What I did for beer today

[brewbama]

Added corn sugar thru the out port to a ferment CO2 purged keg, closed xferred a Weissbier into the keg from the fermenter to prime it, counterflow filled bottles from the keg, and placed them back into the ferment fridge to bottle condition @3.2 volumes CO2.

 

[Tony B]

Talked the lady into ordering an RO system ( Amazon deal price) rather than replace the filter on our old, single stage unit and she was planning to buy a new faucet, since the old one was looking roachy.
Anyhow, it came in a few days ago and I installed it last night.
I still plan to get the majority of my brewing water at work, since we use the same system with larger tanks I usually fill my never used bottling bucket with about 6 gallons and bring it home. Now I have the additional couple gallons I need for a brew day plus excellent water for the ice maker, cooking, drinking or whatever as well.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Brewed a gallon of 1.044 wort (33% 2-row, 67% instant oats), and sprinkled a little bit of LalBrew Abbaye dry yeast, to make a nice big starter for a belgian-dark-strong next week.

 

[MaxStout]

Brewed 6 gallons of ordinary bitter. Maris, some medium UK crystal, 8 oz torrified wheat for some body, a touch of Carafa III for a little color. Mash went well, pH a little lower than projected but fine--5.25 measured vs 5.36 predicted by Bru N Water. I mashed all the grains, including the little bit of Carafa and factored that in Brew N Water. Usually my pH is within a few 100ths of Brew N Water.

First Gold, 1.5 oz at 60 and 1.5 oz at 5 mins.

Racked 6 gallons to the fermenter and pitched rehydrated S-04. This time I did not oxygenate the wort. Many brewers say it's not necessary with dry yeast, so want to find out if it matters.

OG was 1.041.

 

[brewbama]

Kegged an ordinary bitter.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Weighed and milled grain for brew day tomorrow, and ran pbw through the AIO and chiller then through 2 rinses.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Yesterday I picked up some drink coasters made from barrel staves. A local guy makes them, plus all sorts of other items from used barrels he picks up after a brewery is done with them. I'll give the coasters a proper test drive next week during a Christmas party at the Oak Island Brewery/Tavern.

 

[Willy]

Cleaned out the six beer lines on the keezer.
Now… I am ready for holiday glad tidings and family and friends to make a dent in my holiday stockpile (I have 25 gallons on reserve. Ha)

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Cleaned out the six beer lines on the keezer.
Now… I am ready for holiday glad tidings and family and friends to make a dent in my holiday stockpile (I have 25 gallons on reserve. Ha)

When should I stop over?

 

[Knightshade]

Talked the lady into ordering an RO system ( Amazon deal price) rather than replace the filter on our old, single stage unit and she was planning to buy a new faucet, since the old one was looking roachy.
Anyhow, it came in a few days ago and I installed it last night.
I still plan to get the majority of my brewing water at work, since we use the same system with larger tanks I usually fill my never used bottling bucket with about 6 gallons and bring it home. Now I have the additional couple gallons I need for a brew day plus excellent water for the ice maker, cooking, drinking or whatever as well.

This reminds me of the shirt I saw "The Apartment Brewer" wearing the other day.

 

[Knightshade]

Dry hopped the Pale Ale, and not beer related per se, but made a 1G batch of hard tea and threw it in the same FC as the cider.

 

[Willy]

When should I stop over?

You can start driving now. From WI it’s about 15 hours.

 

[brewbama]

Collecting RO for tomorrow’s brew day.

 

[ba-brewer]

Kegged my Munich Dunkel, a few extra days in the fermentor made for a pretty clear beer on transfer.

 

[grampamark]

Went to the LHBS and got ingredients for two batches-a Mosaic SMaSH and a Bullwinkle Brown (Moose Drool clone).

 

[RumOnTheDocks]

Moved around 14 gallons of bottled beer to my new apartment, my back is not pleased with me.

 

[leedspointbrew]

Went to the LHBS and got ingredients for two batches-a Mosaic SMaSH and a Bullwinkle Brown (Moose Drool clone).

Brewing the Angry Hank's Street Fight soon. But a Moose Drool clone sounds good too.

 

[day_trippr]

Swapped out a kicked keg of Julius with a freshie of Juicy Bits, ran the kick through the Mark II keg washer, then set up my chocolate stout for a crash before kegging in a couple of days...

Cheers!

 

[HM-2]

Doughed in on the variation of my rum barrel red rye ale.
Jacked up the ABV a bit this time around (shooting for 8.5%).

70% Floor-Malted MO
18% Rye Malt
7% Red Rye Crystal
3% CaraHell
2% Crystal T50

Even with 250g of rice hulls it's been a pretty sticky one.

50 IBU, mostly Apollo in the boil with a small Simcoe addition at 5m
50g Simcoe and 30g Sabro in the whirlpool
50g addition of each as a dry hop
Then 6 weeks on medium char oak staves soaked for 5 days in Appleton Estate 12 year rum.

Last time I brewed a variation of this and brought it to my local HB club, the feedback was "a bit too Citra forward in the hopping" and "needs a point or two more ABV" (it was 7% plus whatever the rum added, which I dumped in with the staves). Hoping to rectify that this time with a bit more grapefruit/resin and a little more punch. I can be quite Sabro sensitive and this is by far the best use I've ever found for it, the oily coconut places really nice with the wood, rum and rye spice and presents as much less like suntan lotion and more like dundery rum funk than it can in other cases.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Today I’m currently brewing an Abbot Ale clone. It’s a Strong Bitter brewed by Greene King. My recipe is
4200g Maris Otter
300g Amber malt
200g Medium Crystal
25g First Gold & 20g Challenger at 60m
25g Fuggles at 15m
25g Pilgrim at 85C for 20m
Yeast is WHC Old English.
OG 1051 BHE 75%

 

[garzlok]

Got a yeast starter going for my stout that I hope to brew on Monday or Tuesday.

