What I did for beer today

[day_trippr]

Short session in the brew space today. Pulverized pellets for dry hopping my first "session hazy" brew and poured them in to slowly drop...

...then I swapped out a kicked keg in the keezer for one from my latest batch of All Your Citra [Are Belong To Us] neipa and ran the kick through the ancient Mark II.

No big whoop...

Cheers!

 

[ba-brewer]

A break in the recent rains today so I brewed a best bitter. Kegged my American amber while the boil was happening.

 

[lumpher]

Setting up a keggle drain and recirc system for big batches complete with tri-clamps, pump, and hoses. Sparge arm is next. Clear hoses are temporary for a visual and planning until I can get silicone hoses, and I still need to use teflon tape on a couple connections, but it's a work in progress.

 

[seatazzz]

Drank some tasty House NEIPA while having a long drawn out fight with my knitting machine, that now needs new parts. Fortunately those are available locally. Gonna order more hops tomorrow for the planned NEIPA for competition, also thinking about what I want to brew this weekend. Probably just something simple, fast, and easy. Kinda like me in my younger days. Now I'm complicated, slow as a turtle, and according to my husband more difficult than sudoku in the dark, with a pen.

 

[day_trippr]

Been elbow deep building a new computer for the Spousal Unit and migrating her digital life from her 13 year old system but came up for air long enough to swap out a kicked keg of my beloved ~12% chocolate stout, tap a fresh keg of the same beer, and run the kick through the venerable Mark II (even older than said computer) whose little bendy plastic tabs that used to hold it together have gone off to Plastic Heaven, leaving only gravity and inertia

Cheers! (Still, got 'er done )

 

[seatazzz]

Been elbow deep building a new computer for the Spousal Unit and migrating her digital life from her 13 year old system but came up for air long enough to swap out a kicked keg of my beloved ~12% chocolate stout, tap a fresh keg of the same beer, and run the kick through the venerable Mark II (even older than said computer) whose little bendy plastic tabs that used to hold it together have gone off to Plastic Heaven, leaving only gravity and inertia

Cheers! (Still, got 'er done )

Okay, I gotta ask...what was the build???? did you sell your soul for one of the new Nvidia 50 series?

 

[day_trippr]

Lols! I'm not that big of a dummy

They are basically Unobtanium right now, and what is out there is going for 2~3x MSRP.
On top of that the drivers are allegedly bricking 5090s. Oof.

So, no.
Not yet

But, yes, sooner than later I will have an RTX5090, probably an OC model, and the wife will get my RTX4090. Just a matter of Nvidia getting their drivers and production lines together - and beating that over-MSRP price down to earth with volume. Could be a year I reckon.

You can see the build details here. It's a super sweet machine. Should have it commissioned in a day or so, just finishing up copying a decade+ of stuff from her current system to the new build, then will run a full set of backups before she switches machines...

Cheers!

 

[BrewZer]

Hit up my LHBS for ingredients (yesterday) to brew a Piraat clone (today). Got a starter running (yesterday) and I'm summoning the courage and stamina to fire up the water in the garage since it's still just 29F outside right now.

Assistent Braumeister and I decided to call it Black Pearl's Revenge; hopefully we're a little closer to the intended ABV (10-ish) than last time (14-ish). But that was extract+, this is all grain.

Fortunately, the garage will be cold enough to ferment out there -- and of course, I chose to brew an ale with WLP-500, which prefers 65 - 72... so I'll be breaking out the heating pad and Inkbird controller on this batch.

@MaxStout (since you asked for an update) For what it's worth, the mash (16 lbs of grist) in a 44 quart pot was like a thin gruel instead of a free flowing liquid. And I didn't quite hit my mash temp -- the extra 6 pounds of grist took it down to 148F, but I didn't want to burn the BIABag, so I let it ride. Conversion was complete in 50 minutes, and squeezing the bag was like trying to get turnip juice out of a turnip.

Boil was standard except I only got about 6 gallons out of the bag, so after boil-off my final volume was closer to 5 gallons. SG before boiling was 1.077; afterwards was 1.100. The OG after adding a gallon of spring water to bring up the volume dropped to 1.089, so with a good run of the yeast (WLP500) I can see anywhere from 9.5 to 10.3% ABV. Flavor at this point is SWE-E-E-E-T! with good hints of hops at the back. I smell raisins and currants already; Assistent Braumeister smells caramel notes. We'll let it sit for at least 3 weeks in the fermenter and see how it goes.

 

[Willy]

Busy morning - just finished kegging Kona The Beerbarian, from 2 SS brewbuckets into 2 ready for business cornies. Currently cleaning/soaking the buckets.

