What I did for beer today

[schuchdan]

Today I brewed a 10 gallon batch, made an immersion chiller with 1/2" x 50' copper tube and tested it in today's batch, ordered a bigger brew bag for my keggle, and ordered a pound of citra hops.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Today I brewed 19 litres of a Black Sheep clone
3200g MO
150g Medium Crystal
150g Torrefied Wheat
25g Roast Barley
60 minutes
15g Progress
10g Challenger
10g Fuggles
15 minutes
15g EKG
WHC Bond yeast at 20C

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I'm rehydrating myself after a brutal time cutting the lawn this morning. Tried to beat the heat and humidity, finished around 12:30, almost made it.

Beer tastes great!

 

[day_trippr]

No way am I working outside today!

 

[seatazzz]

Kegged off the four day old (yes you read that right) light/blonde/lager/thing fermented on novalager under pressure today. Needs to get colder, and a bit more fizzy, but the slightly cool semi-flat thing it is right now tastes pretty darned good. In a few days (or maybe tomorrow if I'm antsy) this will be a very good thirst quencher for next week on my staycation when the garage/brewery will (hopefully) get completely cleaned out.

 

[JohnDBrewer]

Double brew day done. Just finished up, 6-1/2 hours. 5 gal of Czech Pils and 5 gal of a Classic American Pils. The CAP was a full volume attempt. Went well, need to look review the statics.

 

[MaxStout]

Mixed some bourbon with 2 oz of bourbon barrel chips to add to my imperial stout next week. I used a little over a pint of Jim Beam with the chips, to give me about 3 oz/gallon. (I figure the chips will absorb some.) I'll strain out the chips and add the bourbon to the bottling bucket.

 

[ba-brewer]

Brewed a 3gal batch of beer, a pre-prohibition lager at the bottom of the specs, 20% corn 20% 6row and 60% 2row with cluster hops for bittering and mid hops and a combo of cluster and hallertau MF at the end of the boil.

 

[Pennine]

Hit up the LHBS to grab some yeast and a spoon to harvest yeast from my kegs. Timothy Taylors and Coors yeast and a few beers of course.

 

[Willy]

It wasn't supposed to be a beer day... (Rain in the forecast, experts wrong. Gorgeous clear skies).

So, making a other 6 gallon batch of Czech pilsner (Saaz, SRM of 5-6) with a late hop addition of mittelfru. Hoppy like a Czech pilsner... IBU is 44. Going perfectly. No sparge, hit volumes perfectly just by squeezing the bag with a ratchet strap... Like milking a cow, really like this method vs the gloves and squeeze.

Checked the gravity on the mocha Irish Stout after day 9 of fermentation. 1.014 with a final expected gravity of 1.011. checked previous batches logged by a spindel and expecting to hit 1.011 in the next week. All is well.

Finished the cold crash on a very Pale Ale... And moved it to the on deck circle in the keezer. Getting carbed now - ready to pour when needed in a week. This cleared out the Ferm chamber for the pilsner I am making now.
Phew
Busy day.

 

[ClaudiusB]

Memories from the past.
Nine years ago, on June 27th, our Beer Camp. Beer camps typically last 4-6 weeks.

 

[leedspointbrew]

Memories from the past.
Nine years ago, on June 27th, our Beer Camp. Beer camps typically last 4-6 weeks.

View attachment 878669

Can 55-year olds come to your camp? My beer needs all the help it can get.

 

[leedspointbrew]

Etched a beer glass.

 

[ClaudiusB]

Can 55-year olds come to your camp? My beer needs all the help it can get.

You are very young and meet our minimum age requirement.
Beer camp is not only about beer, but also equipment science and material science.
The attached GIF was during our friction testing different materials for the silo design class.

 

[ba-brewer]

Put a spunding valve on my pre-prohibition lager today as the gravity was close to 90% of the way to terminal gravity. Been doing my 3gal lagers in 5gal kegs so I can build some pressure and do a cold crash without suck back.

Started the process of building up a starter from a slant of WLP075 Hansen Blend yeast. Made some more slants for next.

Also made 49 fresh slant blanks, which was mostly washing a bunch of little bottles and listening to the pressure cooker jiggle for 30mins.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Brewed 3.0 gallons of my Coconut Stout recipe WHILE MY WIFE WAS WATCHING, and didn't spill anything! Might have to change my brewery label to something other than "guy mopping up hot wort".

Also, hit my gravity (1060) and volume perfectly!

 

[ba-brewer]

Another day of washing glass and listening to the pressure cooker. Made 4.5gal of wort and canned it up, 13quarts, 9pints, 10 half pints and 8 quarter pints. Also squeezed in 2 pounds of invert sugar.

Used some of the starter wort to step up the WLP075 I am working on.