A power outage took out my RaspberryPints build the other day, so I configured a new SD card from scratch, added a Power Off/Power On switch to my Raspberry Pi that is running Pints, and plugged it all into a new Uninterruptable Power Supply...

....only to find out that I have an empty CO2 tank (off to get more CO2)

 

[mac_1103]

Filled a few bottles and a couple of minikegs for a party tomorrow.

 

[day_trippr]

Kegged my chocolate stout today then cleaned the two carboys...

Cheers!

 

[brewbama]

Took the time to add measured amounts of cold liquid to my little kegs so I can tell how many gallons I have remaining. Here I poured some out and heated the cold sensitive tape w/ my hand so I can see if I can deactivate it when the keg is in the fridge.

 

[garzlok]

...6 months later and it's still a battle... hoping I found and fixed my CO2 leak today.

 

[ClaudiusB]

I decided today to address multiple complaints from my brewing system about one of the water supply valves not performing as expected during brewing.
I used the hardware diagnostic tools available to solve the valve's intermittent problem by letting the system cycle the valve until failure. The problem turned out to be a slow-opening microswitch.
Attached are a few pics showing some of the diagnostic tools.

 

[Knightshade]

Transferred the pale ale out of the fermenter into a keg. Flushed the waiting line with starsan and hooked it up. Currently conditioning at 30/30, ill report back in 3 days!!

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Brewed 3 gallons of 1.092 wort (the fabled Westvletern Clone recipe), pleasantly surprised to hit my gravity and volume so closely on the first try, without needing any DME. Not sure what I'm expecting, I tasted the candi syrup D-180 by itself and thought "well that's actually kinda flavorless", but I bought the syrup at least a year ago, and who knows how long it had been sitting on the shelf at the HBS.

 

[tdf]

Today I kegged 3 beers (happy to have my taps filled again soon)

And squeezed some cans of saison. They are pretty firm 2 weeks in.

 

[brewbama]

I went to get my CO2 bottle filled w/ beverage grade CO2 and bought a spare 5# CO2 bottle so when I do run low on CO2 I can swap it out and get the spare filling at my leisure vs crisis mode.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I'm drinking HB while cleaning my tavern for a get together tomorrow. Always a little to do before company.

Food, friends, beer and Bourbon , what could be better?

OK, a couple things come to mind . . .

 

[Knightshade]

Stopped by the LHBS to pick up some grains for the next brewday...which I'm hoping will happen this weekend!

 

[BeerNsteadofH2O]

Just finished milling 9 and a half lbs. Of 2 row, 14 ounces of midnight wheat and 8 ounces of crystal 40 L.. ran 9 gallons of RO/DI 4.25 gallons in the brewzilla, the rest in the hot liquor tank, set the brewzilla to start heating at 7 Am.

 

[HM-2]

Switched my rum barrel red rye ale over yo spunding instead of airlock. Needs a couple more days before DH.

Prepped my oak stave pieces by vacuum sealing 12 of them in a large sous vide bag with about half a bottle of Appleton Estate 12 year Rare Cask Jamaican rum donated by my FIL from his stash.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Switched my rum barrel red rye ale over yo spunding instead of airlock. Needs a couple more days before DH.

Prepped my oak stave pieces by vacuum sealing 12 of them in a large sous vide bag with about half a bottle of Appleton Estate 12 year Rare Cask Jamaican rum donated by my FIL from his stash.

How long do you leave the staves and rum sealed up?

 

[HM-2]

How long do you leave the staves and rum sealed up?

About a week usually. Then they'll spend probably 6 weeks in the fermenter.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

About a week usually. Then they'll spend probably 6 weeks in the fermenter.

Interesting, I was thinking they'd be added to an aging keg after fermentation. Do you use something similar to that?

 

[HM-2]

Interesting, I was thinking they'd be added to an aging keg after fermentation. Do you use something similar to that?

No, I dump the trub from my primary and just use that. I have transferred to secondary before but honestly would rather avoid dirtying another receptacle.

 

[day_trippr]

Another slow day here, decided to follow up on my post here regarding the rotameter I bought from @Bobby_M at brewhardware.com. I had wondered what the full-flow rates were with and without the meter in line.

I dragged out one of my old 10 gallon G1 kettles and set up a minimally restrictive configuration with essentially "negative lift" so as to enable as high a flow rate as possible. Put enough water in the 20 gallon G1 to allow 7 gallons to be transferred before the pick-up tube went dry.

Turns out the suspicion I expressed in that earlier post was pretty much on target. With the meter removed the pump moved 7 gallons in 1:05, and with the meter in line the same volume took 1:07. I only did the one test for each configuration, so I'd take the results as within the margin of testing error

Looking at the spec for the 815pl, the expected flow rate for such a simple essentially zero lift configuration would be 7 gpm, so I'm pretty confident that the meter isn't at all restrictive at the tested flow rate...

Cheers!

 

[day_trippr]

Spinning up a big 1318 starter for a 10g batch of my all-Citra hazy...

Cheers!