'm not at home for a while now, my kitchen fridge is also already half filled with conditioning bottles... It's a good thing that the cold season is coming, because the cellar well is a good place to store things. (This is how brewers must have felt before the invention of the ingenious Mr. Linde.)
The 18+5 liter pear cider also wants to be bottled in a few days... then there would still be half-liter bottles for around 25 liters left for whatever comes into my head.. let's see...

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Buy them anyway! It’s what we do, just keep buying. You’ll be glad the next time you fill to capacity!!
I probly would but I`m literally running out of physical space to put the bottles in as my garage acts as a brewery, a paintbooth (separate corner though I also do the boiling there because of the powerful vent fan), metal AND a luthier workshop whatever happens to tickle my fancy at the time (currently building both a motorbike and a bass) as well as my mancave/office in front so there`s just not any more free space LOL.
 
I bottled 5 gallons of oatmeal stout. I had a glitch along the way. While racking from the FV into the bottling bucket, I saw some air bubbles passing through the drain tubing, and heard the glug glug sound. I spotted the problem, but not before a gallon or so had passed through. I had replaced the hose clamp holding the hose to the drain valve nipple with one of those new-fangled "smooth" clamps. When snugged up, the clamp went out of round, due to the metal's stiffness. The end of the tubing conformed to this oval shape, allowing air to be drawn in.

I replaced the clamp with a regular worm-screw type, threw out the smoothie clamp, opened the valve again and the rest racked fine. I always add some meta and AA to the bottling bucket to scavenge O2. Hopefully, my beer won't be oxidized any faster than usual.
 
Kegging off the latest batch of house NEIPA. Cleaned two fermenters that had sat for a few days (yes bad but they were sealed up). Deciding on the weekend brew; either a red (hubby is into those right now) or just a plain blonde (he used to be into those but we've been married a long time). (That was a joke).
 
Buy them anyway! It’s what we do, just keep buying. You’ll be glad the next time you fill to capacity!!
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Caved in :mug: Going through some personal stuff, had an absolute rotter of a day so needed to do sth fun tonight. Figured if I move my TIG rig out from the worksop to the actual garage side and make some room to fit a couple boxes I can squeeze in another shelf full of bottles so of course I had to order 24x 0,5L bottles, 300 caps and some hopsocks 😇

OH! Also finally got rid of this weird malt bag I bought probly a year ago, it was already out of date a couple months. It said Viking Malts Chocolate Light 400 EBC which to me is a bit of an oxymoron like 400 isn`t anywhere near light to me... We`ll see, this should be pretty stiff as I dumped 7Kg of pale as well as that half kilo of the not-so-light choc in there

Anyway once I pitch this batch I have over a hundred liters of beer on the go. Oh and another oddity, IDK if it`s the exceptionally high apple yield this fall or what but the entire country seems to be out of stock of those cheap under 20eur fermenter buckets, everywhere I`ve looked says none available so had to buy a 30L water jug to ferment this one in.
 
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Brewed a 2.5G Munich based pale ale with lots of Comet hops. It was meant to be 2row based with "some" Munich in the grist. Oh well no way but forward now, huh? Other than that, brew day went smoothly.

I pitched some W34/70 at 60F with pressure set at 10psi. This is in my recent 3g keg purchase. Fingers crossed.......
 
I think I'm the master procrastinator!
15 years ago I bought a twin-tower kegerator (Edgestar), and for the last 15 years I've complained about foam from the taps.
A few days ago when both kegs kicked, I finally decided it was time to balance the lines (which were only 5' long from the factory).
Calculations showed they needed to be 10.96'.
So now I just finished installing the proper length beer lines.
I have two kegs lagering in the refrigerator right now, I'll be tapping them soon to see if this change does anything as far as reducing the foam when pulling a pint.
 
I did a double O2 free transfer - two 5 gal buckets emptying into two corny kegs. Went very nicely and I now have stout at the ready for the holiday season... Or most of it. I hope.

Also began assembling parts for a mash tun hoist that will be attached to an existing gazebo. The pulley unit arrives in a day or two. Sheesh - I'm getting too old to just go .... Grrrrr and lift it out.
 
Dry hopped 3.5 oz of Comet hops. Fermentation looked great when I peeked into the keg to drop the bagged hops. This batch was another to move older/excessive inventory out of the way. One of the 3G kegs I purchased has a crooked bale on it. Don't know what happened there with QC. It's the one that's in use but it's holding pressure so far.

Now on to the next recipe................
 
