What I did for beer today

[unionrdr]

Got somenewly emptied bottles to clean today after a couple naps this morning. Turkey day is good,but takes some work. All home made & home brewed takes some work & planning. 4 days & my order from Midwest is still "processing". Odered a new 7.9G fermenter with lid & grommet & a temp strip to replace the one I tossed out. Got an Italian spigot for this one,no more barrel taps. So I decided to try one of my Whiskely stouts outta the box @ 3weeks & 2 days. got a nice one finger head after a lil foam came outta the bottle. gunna have good carb & head after a week in the fridge. Had a couple shots of vodka left before boy's make a run in a lil while. Then I'll try my Cougar country IPA with the turkey & all. The Maori IPA went rather well with it's NZ hop flavors. Interesting how it melded with herb & spice flavors. Actually went pretty good with the southern style candied yams wife makes. Huh...Whiskely stout is holding a nice 3/32" veneer head. Cool.

 

[wilson42203]

SWMBO did a little Black Friday shopping late last night, so I had a bargaining tool this morning and ordered AHS's "our special holiday ale". Unfortunately, it likely won't be ready for Christmas, but that just means I won't have to share it when the family comes over.

 

[nukebrewer]

Brewed a beer for the wife today, an American brown that I brewed for this past nhs that she completely fell in love with. For the first time in quite some time, all seven of my fermenters are full. Five batches of beer, two batches of cider.

 

[finsfan]

Brewed up my pumpkin buffalo sweat clone today and racked Yoopers hoppy amber into secondary

 

[rowan57]

I dropped a bottle of Duvel Bottle didn't break (but won't be reusing, just in case) but did make a very foamy fountain. My FAVOURITE beer

 

[bleme]

Brewed a Baltic Porter. No hops in the boil. A total of 5oz of Cascade/centennial/Belma in a 20 min whirlpool at 195F. Can't wait!

 

[Qhrumphf]

Bought a new grain mill on a black friday deal. My LHBS usually has stuff at the same prices as the online guys, and often cheaper, and with the added sale it was a bargain.

 

[BGBC]

Delabeled a case of bottles.

 

[govner1]

Picked up two recipes @ my LHBS- Foothills Hoppyum & Mystic Fox Red Ale

 

[K5MOW]

Showed some new brewers to be how to make a batch.

Roger

 

[Qhrumphf]

Gave my old Corona mill to a clubmate since I don't need it any more, and was given a couple bottles of his medal winning Berliner Weisse, and a few ounces of leaf Willamette. Probably going to do a MO/Willamette SMaSH Bitter with em.

 

[NTXBrauer]

Put a buff and shine on 5 ball-lock corny kegs that I picked up on CL for a song. Best of all, they were clean inside and hold pressure

 

[tjmac5071]

Yesterday I racked a black IPA with a stuck fermentation into a new bottle and added an actively fermenting starter...fingers crossed.

Brewed my hoppy amber ale today.

Tomorrow I'm bottling a winter warmer to give out as gifts to some family at Christmas and building so carrying cases to go with them

 

[TrustyOlJohnson]

Bottled a Christmas Ale just in time to allow for 4 weeks in the bottle before chilling to drink. This one should be good.

Soldiers ready to go to war!!

 

[TrustyOlJohnson]

Not as much as I wanted to.
Was given a free fridge so had to transport it. Then found out GFCI outlets and fridges aren't good. I had to change out the GFCI for a standard outlet. I had to clean the crap out of the fridge. It was wiped down but the amount of gunk and dog hair inside was too much for me to ignore. Before all of this I had to build a table for my miter saw because the cabinet it was on won't let me store my lawn mower under it. I'm starting to be limited on space. I still have more garage organizing to do.

Glad to see im not the only one that has to do this lol!!

 

[TrustyOlJohnson]

2/3 of the way through the boil of my first Dusseldorf Altbier. Off to a good start so far.

Id be interested in hearing how this comes out for you and the process you used (recipe/mash/yeast/water/ ferm sched etc)
Im planning to brew an Alt in Jan to be ready in April.

 

[Trippel-A]

Took a gravity reading and confirmed that fermentation is stuck on a bourbon barrel porter. SG is 1.021-1.022. If it were an all-grain batch, I'd just chock it up to an inefficient mash and move on, but this was an extract batch and I fear eventual bottle bombs.

If you're good at these things, check out this other thread and drop me a hint. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/lost-some-yeast-fermentation-very-slow-any-advice-437699/

 

[Qhrumphf]

Id be interested in hearing how this comes out for you and the process you used (recipe/mash/yeast/water/ ferm sched etc)
Im planning to brew an Alt in Jan to be ready in April.

I'll update, but recipe was:

5 lbs Munich I (Weyermann) (7.1 SRM) Grain 1 58.0 %
2 lbs 8.0 oz Floor Malted Bohemian Pilsner (Weyermann) (1.7 SRM) Grain 2 29.0 %
8.0 oz Caramunich III (Weyermann) (71.0 SRM) Grain 3 5.8 %
8.0 oz Special Roast (Briess) (50.0 SRM) Grain 4 5.8 %
2.0 oz Carafa Special I (Weyermann) (320.0 SRM) Grain 5 1.4 %
1.75 oz Hallertauer [4.10 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 30.5 IBUs
0.75 oz Hallertauer [4.10 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 7 7.9 IBUs
0.50 oz Hallertauer [4.10 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 8 1.7 IBUs
1.0 pkg German Ale (Wyeast Labs #1007) [124.21 ml] Yeast 9 -

Appropriately sized starter (I got abnormally fresh yeast from my LHBS, so it was about 1.3 L on the stir plate), and with my gear after 90 min boil I ended up just over 5 gallons into the fermenter at 1.050 OG. I've been fermenting it at a good and steady 58°F, which is where I've done all my hybrids in the past. It's my first ever Altbier, but the recipe is loosely based off of the recipe in BCS, so I don't think it could be all that bad.