Next up - clean , PBW, starsan and carb the kicked keg so it's ready.

And then try and find/fix a slow leak in a corny lid. Probably the PRV or a stuck popit on the post. Or just put on a different lid and see if it holds pressure.

 

[day_trippr]

Kegged my first "session hazy" brew today and when cleaning up afterward I could smell how tasty this is gonna be

ABV came in higher than anticipated at 5.1 vs 4.6, likely due to increased efficiency vs my typical 8~8.5% DIPAs. I've never brewed a beer this small on my 3v2p 20g rig so used the same BHE set in BS3 as the big recipes as I had no idea what value to use. I have an idea now

Cheers!

 

[Immocles]

Kegged an IPL. Tastes surprisingly good since I struggle with IPAs.
Also cleaned and sanitized kegs. Left one with some star San and pressurized for whenever I need it next. Hopefully sooner rather than later

 

[jcav]

Tapped my Extra Special Bitter. Got amazing effciency and made a more fermentable wort since I always make the same exact recipe, and this time it came out to 6.0% ABV. Tastes amazing and the English hops really pop in this one. Probably should call it an English Strong Ale since it is a little high in alcohol.

John

 

[day_trippr]

My siphon tank is down to its last few pounds and can use a bit of thermal assistance to do transfers now. Heating blanky applied for a few hours while the near-empty 5 pounder I use for racking sat in a freezer at -10° over the same time. Put them together quickly and I managed to push almost 2 whole pounds over

Cheers!

 

[BrewZer]

To keep the ferment inside the fermenter, I had to add a blow-off tube to the Black Pearl's Revenge this morning before I left the house. When I got back, kreusen was in the blow-off jar, so very timely indeed!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Busy morning - just finished kegging Kona The Beerbarian, from 2 SS brewbuckets into 2 ready for business cornies.

OMG, did you use Kona coffee for a beer ingredient?

I’m getting some entries ready and stocking some beer into the fridge for the game tonight.

 

[Willy]

OMG, did you use Kona coffee for a beer ingredient?

I’m getting some entries ready and stocking some beer into the fridge for the game tonight.

Went to Hawaii last year - great time. But no Kona in the beer. A play on Conan the Barbarian... Oh my. Dad joke?

 

[BrewZer]

Went to Hawaii last year - great time. But no Kona in the beer. A play on Conan the Barbarian... Oh my. Dad joke?

 

[Knightshade]

How in the hell do a couple of gaskets cost $41? Ugh..so..ugh.

I've managed to destroy the stupid white nylon gaskets in my Anvil Foundry ball valve twice now and after not being able to source them anywhere, I just decided to get an "Internal valve seal kit" directly from Anvil, and since I was on there went ahead and ordered 2 and ordered 2 of the oring kits as well.

Boooo!!

 

[HM-2]

Bumped the temp up on my Brut IPA as it looks to have finished fermenting.

I've got a bit of a cold right now so it could be the old sense of smell playing trucks on me, but I'm sure it's thrown loads of isoamyl acetate like a hefe yeast.

I really hope not. "Mango Madness", the flavour profile is right there in the name.

 

[Willy]

Just dry hopped 1 1/4 OZ of Saaz into the conical. Still using the 1 1/2" triclamp for the drop, but before putting the hops in I chopped them up into small pieces so it wouldn't get hung up. Worked great. Still have another 4 days before I do the D rest for 3-4 days followed by a cold crash over 5-7 days. And then... Lager for 6 weeks.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Bottled 2.7 gallons of imperial stout (28 bottles) that I brewed 2 weeks ago, sample tasted quite nice.

 

[BrewZer]

I'm sniffin' my airlock like a CO2 addict... man, that mix of grains and yeast sure smells good!

 

[HM-2]

Dry hopped my Brut IPA.

I had been a bit weirded out as my workshop smelled very much like I'd been fermenting a hefe.

On closer inspection, it's mango. ALL THE MANGO.

 

[Willy]

Got the beer lines cleaned again. 4 taps at a time thanks to a nifty manifold from Brewhardware.com - everything is neat and cleaned. Faucets removed, brushed and PBW'd / starsan too. Thorough.

Just about 90 minutes before beer thirty when I can sample the beer thru new lines.

 

[MaxStout]

Brewed a batch of Skibsol (Danish ship's beer). Smoked malt, some Munich I, rye malt, Carapils, and Carafa II for color. Bittered with Perle. Racked 5.75 gallons of wort into my Brew Bucket, pitched rehydrated US-05. OG was 1.045.