Tapped the raspberry melomel I made last month, and hoodoggie is it a good one! Husband, who professes to not like mead, took a few sips from the glass I brought out for him to try, and then kept it. He says it's more like a seltzer than a mead; this one has no fusels, just a nice clean taste. It's not tart but has a very fresh raspberry flavor; a tiny bit of blue agave syrup added to the glass makes it even better. Darn proud of myself for this one.
 
I've struggled to figure out how to get a Flotit 2.0 dip tube into my SS Brewbucket ale fermenter for several years. I think I may have cracked the code with some 1/4" ID, 5/16" OD tubing. The 1/4" ID fits the narrow outlet on the Flotit and the 5/16" ID snugs up tightly within the ID of the Brew Bucket's racking arm. I hope this works because I really don't want to weld on an impossible to clean/boil only reducer.
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Ignore the filthy racking arm, it's a dead soldier that died when my sauce pan ran dry during a caustic boil. Still pissed at myself about that one.
 
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The Flotit 2.0 conversion on my SS Brewbucket passed the test. Looks like I can now use pellet dry hops in the ale fermenter.

Stuff’s about to get real stanky round here.
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Looks like you got it figured out. For future consideration a coupling reducer could also work there as an inexpensive fix. Various types exist. A SS barbed one would probably have worked off the racking arm. Less parts how you have it now though.
 
The Flotit 2.0 conversion on my SS Brewbucket passed the test. Looks like I can now use pellet dry hops in the ale fermenter.

Stuff’s about to get real stanky round here.
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I have a couple Brew Buckets. I might have to consider that mod for the (few) times I dry hop. I hate messing with bags, but free-range hops have a bad habit of clogging the racking arm.
 
(day before yesterday)
I opened my first Grape Ale, it was definitely not what I was expecting (although I had never tried a grape ale).
I think I had my first disappointment, it's drinkable but it wasn't at all what I expected... i can feel the acidity of the grapes but it seems a bit watered down, and i can't notice any of the aromas of the Moscatel (the grapes I used). Anyway, I'll wait and see if it improves with time and I'll see if the other two grape ales I have just finished fermenting are better than this one.
 
I made a list - a list of beers and ciders in my fridge and storage room.

I usually had two to three, rerely four different types of beer in the fridge. The lid colors and color codes of the rubbers on the swing-top bottles were still manageable in my head.
Since I also brew a lot of small batches, I would have completely lost track without LEAN. Nevertheless, I now have to write down what's what.
Colors start to repeat ... Including cider, there are currently 17 different beverages in 21 different bottle/cap combinations.
There are more combinations than beverages, because I usually use swing-top bottles in addition to crown caps for bottling larger volumes, which then don't leave the house.
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(Yes, I know 9°C is "warmish" ... I like it that way.)

edit: and I should headlined this: Dear HBT - this is your fault!
 
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When the colours clash buy some coloured sticky dots.
Thank you for shattering my worlds of complicated thoughts to nothingness with a simple and yet effective idea. I came up so far with "designing one or even more rubber stamps, reactivating my print industry related contacts to get some screen-print inks from them and apply it to the bottle caps to make more kinds of different and self designed caps!" 🤣
 
Bottled 2.7 gallons of coconut stout
Brewed 3.25 gallons of imperial stout (1.101, 70 ibu)
Mopped the floor :p
Bottled the 3 gallons (minus trub/yeast) of imperial stout I made just ten days ago, 1.101 down to 1.023, and tasting quite nice already! Added 8 ounces of no-name bourbon, priming sugar, and ec-1118 yeast to make sure it carbs up.
 
Thank you for shattering my worlds of complicated thoughts to nothingness with a simple and yet effective idea. I came up so far with "designing one or even more rubber stamps, reactivating my print industry related contacts to get some screen-print inks from them and apply it to the bottle caps to make more kinds of different and self designed caps!" 🤣

I get rolls of 3/4" dots on Amazon. But writing the style and date on 50+ dots is my least favorite part of bottling day.
 
Looked deep in to my fermenzilla and been fasinated about all the activity.
Have you tried pitching WY1968/Pub, ie the Fullers strain? It doesn't always do it, but it'll sometimes create these amazing golf ball sized clumps of yeast that whirl around inside your fermenter like some kinda Hollywood notion of an asteroid field. It's hours of fun for the whole family.
 
Have you tried pitching WY1968/Pub, ie the Fullers strain? It doesn't always do it, but it'll sometimes create these amazing golf ball sized clumps of yeast that whirl around inside your fermenter like some kinda Hollywood notion of an asteroid field. It's hours of fun for the whole family.
It is my first brew with fermenzilla, amazing how muts activity with 34/70
 

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