 

[Rich_O]

Brewed a table hazy pale today - single hopped with Krush

OG: 1044
IBU: 15

Grist
76.8% Extra pale
8.6% wheat malt
7.9% malted oats (to use up the bag)
6.8% Chit Malt

Hops

2 IBU Magnum @ 60 mins
Whirlpool - 3.5g/l Krush - 30 min WP starting @ 80c (but let drop naturally)
Dry Hop - 12.5g/l Krush

Water (adjusted with calcium chloride, epson salts & table salt (in the boil only) from tap water)

Cal: 82
CHL 198
SUL: 40

Yeast

WLP095 - Burlington Ale (pitched ~ 140Bn cells, so in and around the right pitch rate for 14l batch size)
Will KO & pitch at 18c, ramp to 22c through fermentation, not sure yet if to DH @ 14c or end of d rest temp (22c)
NBS clarity & ALDC all pitched into fermenter

other items

I have also created 10 15ml vials of WLP095 for my frozen yeast bank, estimate ~ 7bn cells per vial

quite a productive Sunday morning

 

[HM-2]

Bottled up a couple of my prospective competition entries to take to my homebrew club. Going to let the guys and girls there decide which one makes the cut as I can only submit one.

3.5% table Saison with Nelson and BRU-1
3.8% West Coast micro IPA with Amarillo, Centennial and Luminosa.

Rules are simple - 4% or under, has to be brewed between competition opening date (mid May) and submission cut off (mid July).



My money is heavily on the Westie.

 

[Bramling Cross]

It's the already the halfway point in the year, so today I'm tearing down my lager fermenter, boiling what can be boiled, and replacing the lid gasket. It seemed a shame as it was humming along nicely, but it's better to err on the side of caution.

 

[Brewsmith]

I was on vacation at Mt. Lassen in Northern California, so on the way home we stopped in Chico and I got a tour of the brewery.

 

[ba-brewer]

Brewed a 3gal batch of the Fuller's porter recipe I linked a little while back. My boil off was a little lighter than planned so my gravity was a little low, 1050 vs 1052 which I dont mind as I got a little extra beer. The recipe was straight from the horse's mouth and the spent grain ended up in a horse's mouth.

Looking at the raw grain it is surprising the beer turns out so dark.

 

[Willy]

Busy day for beer! Packaged up 10 gallons of HB Mocha Stout in 2 corny kegs. The previous stout was over half finished, so I feel much better to have the next batch conditioning with some beer gas on top. I will do all I can to have some stout on tap. Important!

Measured the final gravity with the EasyDens (love that tool!!!) and it came in right where it was supposed to. (1.011). That gives me an ABV of ~4.1%.

Washed, cleaned and sanitized the two brew buckets so they will be ready for the next batch (Irish Red Ale I think).

 

[MaxStout]

Bottled just under 5 gallons of imperial stout. I had a pint of Jim Beam sitting on 2oz of bourbon barrel chips for a week. I strained off the bourbon and added it to the bottling bucket. Filled and capped 49 12oz long necks. With the booze, it's about 10.2% ABV.

Now they go in my crawlspace, where I will "forget" about them for 6 months. Oh, who am I kidding--I'll probably crack one open at 3.

 

[JohnDBrewer]

Cleaned 5 kegs from a festival on Saturday. Kegged 10-gal of Festbier.

 

[seatazzz]

Decided I was tired of sitting hunched over when working from home/updating brewing notes/surfing HBT, so today went to Ikea and got myself a new desk. Just finished getting it put together after a SECOND trip to Ikea, because silly me didn't see that one of the legs for the desk came without hardware. They had a spare, and I am VERY happy. Tomorrow I will fill those drawers with random small brewery parts, nail-doing stuff, and whatever else I want handy. Tonight is all about cooling off with three fans blowing full blast, and pitching yeast on the Novalager thing I brewed this morning.

 

[ba-brewer]

Started the day watching a very happy bubbling English porter.

Then dropped the temp on my pre-prohibition lager by 5F degrees.

Next wheeled out my system and brewed 5gal of citra/equinox golden ale. Again slightly off on gravity due to low boil off. I have an electric brewing system and changed the wattage of the elements recently so I am getting things back redialed in.

More before and after pics, 50/50 golden promise/GW 2row, pictures does show so well but the GW 2row looks very pale compared to the golden promise even though the SRMs are pretty close.

Before the day is over I will need to add a blow off tube to my English porter as the low boils off compromised the head space in the fermentor and I can see the airlock got sullied. 3gals in a 3.5gal bucket is a crap shoot and that extra 1/10th of a gal or so pushed it over the edge.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Bottled 2.6 gallons of Cascade/Citra pale ale, that somehow went from 1055 down to 1005 on 3rd-generation S-04 yeast...
Sample tasted (and smelled) really nice. Not sure what happened to make it drop that low, software was expecting 1011-ish. Mash was normal (151F, 60 minutes), must've been something wild.