One thing I did different this time is I dissolved the 2.2g Wyeast yeast nutrient in 100ml sterilized water and added that to the chilled wort just before the pitch. I've been reading on some other threads that a lot of the zinc is absorbed by the trub if the nutrient is added to the boil, so added it on the cold side. No idea if I'll see any difference, but decided to try this approach.

 

[lumpher]

Finally bit the bullet and got markable tap handles

 

[day_trippr]

Had to use all of the 1318 I had on hand for my last hazy, so today I restarted the over-build line using a barely month-old smack pack that quickly inflated once smacked and warmed. That was the demise of the line last time as I started with an almost 6 month old pack that was lethargic every step of the way...

Cheers!

 

[flipster]

I had kind of a highly motivated beer streak this week besides work - a bit exhausting but satisfying.
Some good preparation made it easy to keep it going, now it is time to document the results:

I brewed three small batches of pale ale three days in a row: Munich Kolibri, Like Hell, Wai-iti Summer in my Utility Beer Reseach Kitchen.

All with the same mash scheme, boiling time and some revived MJ M44 WestCoast, sleeping since October in my fridge:
- 4.5l mash water + 3.5l sparge water
- 10min @ 57°C, 70min @ 66°C, mash out at 78°C;
- boil 70min;

Munich Kolibri (6l)
1100g Munich + 60g CaraPils + 40g Acid;
4g Citra (12,5a) + 1,5g Perle (10a) @ t-70min;
5g Kolibri (4,9a) @ flame out whirlpool;
dry hopping with 10g Kolibri (in a few days);
goal: comparison with a former UBRK recipe with Pilsener instead of Munich malt.

Like Hell (6l)
1100g Pilsener + 60g CaraPils + 40g Acid;
5,4g Tettnanger (5,5a) + 2,8g Tradition (6,7a) @ t-70min;
goal: comparison with a former UBRK Münchener Hell brew - Pale Ale with Helles style hopping.

Wai-iti Summer (5l)
half a liter less of mash and sparge water;
800g Pilsener + 100g Biscuit (self made) + 50g CaraPils + 50g Acid;
12g Wai-iti (3,5a) @ first wort
+ 30g thin sliced ginger @ t-30 min, + 10g @ t-5min;
3,6g Wai-iti @ flame out (just added the rest)
goal: getting closer to my desired Summe Ale - I skipped the orange zest, this wasn't heading into the right direction imo, but a welcome try. This time I lowered the amount of ginger by 2g/l, also reduced the IBU by about 5 and added some biscuit malt, just because I think that was necessary. Let's see, how this turns out.

And last but not least: I bottled today 28,5 l of my Münchener Dunkel called "Dünkl". It's the third time I brewed this recipe. Two years ago when I did it the first time I got an infection into the fermenter and I had to dump it. Since then I feels like the final boss. It will take now some weeks until it's really finished, but the fist sip was not bad - and not bad.

PS: .. and for those who remember it - I could manage to reduce the used count of different bottle cap colors - just by drinking some beer over the last months. So I have now some capacity (beside the brilliant "just add a sticker you fool!" idea). The Dünkl got the black caps. Of course.
Cheers!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Brewed a batch of Skibsol (Danish ship's beer). Smoked malt, some Munich I, rye malt, Carapils, and Carafa II for color. Bittered with Perle. Racked 5.75 gallons of wort into my Brew Bucket, pitched rehydrated US-05. OG was 1.045.

One thing I did different this time is I dissolved the 2.2g Wyeast yeast nutrient in 100ml sterilized water and added that to the chilled wort just before the pitch. I've been reading on some other threads that a lot of the zinc is absorbed by the trub if the nutrient is added to the boil, so added it on the cold side. No idea if I'll see any difference, but decided to try this approach.

Chris White has said, losing zinc in the boil is due to chelation. I used to boil nutrient and water together in a beaker in the microwave. The last addition, for a mead, I let the water cool. It feels like a mistake. Time will tell.

I’m getting things ready for a brew day, a simple American light lager. Then an American lager to follow on the yeast cake down the road.

 

[Willy]

Easy stuff... Cleaned a spent corny of stout, starsan, pressure, and on the shelf ready to package.

Began a pils D rest. Ready on Tuesday to cold crash. While that's happening, I'm gonna cold crash a blonde ale in the mini freezer/inkbird unit. On Tuesday - the blonde ale goes to the Keezer to stay at serving temp, awaiting the next kicked corny. On Tuesday the pils will begin a cold crash.

Ordered PBW, starsan and 10 lb of Breiss chocolate malt 350L. Love that stuff.