What I did for beer today

[connell89]

Today I am going to try my first SMASH beer. I just hope the 2-row Pils malt is not too old and using my one Cascade hops grown the past two years.

 

[T Murph]

Today I am going to try my first SMASH beer. I just hope the 2-row Pils malt is not too old and using my one Cascade hops grown the past two years.

Sounds interesting. Please post the outcome.

 

[BrewZer]

Three cheers for the red, white and BREW!

ABM and I got the Summer 48 into the fermenter with no injuries or casualties that we know of. I'm trying out a fermenter cooler bag with massive frozen gel packs to try and control temperature. We'll see how it works -- there's a lot of dead air in that bag around my dinky little 6 gallon fermenter...

Didn't quite hit the 1.053 I was looking for, but I may have mashed in just a bit hot at 164, which only dropped to 154 when I got the grist into it. We'll see how the final numbers come out.

 

[JAReeves]

Refilled the sparkling mineral water kegs, prepped water and grain for a Maris Otter-Centennial SMaSH tomorrow, and set up a starter of London Dry on the stir plate.

 

[broot]

Dry Hopped an ipa with 2 oz. Citra and 2 oz. McKenzie hops this morning and will keg it Saturday night.

 

[Bramling Cross]

Dry hopped an NEIPA with 5oz of Citra, Mosaic, and Simcoe. Then got a starter going for a weekend Witbier brew session.
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Would you mind telling more about your hop dropper process? Like me, it looks like you don't have adequate space in your fridge for the dropper to ride on your brewbucket throughout the fermentation. Looks like you installed a butterfly valve on your brewbucket lid, then you hook up the dropper? How'd you pull that off? I'm eager to learn about this!

 

[garzlok]

Would you mind telling more about your hop dropper process? Like me, it looks like you don't have adequate space in your fridge for the dropper to ride on your brewbucket throughout the fermentation. Looks like you installed a butterfly valve on your brewbucket lid, then you hook up the dropper? How'd you pull that off? I'm eager to learn about this!

So…2” TC Bulkhead thru the lid attached to a 2” butterfly valve. That always stays on and fits in my chamber with no issues. When my fermenter is in the chamber, I have a TC blank above the butterfly valve.

When it’s time to dry hop. I take the fermenter out of the chamber, take off the blank, and place the hop bong onto the butterfly valve. Add my hops. Hook-up CO2 to the bong, and purge. I open and close the bong and do a number of cycles to try and rid myself of as much O2 as possible.

Open the butterfly valve, drop hops, close butterfly valve, take off hop bong, place blank back on and put fermenter back into chamber.

This was my maiden voyage with this process. It may not be perfect, but it’s got to be a heck of a lot better than opening my lid and throwing hops in.

 

[T Murph]

@ garzlok I like you process using a blank cap on top of your valve. Enabling you to remove the hop bong offers flexibility moving the fermenter in and out of your fermentation chamber and allows it to fit into shorter space. I like that and I'll be copying your process. Thanks for sharing.

 

[BrewZer]

Checked in on my Summer 48, and I've got kreusen and 67° 12 hours after loading it into my cooler bag. Had to change out the frozen gel pack at zero-dark-thirty this morning, but so far the system (Cool Brewing bag and Cooler Shock large gel packs) seems to be working as advertised to control fermentation temperatures.

 

[HM-2]

Dry hopped my Hopfenweisse with 40g Luminosa, 30g Azacca Cryo and 20g Hallertau Mittelfreuh.

Dosed my bretted Saison with some extra fermentables, in the form of a 1:2 sugar syrup made with 250g clear candi sugar and 500ml water.

 

[JAReeves]

Making a Maris Otter-Centennial SMaSH. Hopefully get around to moving some kegs around so I can start pouring the Guava Saison and the Pear Agave Cider.

 

[bike2brew]

Experiments with Spike Steam Condensing Lid and SVBS brewing system. Able to reduce kettle volume by 1 gal/hr @ 80% of boil. That's using kettle marks @ 7 and 6 gallons respectively. 1st experiment @ 75% was somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 so repeat @ 80% to be right on mark. Going to need to float hop spider during the boil as I can't hang my current set-up in the kettle with the lid in place. Overall pleased with the setup will have immediate impact on reducing moisture during brewing.

 

[Bramling Cross]

So…2” TC Bulkhead thru the lid attached to a 2” butterfly valve. That always stays on and fits in my chamber with no issues. When my fermenter is in the chamber, I have a TC blank above the butterfly valve.

When it’s time to dry hop. I take the fermenter out of the chamber, take off the blank, and place the hop bong onto the butterfly valve. Add my hops. Hook-up CO2 to the bong, and purge. I open and close the bong and do a number of cycles to try and rid myself of as much O2 as possible.