 

[Bramling Cross]

Finally mashed in on a new batch of Panther Piss. I've had quite an adventure attempting to procure ice this morning. At one point in my adventure I yelled at some kids that were throwing cans at a homeless dude that was digging through a trash can. The homeless person yelled at me for yelling at his friends. I suppose I jumped to an unwarranted conclusion, totally my fault. I'm clearly out of touch. I suppose I'll have to find some cans to throw at my friends.

At least I'm back in my brewery. Things make sense here.

 

[Willy]

Made a trip to Arc3 and replaced the spent CO2 tank. I got lovely red Kegco tank - looks quite snappy.

I keep 2 tanks each of beergas and CO2 so I don't need to race to keep everything all bubbly. I just swap it out and get a replacement soon, at my leisure vs a dire need. Ha.

Later, I have a doubleheader to watch (brewers, so beer related) ... And will sample the 6 taps in no particular order, but the English Brown ale is still my favorite.

 

[Bramling Cross]

Made a trip to Arc3 and replaced the spent CO2 tank. I got lovely red Kegco tank - looks quite snappy.

I keep 2 tanks each of beergas and CO2 so I don't need to race to keep everything all bubbly. I just swap it out and get a replacement soon, at my leisure vs a dire need. Ha.

Later, I have a doubleheader to watch (brewers, so beer related) ... And will sample the 6 taps in no particular order, but the English Brown ale is still my favorite.

I couldn't agree more about how nice it is to have an extra tank, makes things so much less stressful. "Oh, you're out of CO2? No worries, I'll call you again next week."

 

[ClaudiusB]

I moved the Kölsch into dispencing tanks. The next step is quality control before the beer will be released.

 

[BrewZer]

I'll just add this once, since I'll be doing it twice a day for the next 3 weeks.

Swapped out the artificial ice pack in the CoolBrew bag to keep my fermentation temps as low as possible given the circumstances. It's an APA lawnmower beer, (Twin Blades of Fury in honor of my new Toro mower) where I'm expecting lightness, thin mouthfeel, a bit of graininess with moderate hoppage and somewhere between 4.5 and 5% ABV.

 

[Bramling Cross]

I enjoyed a nice drive most of the way up to Baltimore to grab 5lbs of Munich Malt and a couple ounces of Challenger at Maryland Homebrew. It's a really nice shop. It's huge, the folks are nice, it's well organized, and they don't have inconvenient store hours. Can't say enough good about them. I should've picked up a sack of Otter, but I decided I liked the idea of driving up there next weekend. Kinda wasteful, but it's a nice drive and it'll allow me a week to start laying out my Fall and Winter brewing plans.

 

[seatazzz]

Spent most of the early morning doing math; figuring out how wide the ferment fridge, kegerator, new desk, and toolbench were, and where I wanted them. We had a set of metal shelving in the mix as well but that will be finding a new home soon, reducing the clutter. After much sweat, cable management, being patient with crabbypants husband, and lots of fabuloso where the FF and kegerator used to be, new setup is done. The toolchest just made its last move; the bottom is getting a bit rotty. Not surprising since it's a lot older than me (my grandfather built it) but it's still sturdy and holds all the tools including some of the big ones. Still lots of clutter to put away, my old recliner to get to the dump, but for now it's a much nicer space.

 

[BrewMan13]

Haven't posted in a bit, so here goes: kicked the kolsch over the weekend, cleaned the line, and put the Munich dunkel on. Also got a brewday in (a little behind my original schedule, but still plenty of beer on hand). Missed my target OG but oh well.

 

[ClaudiusB]

Kölsch quality control, including presentation, and an O2 tank ON sensor replacement. The sensor was a sticking reed switch.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Today I brewed 15 litres of a Sierra Nevada Pale clone
3000g Maris Otter
80g Dark Crystal Malt
25g Cascade at 45m, 15m and whirlpool
US-05 style yeast

 

[HM-2]

Packaged up and labelled four bottles of my West Coast Micro IPA late last night along with recipe card and price-to-brew as required by the rules of the competition I'm entering.

They're in their box, in an airtight bag, in a cool box full of ice packs in the boot of my car until I get back from the office, then I'll drop them in with the Malt Miller on my way home this afternoon.

 

[Willy]

Cleaned out two spend corny kegs - an English Brown Ale called Squirrel Nut, and a Blonde 4.9% ale. Back ups already hooked up and carbed. English Brown had corny 2 of the same batch and Blondie was replaced by corny # 2 of the Louie The Lip Lager, which tastes better than #1 due to aging for 5 weeks in the cooling chamber.

The Czech Pilsner finished up the D rest and is cold crashing over the next 4-5 days before more lagering time and carbing up. I have time before the German Pilsner kicks.