What I did for beer today

Yakima 728
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Brewing a cyro hazy right now.

"Oats three ways" (flaked, malted and golden naked) plus 10% wheat (malted and torrified) on a 50/50 base of pilsner and Golden Promise.

The mash wasn't very fun and my efficiency was in the 60s...I'm normally near 80%. I did mash hot (70°C) so probably would have got closer to my numbers going a bit lower.

Just measured out my whirlpool...70g Motueka, 50g cryo Vic Secret and 25g cryo BRU-1

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Cleaned a pair of kicked kegs, then dumped my ~4 months old Star San batch and made up a fresh batch using my RO water. Then prepped for brewing my 1.107 OG imperial chocolate honey stout tomorrow by programming my RO controller to load 23.75 gallons into the brew rig, gathering all the grains for morning milling, measuring out the mineral additions for strike and sparge liquors, prepping a pair of my italian 6.5g carboys, setting up a pair of kegs for fermentation gas purging, and generally setting all the gear 'n' stuff in their proper places.

In the AM I'll grind the grist and measure out all the hop additions while the BK and HLT come up to strike and recirculation temps, respectively, with their mineral additions added. Then I'll underlet the strike and be off and running. Easy peasy!

Haven't brewed since the middle of June and looking forward to knocking a few months of rust off...

Cheers!
 
Man, that was a rather epic brew session. When you're dealing with black wort in a room that's basically white and full of white equipment, errant wort becomes a major headache simply because it cannot be unseen. I could easily count an extra hour just from cleaning up after myself today! All the way to the end: filling the carboys, using silicone hose from the brew rig through a pump, of course, take the hose from the neck of one carboy to add more to the other and have it catch on the edge of the neck causing it to snap and sending a chord of black wort over my shoulder and painting one of my fridges 🤬

That's the kind of day I had in the brewery.

But with all the cleaning distractions I didn't lose track of what actually needed to be done. So the good news is I totally nailed the OG of 1.107 - which ain't easy - so it shall indeed be A Big Chocolate Beer :rock:

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Kegs waiting for purging gas...

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Cheers! (I totally need a beer! :p)
 
Kegging my NEIPA. 12.8g/L of cryo BRU-1, Motueka and Vic Secret has taken a fair bit of the volume sadly so don't think I'll get a full 19L. Running through the white bounce because there's a lot of floating detritus.

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Smells ****ing fantastic. Overripe pineapple and candied lime.
 
About seven months ago, I did a double-mash imperial stout (12.6%ABV) and aged it in a 5 gal bourbon barrel for about 6 months. At about the 5 month mark, I brewed the exact same recipe, but after 3 weeks in the fermenter, I split the batch and aged 1/3 on vanilla beans, 1/3 just keg conditioned and 1/3 I stabilized and aged on maple syrup. All for about 3 weeks.

Yesterday, I invited a few friends over and we did blending experiments. I even asked ChatGPT to write a scoring sheet for me.

Lots of fun, and have a couple blends that I think are going to be tasty.

Oh, and had to finish the day off with a Kings Cup!
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Brew rig was over due for a hot PBW cleaning and as it's another rainy day in Paradise I am getting it done...

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[edit] Whenever I do this I marvel at 3V2P herms rig users that don't use an autosparge valve. With just a couple inches of cleaning solution in my mlt the autosparge float...won't...so it's a fiddly operation balancing the flow rates between the two pumps...

Cheers!
 
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Been a busy week:
- Monday I brewed the Winter’s Bourbon Cask Ale

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/winters-bourbon-cask-ale-clone.156479/
- Tuesday I drove to the homebrew shop to restock needed grains and hops
- Wednesday I bottled a mead that has been sitting on oak cubes for about 10 months. And I bottled a holiday ale, split batch, half with a cinnamon clove flavoring and half with an oatmeal cookie flavoring.
- Today I brewed Munich Dunkel that will likely be ready after Christmas.

Next week I plan to brew my annual barleywine
 
Kegged the Figgy Pudding Christmas Stout. Final gravity was a little lower than I expected, but then again I really didn't know what to expect from 7 lbs of fresh figs. Tasted a bit bitter, but definitely complex and fruity. Hope it mellows out in time for the early December tree cutting party, but it probably won't really hit its stride for about six more months.
 
Cleaned a pair of kicked kegs, ran out to pick up a specific base malt for an IPA I'm brewing tomorrow, got all the grains measured and the mill set up for a morning crush, and programmed my RO controller to load the brew rig with 20 gallons of water (which is chugging along right now). Fired up the #2 fermentation fridge to make sure it's still working (like all my brew fridges, it's a Craig's List score so comes with a bit of sketchiness ;)) and programmed its BrewPi controller, then measured out all the salts for the brew.

Should be all set to go once I get a cup of coffee in me in the AM...

Cheers!
 
Checked on a small keg I have in the garage fridge with a Maibock that’s been lagering a long while. The last time I tapped it the beer was flat And I didn’t have time to check on the leak. Well, I’d like to get this one into a competition if it‘s still okay, so I carried out a tank of CO2 and the leak was coming from the PRV. Swapped the lid with another - problem solved. I plan to sample it on Sunday and bottle some on Monday. Last Tuesday I delivered 2 pins for a caskfest this Saturday.
 
