What I did for beer today

[Drinking Sensibly]

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

 

[flipster]

Yesterday I bottled the fermented MJ Peach & Passion Fruit cider kit and so the vat was ready for cleaning today.

I planned to finish work early today, so I prepared a brew day yesterday as well, grinding malts and putting together my 5-litre system. Also took the yeast out of the fridge and teased it with the recently pickled wort to wake the little fellas up (and they were hangry...).

I added a new feature to my utility muffin beer research kitchen setup, to avoid geodetic pressure while lautering directly into the boiling kettle: just by adding a simple copper T-connection. I'm pretty sure, it's not really necessary at this scale... but hey... I did it just because I can.

This time I repeated a recipe I did recently just to test the repeatability. After boiling I ended up with 0,2ltr more than last time and at 1,051 OG just 1pt "off". I'm quite happy with the result, and looking forward to a comparing tasting.

And - what a coincidence - the duration of 45min for the saccharification rest at 72°C was exactly the time, my Leberkäs-loaf took to bake. This is what my brewers lunch today looked like:
Leberkäs, prezel, sweet Bavarian style "Hausmacher" (homemade) mustard, and a self made cold extraction '1%' beer.

 

[T Murph]

I weighed and vacuum sealed my first of the season harvest of Nugget Hops today. Quite happy, I ended up with 1 lb 3 3/4 ounces. That's a lot of Nuggets for a homebrewer. I still have about half a pound from last year's harvest. I'm gonna offer a pound to a local brewery and maybe they will toss them into a small batch of a local ingredient brew.

 

[Cameronl]

I swapped out the no-name STC-1000 temp controller on my glycol chiller for an Inkbird branded one.

On Sunday, I finished brewing up a lager, got it into the fermenter, then powered up the chiller. The controller seemed to think the glycol was at 157F!

I was unhappy with the controller from the get-go, as the power and settings buttons were reversed (the settings button turned it on, the power button went into settings mode). It was annoying, but hey, I saved $3 over an Inkbird!

I set the controller to 135F just to get it cooling without it running nonstop, and quickly ordered an Inkbird online. I kept an eye on the controller for the fermenter glycol pump to be sure it was where I wanted it to be. The new controller arrived after just three days and I quickly swapped it out.

 

[RevKev]

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!

Yeah things happen... but it's what happens when you buy off Amazon for 1/2 the cost of the big bois.

I actually just did a little dry hop here with the rig.. although 1lb is the absolute limit lol. I would recommend doing 8oz twice...

Going to spund at 15PSI for 3 days then keg it with closed transfer.

 

[HM-2]

I did some unplanned rapid disassembly on a broken Kegland counter-pressure bottle filler.

I broke this ages ago, snapped the wand off because my tap tower is slightly too short to fit in under comfortably.

I had a bright idea to rip the stub of the wand out and M8 tap the housing so I could fit a barb with some appropriately sized silicone tubing.

What I didn't realise is that the housing isn't threaded into the body of the bottle filler but glued with some sort of food grade epoxy so once the level of force needed to pass the tap through the hole got high enough it just sheared off.

I do think I've probably got enough threads that, in combination with some PTFE plumbers tape, I can get a decent seal.

 

[day_trippr]

Came home from a family week on Cape Cod to a roasty house (really need to install wifi controls on the HVAC!) and needed to do a second cycle on a big 1318 starter. Fired up an idle fridge and stuck the stir plate inside. Whatever it takes!

Cheers!

 

[BrewZer]

Curiosity got the better of me concerning the Flash Ferment Brewing kits on MoreBeer, so I ordered one of the Hefeweizen kits and some of the carbonation drops. Should be here Friday (has to come from California) and I'll be taking the Summer 48 out of the fermenter the week after that, so I'm hoping to get a 15-minute batch into the process that very evening. I don't have high expectations, but anything that doesn't taste like Bud Light should probably be considered a victory of sorts.

 

[Lampy]

Bottled a blonde ale fermented with T58 at 80°F +/- a few degrees in the garage. Definitely got estery banana smells from the bucket at bottling, as well as possibly some boozy fusel alcohol.

 

[ba-brewer]

Bottle beers for a contest, international amber lager, California common, Australian Sparkling ale and a Piwo Grodziskie. The California common was in a keg with a floating dip tube and it got stuck and was shooting CO2 instead of beer after the first bottle so I had to open the keg and get the thing to draw correctly.

Been doing some of my lager is 5gal kegs (like the California common) then transfer to smaller 3gal kegs after they condition for a while. Since I compromised the California common I moved it to a smaller keg and put my marzen(also in a 5gal keg) into the lager cooler for conditioning.

 

[brewbama]

Kegged a Dunkel and added step 1 of the clarification process to a Tart Cherry/Apple Cider

 

[JAReeves]

Yesterday, gave up the Eroica for dead. Moved the free Willow Creek hops (thank you @Greatlakeshops!) which were in a container into their spot in the raised bed box.

 

[HM-2]

Finished my jury rig of my broken Kegland bottle filler. Epoxy still needs to fully cure but I've tested it with air and it works brilliantly.

