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What I did for beer today

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Apricot wheat now bottled. That was sitting a while, but color and flavor are good. I added the dry Brett to some bottles they will be ready for Homebrew alley. I also packed entries to ship to a competition. The last one to ship for this year, but not the last comp to enter.
Hope your beers do well and good luck with your contests
 
Hope your beers do well and good luck with your contests
Much thanks!
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Accept for some cleaning this small batch of grape ale is bottled. What I thought was a pellical forming didn’t progress so after tasting it I decided to package it up. I topped off all but one with wine gas, but left my “tester” with no special treatment, so if I’m wrong there will be evidence in the tester. I love the color of this, it reminds me of a blush wine.
 
Bottled just over 5 gallons of SN Tumbler clone. Yielded 53 12oz longnecks. FG was a bit lower than expected--1.009, vs the expected 1.012. I pitched US-05, and OG was 1.053, so that gives about 83% AA. Mash temp was 152F. It'll be a tad on the thin side.

Hydro sample smelled and tasted good.
 
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)
 
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!
 

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