I thought about doing a 3 step decoction mash (protein rest/conversion rest/mash out), but ended up settling on a boring 60 minute single infusion at 154 and doing my usual "sparge mash out" (where I drain the grain bed, add hot enough sparge water to bring the grain bed to 168-169° and let that rest for 10-15 before draining again). Active fermentation just stopped, and haven't checked FG yet, so I don't know where it ended up.

I'm planning on 3-4 weeks in primary at 58° followed by another 4 weeks in secondary "lagering" at 40° and getting hit with gelatin before I bottle it.

As far as water, I targeted the Bru'n Water "Dusseldorf (Boiled)" profile. Final water actually used was:

Ca 50
Mg 6
Na 32
SO4 83
Cl 41
HCO3 60

That was without needing any distilled/RO water, just some gypsum additions, (I love my water for that reason), and doesn't include the minute additions of neutralizing ~3ppm of chloramine w/ campden tabs. Mash pH of 5.3

 

[unionrdr]

Got a ton of HB bottles to clean & hope my robust porter is ready to bottle. Vodka & vanilla beans lookin nice & dark.

 

[celticdevildog]

In the spirit of Black Friday/Cyber Monday I have been shopping for great deals. I've been looking for anything that just "catches my eye" for brewing. So far, its a set of various beer glasses so I can try and match beer style with the proper glass. I've also got some bar towels and coasters on order to help get my bar set up.

 

[NickTheGreat]

Picked up all my brewing crap laying on the basement floor. that counts, right? RIGHT?

 

[unionrdr]

Made priming solution for my robust porter to 2.2 volumes co2. Swirled up vanilla bean/vodka solution & strained into priming solution. Suicide solution? hah,lolz.
Smells really good too. The organic-like smell from the bean pods is gone after about a month in the vodka waiting for bottling day. Just a really smooth vanilla smell. Hope it works well enough to add a decent vanilla flavor on the back.

 

[winvarin]

Just mounted a heating pad (the stick on pad from Williams Brewing) in my ferm chamber and hooked that and the fridge to my newly wired STC1000. Everything appears to be functioning well. Using it for finished beer storage at the moment. Everything sitting comfortably at 57f

 

[unionrdr]

Well,as of 1:58PM I got a hair over 52.5 bottles Of my Snowbound vanilla porter. If it winds up tasting the way it made the room smell,this'll be a treat.
Room smelled of roasty chocolaty vanilla. Yum. Also this came in today,even though I got no e-mail tracking number...
new 7.9G shorty fermenter;
http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/PICT0004_zpscf22da6d.jpg.html] [/URL]
The remaining half bottle of Snowbound vanilla porter;
http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/PICT0005_zps0db0af9e.jpg.html] [/URL]
Tasting the remaining bit of beer,I def get roasty chocolaty vanilla. Should be great carbed up.

 

[skitamofo]

I went to work so I have a good excuse to have a few when I get home. The things I do...

 

[govner1]

Moved my Cream Ale from primary to secondary & dry hopped w/ Nelson Sauvin

 

[LoloMT7]

Back in October my Saison took best of show at the Montana Mashup. For the 1st place prize I got to brew it on a commercial scale at Bridger Brewing with the head Brewer Daniel Pollard.
http://growlerfills.blogspot.com/2013/10/montana-mashup-home-brew-competition.html

Daniel and I setup this last weekend (Nov 30th & Dec 1st) as the brew dates. So I drove over to Bozeman on Saturday morning and helped begin prepping for brew day and worked on other stuff around the brewery with him as well. We used the yeast I brought over which was a cake from a 10 gallon batch. We pitched the yeast cake into the 10 BBL fermenter with 11 gallons of water and 12lbs of light dry malt extract to get the yeast going and have enough slurry for our wort the next day.

Next we Milled all the grains and made sure all the other ingredients were measured and ready for the next day:

521 lbs 2-row
157 lbs Wheat
28.5 lbs Vienna
15.5 lbs Acid Malt

Hops

60 Minute hops
2lbs 8oz (We subbed a new experimental hop called 5056 here)

10 Minute hops
3lbs Motueka

Other:
47.5 lbs Candi Sugar


Brew day went great. My arms got a good workout cleaning out the mash tun . After all of the wort was transferred into the fermenter we pulled off 5 gallons to fill up my carboy and I took it home with me. It is fermenting away strong now. I had a great time and enjoyed the brewery and people in Bozeman. Thanks Bridger Brewing. If anyone is ever in the neighborhood you should stop by and see them. If you stop in soon you might even see my Saison on tap.

 

[LoloMT7]

couple more pictures

 

[finsfan]

Congrats Clint, Im sure that was amazing!

 

[slbradley01]

Worked on the Keezer collar. Sanded , took some measurements. I think I can fit a fifth corny on the hump if I mount the co2 bottle horizontally. Any problems with this?