Open the butterfly valve, drop hops, close butterfly valve, take off hop bong, place blank back on and put fermenter back into chamber.

This was my maiden voyage with this process. It may not be perfect, but it’s got to be a heck of a lot better than opening my lid and throwing hops in.

Thank you for taking the time to explain that! It makes sense and I'm eager to start scheming.

Every damned time I think my hardware is set for life...

 

[3 Dawg Night]

Kegged my Cascade Horizon American Pale Ale. Lots of citrus & pine. Can't wait for this one to carb up!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Working up recipes for an English barley wine which I will partigyle for an American strong. It will be my first time brewing these two.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Got entries ready to ship tomorrow.

 

[garzlok]

Every damned time I think my hardware is set for life...

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. I fully place the blame on this community.

 

[tdf]

I managed to run out of homebrew for the first time in quite a while last week. Been a busy year so far. Today I am brewing 50L of beer to get the pipeline going again. 22L of a German style pils and 28L of Bitter which I am going to split between WLP002 and Verdant (fermented a bit warmer than the 002).

That's more than 3x my normal batch size but I managed to piece together a second electric system with leftover pieces from grainfather. It's going well so far - hopefully I can stick the landing.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Entries are officially in the system and after I get the laundry done I’ll be weighing out the grist for tomorrow’s brew day. I need to brew a Hefe so I can give out some swirlies in August. Hubby likes them so they shouldn’t hang around past their prime.

 

[RevKev]

Thank you for taking the time to explain that! It makes sense and I'm eager to start scheming.

Every damned time I think my hardware is set for life...

I went for a 3in TC and 3in sight glass since the unitank has one. Bought everything off Amazon, maybe the Denord valves for 3in are good.

But this 1.5in valve is terrible QC...crossthreaded from factory and the silicone gasket seemed to be melted? Maybe that's the 110F heat and shipping.

 

[ba-brewer]

Brewed 2gal of Czech dark lager today, first attempt at the style.

Kegged my best bitter too, beer looked cloudier than I was expecting but noticed there was a decent creamy krausen ring so hopefully it will drop clear when chilled.

My marzen seems done so starting a semi slow cold crash waiting for a space to open up in the lager cooler.

 

[tdf]

I managed to run out of homebrew for the first time in quite a while last week. Been a busy year so far. Today I am brewing 50L of beer to get the pipeline going again. 22L of a German style pils and 28L of Bitter which I am going to split between WLP002 and Verdant (fermented a bit warmer than the 002).

That's more than 3x my normal batch size but I managed to piece together a second electric system with leftover pieces from grainfather. It's going well so far - hopefully I can stick the landing.

I managed to pull it off, mostly. I had to get out an old immersion chiller for the pils because the counterflow chiller wasn't cooperating so the late hops probably contributed more bitterness than I planned.

I also dry hopped my APA and cleaned 10 kegs

 

[HM-2]

Kegged up my Hopfenweisse. It's pretty grassy, ended up spending twice as long in DH as I would normally do as I got totally wiped out by a stomach bug for four days.

Hopefully a week in the kegerator will sort that out.

 

[T Murph]

Harvested my Nugget Hops today. Got almost a 5 gal bucket full. Got them on a screen above a box fan drying.

 

[BrewZer]

Checked on my Cool Brewing brew cooler and my fermentation has clearly subsided, as the kreusen has dissolved into yeast rafts and the Freezer Shock bags are now keeping the temps down in the 63° range.

After a week of using the bag/gel system, I believe I've solved the temperature control issue without having to invest in yet another refrigerator...although the cost was about the same, I won't be adding to the electricity bill as much.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Sniffed an airlock. Mmmm. Will it be a banana bomb? Will it be balanced? Time will tell.

 

[JAReeves]

Added 2oz of whole-cone Centennial to my SMaSH Pale Ale.

Chilled the starter for the future Pilsner.

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

Filled 41 half-litre bottles with Czech style lager.
Got everything ready for brewing an Altbier tomorrow.

 

[Bramling Cross]

I went for a 3in TC and 3in sight glass since the unitank has one. Bought everything off Amazon, maybe the Denord valves for 3in are good.

But this 1.5in valve is terrible QC...crossthreaded from factory and the silicone gasket seemed to be melted? Maybe that's the 110F heat and shipping.

Really appreciate the clear instructions and the time you put into doing that, I have this bookmarked. Thank you!

I've been brewing for three decades, so I certainly know what it feels like to find out your holy grail parts aren't what you thought they would be. It's a running joke, really.

The important thing is that you made them work. That's proper homebrewing, sir!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Note to self: always use a blowoff tube with a Hefe. This was not fun cleaning up second thing in the morning , and I am thankful it was contained to the top of my bucket fermentor. Maybe I’ll make mixed fermentation “sourdough” waffles on Sunday.