 

[Willy]

Busy morning - I transferred a 5 gal batch into a corny keg - to the cold crash mini freezer . Slow crash at 3-5°F per day until I get to 34°.

Replaced all the plastic post disconnects (both CO2 & Beer) with stainless steel disconnects. Also re-color coded lines 1-6 using Roy G BV ... Red, orange. yellow, etc)

If you are a newbie... Just get the stainless steel disconnects. If you got plastic ones.... The day of the Krack-n is coming. A beer line post cracks.... Beer geyer. Or a CO2 plastic post disconnect crack... CO2 tank is now empty. Glad I made the change... After losing about 3 gallons of beer and 4 lbs of CO2... Slow learner.

 

[day_trippr]

There must be a bazillion of them in use but I don't recall ever reading of a CMB connector actually breaking...

Cheers!

 

[T Murph]

Cleaned a couple of Sanke Sixtels so I can keg my Irish Red Ale brewed last Brewsday Tuesday. Next I'll do a closed system transfer of the beer to a keg.

 

[grampamark]

Kegged an Amber Ale, sort of a “clean out the cupboard” recipe, that I brewed about 3 weeks ago. The sample tasted pretty good.

 

[day_trippr]

The ~30 year old 19" 4:3 LCD heavyweight monitor I had perched on my tap tower for over a decade started losing its mind lately, with the blue channel coming and going and then the whole thing shutting down. Went to Amazon and found a lightweight 17" 4:3 LED for a mere $60 and jumped on that offer. It showed up this morning, and it looks fine and the compact base is riding the tower just fine.

Cheers!

 

[Kris.J]

I made Cathy Mitchell PROUD!

 

[ba-brewer]

Third day in row brewing, 2gal of bullion best bitter today, 3gal german pilsner yesterday and 5gal of comet golden ale the day before. I brew outside and we had a three days break in warm weather so I took advantage of it.

I was not going to keg my Czech dark lager yet but I accidentally checked the gravity this morning and it had not changed since day 3 so I kegged it. Gravity was a bit high but tasted fine. Had a slapstick moment when I purged the keg after filling it, the bev out poppit was stuck open so when I put 30psi on the gas in I got squirted in the face with beer.

 

[HM-2]

Just started hearing strike water for an 8.0% Mountain DIPA with Citra, Centennial and Strata.

Checked on my keg of all-the-Bretts dosed Saison which is smelling truly incredible.

Adjusted the gas on my Hopfenweisse which at a bit over a week in the kegerator has now lost the hop bite it had and started tasting quite excellent. It's carbed up to about 3.4 volumes so it's back down to serving pressure now.

 

[HM-2]

Big, big whirlpool.
160g, of which 85g is Cryo.

Centennial/Citra/Strata.

 

[BrewZer]

Pulled a FG sample on the Summer 48: 1.014, for 4.73 ABV. Taste is...malty/bready up front, with a creeping bitterness that sneaks up on you in the back.

Can't wait to taste it after it carbonates!

 

[Bramling Cross]

Death to beerstone!!!

 

[bkboiler]

cleaned up a big blow out of yeast. Had half inch silicone blow-off tube....but the bung either wasn't pushed in tight enough or got forced out by the kräusen...lot of overflow in the ferm fridge...
at least I know the yeast is healthy

 

[Bramling Cross]

cleaned up a big blow out of yeast. Had half inch silicone blow-off tube....but the bung either wasn't pushed in tight enough or got forced out by the kräusen...lot of overflow in the ferm fridge...
at least I know the yeast is healthy

Oh boy, that's never a fun one. I feel for you, sir.

 

[bkboiler]

Oh boy, that's never a fun one. I feel for you, sir.

found out what it was...one of my airlocks (but not the other two) has a little feature at the bottom that maybe is there to prevent debris movement...well it clogged. Cut it off and sanded it down to prevent future mishaps ‍

 

[Bramling Cross]

After an overnight soak in PBW followed by an overnight application of 5-Star BS remover, and a lot of attention with my toilet brush onna drill, here's the result.

Not ideal, but it's only the kettle. Beerstone in the kettle, in the broader scheme of things, doesn't matter all that much.

I'll pull the valves next weekend, clean and re-build them, then I'll be ready for the launch of the 2024 brewing season!*

*My brewing season always starts with the first of my UK ales in the Fall--it makes sense to me, okay?

 

[leedspointbrew]

Picked up grain, hops, yeast (34/70) at the LHBS, for my first-ever non-Faketoberfest; no Lutra this time around. Hopefully the iced gallons and swamp cooler will keep the temps within acceptable parameters.

 

[HM-2]

Dry hopped my Mountain DIPA with another 160g. 90 Strata, 45 Citra Cryo, 25 Centennial Cryo.

The WHC High Voltage absolutely ripped through it. 1.075 to 1.014 in 2 and a half days, held at 32°C.


Also wrote a recipe for something a bit different from the norm- an imperial rice lager hopped with Sorachi Ace.