10 minutes left in the mash of a Ballentine IPA recipe I've been playing with. This version uses the allegedly authentic hop combo and increases the corn to 30% - which made the first 15 minutes of the mash a challenge as the flaked corn literally dissolved! 😳

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Onwards!

Fly sparge chugging slowly along...

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So far so good!

Sparge completed, pre-boil volume * gravity check passed (expected 13.5 gallons at 1.059 SG, hit the volume at 1.062!) so the boil is on!

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Yeehaw! Gettin' 'er done! 🤠

Wrapping this brew day up! Chillin' to pitching temp...

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Filling carboys....

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Gas on! Unnecessary? Perhaps. Call it force of habit, I always do 4 minutes at .5 lpm per fermentor and have never had a disappointing fermentation.

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Loaded into the 2nd ferm fridge, next to last week's imperial chocolate stout...

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...and a pair of kegs hooked up to the two fermentors for purging.

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Everything cleaned and polished and put away. First time using BRY-97. Fingers crossed.

Final stats: volume to the fermentors was on the nose at 10.5 gallons, and I maintained those extra 3 gravity points all the way to a 1.072 OG.

Cheers!
 
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Everyone else seems to be really busy with brewing activities, like almost every day.

I guess, not to be outdone; Wednesday before my financial appointment, I picked up grain, yesterday I milled the grain and got the HLT filled/dialed in. Today I'm brewing!

A doppelbock type beer I call SpaceX Amber.
 
day_trippr said:
10 minutes left in the mash of a Ballentine IPA recipe I've been playing with. This version uses the allegedly authentic hop combo and increases the corn to 30% - which made the first 15 minutes of the mash a challenge as the flaked corn literally dissolved! 😳

View attachment 833059

Onwards!

Fly sparge chugging slowly along...

View attachment 833065

So far so good!

Sparge completed, pre-boil volume * gravity check passed (expected 13.5 gallons at 1.059 SG, hit the volume at 1.062!) so the boil is on!

View attachment 833070

Yeehaw! Gettin' 'er done! 🤠
Click to expand...
You certainly have a nice brewing system and brewing area!

I'm getting close to the wort chilling part, fermenter is all set and I'm about to start shoveling spent grain out of the MT. Luckily, it's still nice outside (44 and light rain) so I can dump the grain in the field on our property.
 
Bottled a smoked porter that I brewed for a family members upcoming 65th birthday. Used a good deal of cherrywood smoked malt from Briess, since they like a lot of smoke in that style. Smell is super smoke forward and the sample I tried tasted the part.

After that I made a kitchen sink IPA with some left over malt I needed to get rid of. There's a mix of 2-row, pilsner, flaked oats, flaked wheat and cologne malt. Threw in some citra, simcoe and el dorado. Not sure how it'll turn out but it'll be a fun experiment.

Now enjoying a home brewed brown ale after all that work. Cheers
 
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Bottled the PITA pumpkin ale - from the sample, subtle vanilla (new addition) and cinnamon (Ceylon this year instead of generic), otherwise pretty similar to last year's batch. And as expected, S-04 was the hero; crystal-clear going into the bottles.
Then did a super-extra-thorough cleaning of bottling bucket, spigot, Fermzilla to get ready for next brew.
 
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Always a trend-bucker, to replace one of my vintage 6.5 gallon Italian carboys that grew a star on its side earlier this fall and had to be put down, I went with a new 6.5 gallon Italian carboy.

Picked it up at one of the last standing LHBS in Massachusetts, the "Beer And Wine Hobby" shop in the North Shore area. The last time I visited a store by that name was maybe 16-something years ago when it was located in a Woburn warehouse, but the current owner had moved the whole operation to a strip mall on Andover Street in Danvers (for my MassHole homies) some time ago.

And I spent at least a half hour speaking with the owner (Mister Genaro Cataldo) who is a super nice guy and can hold up his side of a conversation regarding brewing for sure. He has a fully outfitted store with an extensive and well laid out grain section and can do full sacks, carries White Labs, Wyeast, Imperial and Omega liquid yeasts along with Apex, Fermentis, Lallemand, and even Mangrove Jack dry strains, and apparently does quite a lot of mail order to keep the lights on. The store is only 10 minutes further away from me than Jasper's up in Nashua, so I could easily end up there again...

Cheers!
 
Still trying to figure out why my pump won't pump (it messed with me last Saturday brew day).

Took the head off and pulled the impeller. It was clean, not warped, did spin freely, passed the shake test (for loose or broken magnet pieces inside).
Ran the pump for a second and the magnet spun freely.
Put it all back together, making sure the head was centered and noting was binding.
Hooked it up to my HLT with some water, and...... Nothing... Not a drop moved.

WTH!!!

And sniffed the airlock, yummm.
 
Supposed to be working from home today; ignored the texts (my guys know what they're doing, if they need me they're gonna call) and kegged the latest version of the House NEIPA. Ran low on hops so had to augment the usual Citra/Sabro with some Cascade. Smells good, should be able to test it tomorrow. Then brewed up a batch of pressure fermented lager, on what 'might' be some mystery yeast. Jar of slurry in the back of the fridge, looks like 34/70, smells like 34/70, fwooshed when opened, should be 34/70. Did a starter with it, it took off overnight so pitched it with no qualms. I like that word. I also apparently hate to mark yeast slurry jars; the only reason I know this wasn't my usual ale yeast (Notty) is because there's another jar in the fridge that is actually marked Notty with the date. So it can't be that.
 

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