What I did for beer today

[seanjwalker1]

Put the double tap together, sanitized and purged the kegs for the 1st time ever, waiting on couple extra feet of air hose line from Almighty Amazon today(they are late), did a final grav on the honey Irish Red 7.6%! . Thought today was the big day of 1st kegging but guess it will have to be tomorrow.

 

[day_trippr]

Today...mostly due to stupid luck, I saved a keg of imperial chocolate stout from disaster.

During the week my normal "first pour" typically happens at the stroke of 5pm by intent. But today I was cleaning up after priming the east end of the house, and didn't get to the brewery until 5:13 - when I discovered the stout bubbling up through the handle end of my Micromatic stout faucet! WTH! And YIKES!
Immediately called The Spousal Unit down for emergency assistance as I observed my stout was slowly disappearing down through the drip tray drain into the 3 gallon catch keg inside the keezer. Good it wasn't all over the place - bad that I had no idea how much stout had already been lost.

First instinct was to pull the handle and let it snap back hoping it would seal up tight. A really bad move - instantly the leak rate easily tripled, now flowing at around a quarter-ounce per second. I had the wife hold a 1/2 gallon plastic bucket under the faucet while I used a shop towel to soak up enough of the stout still in the tray to lift the keezer lid just enough to reach in and pop the beer QD off the stout keg.

Flow then stopped, we mopped up the keezer top so I could open the lid fully. I pulled the catch keg and discovered there was barely a cup of stout therein! The wife had caught another cup and I mopped up nearly as much, so it looks like the loss was under a quart. An hour more cleaning, pulling the drain tubing off my drip tray and rinser and cleaning them bright again, draining and cleaning the catch keg, updating my tap list to account for the lost stout, and we were back in bidness.

I pulled the Micromatic faucet and took it apart. This diaphragm is the culprit...

Right at the seam between the bottom tapered section and the immediately adjacent reversed taper above there's a breach. Clearly fatigue failure.
It's a $5 part direct from Micromatic (and I bought two) but it'll likely take most of a week to get here. I stuck my 6th 525ss Perl in its place for the time being but will probably have to drop the nitro pressure waaaaay down to get a tame pour out of it

Could have been so much worse though - like, if it had happened at any other time of the day. That keg had over 4 gallons in it last night, my catch keg is only 3 gallons, and once that is full and the drip tray overflows there would be an epic mess...not to mention a tragic loss of my nitecap for a month. That would be "double-plus ungood!"

I'm now trying to remember how many years I've been running this faucet so I can hopefully PM that diaphragm well before it fails. Kinda like the timing belt on an interference engine, if it fails it's catastrophic. Pretty sure it's at least 8 or 9 years old...

Cheers!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Today...mostly due to stupid luck, I saved a keg of imperial chocolate stout from disaster.

During the week my normal "first pour" typically happens at the stroke of 5pm by intent. But today I was cleaning up after priming the east end of the house, and didn't get to the brewery until 5:13 - when I discovered the stout bubbling up through the handle end of my Micromatic stout faucet! WTH! And YIKES!
Immediately called The Spousal Unit down for emergency assistance as I observed my stout was slowly disappearing down through the drip tray drain into the 3 gallon catch keg inside the keezer. Good it wasn't all over the place - bad that I had no idea how much stout had already been lost.

First instinct was to pull the handle and let it snap back hoping it would seal up tight. A really bad move - instantly the leak rate easily tripled, now flowing at around a quarter-ounce per second. I had the wife hold a 1/2 gallon plastic bucket under the faucet while I used a shop towel to soak up enough of the stout still in the tray to lift the keezer lid just enough to reach in and pop the beer QD off the stout keg.

Flow then stopped, we mopped up the keezer top so I could open the lid fully. I pulled the catch keg and discovered there was barely a cup of stout therein! The wife had caught another cup and I mopped up nearly as much, so it looks like the loss was under a quart. An hour more cleaning, pulling the drain tubing off my drip tray and rinser and cleaning them bright again, draining and cleaning the catch keg, updating my tap list to account for the lost stout, and we were back in bidness.

I pulled the Micromatic faucet and took it apart. This diaphragm is the culprit...

View attachment 685324

Right at the seam between the bottom tapered section and the immediately adjacent reversed taper above there's a breach. Clearly fatigue failure.
It's a $5 part direct from Micromatic (and I bought two) but it'll likely take most of a week to get here. I stuck my 6th 525ss Perl in its place for the time being but will probably have to drop the nitro pressure waaaaay down to get a tame pour out of it

Could have been so much worse though - like, if it had happened at any other time of the day. That keg had over 4 gallons in it last night, my catch keg is only 3 gallons, and once that is full and the drip tray overflows there would be an epic mess...not to mention a tragic loss of my nitecap for a month. That would be "double-plus ungood!"

I'm now trying to remember how many years I've been running this faucet so I can hopefully PM that diaphragm well before it fails. Kinda like the timing belt on an interference engine, if it fails it's catastrophic. Pretty sure it's at least 8 or 9 years old...

Cheers!

Gotta love a happy ending.

 

[day_trippr]

Well, mixed, but hella better than it could have been.
Gonna think about maybe switching stout faucets though. A keg of this stout costs as much to make as the faucet costs...

Cheers!

 

[OldDogBrewing]

SWMBO went to her LCS (Local Craft Store) and picked up a page of magnet material for me, so...

View attachment 685303

So you collect magnets? I collect coasters that I turn into magnets, most of them are Belgian but I'm trying to include more national (Spain) ones

 

[seatazzz]

Kegged up the last WF lager I did; first tasting, before I turned the temp down to 48, was a LOT of sulfur, smell too. After crashing for a few days, it improved in leaps and bounds. No more sulfur, just a nice crisp lager. I was half tempted to save the yeast (Lallemand Diamond Lager, on its second generation) but I have two more fresh packets, so decided to dump this one and not take the chance. Couple more days on force carb should see this bad boy on tap, really looking forward to it.

 

[Joshua Hughes]

Bottled a Kveik “Helles Bock”, cleaned some stuff to brew tomorrow

 

[seanjwalker1]

Got the double tap tower set up, had to improvise, Arctic King has some weird twist lock where the tower goes, had to drill and hope and pray nothing important was running through the top! Got the beer transferred to kegs, just 30 lbs pressure and let it chill down to 45° over next 24 hours then carb up with the quick carb lids. Wooooohoooo!!!

 

[3 Dawg Night]

Bottled my Belgian pale ale. Finally got two full cases (plus three bottles)!

 

[Ayzala]

Got the double tap tower set up, had to improvise, Arctic King has some weird twist lock where the tower goes, had to drill and hope and pray nothing important was running through the top! Got the beer transferred to kegs, just 30 lbs pressure and let it chill down to 45° over next 24 hours then carb up with the quick carb lids. Wooooohoooo!!!View attachment 685473View attachment 685474

On the carpet! If my wife..... You are very brave... Cudos

 

[seanjwalker1]

On the carpet! If my wife..... You are very brave... Cudos

Actually she was giving me a come to Jesus evil eye kind of look! But! She had pilfered the kitchen during what was supposed to be my slotted time slot...so only got the look, without the actual words

 

[JAReeves]

Sat in on the live chat with Michael Tonsmeire, even got a question answered. Thank you, Mad Fermentationist!

 

[Joshua Hughes]

Brewed a Pale Ale. Used Kveik Voss. I went about 17% wheat to see what it will be like.

 

[seanjwalker1]

I know I checked for leaks yesterday with soapy sudsey water...lost 1/2 of my co2 Damn it @!#%#!÷. Rechecked and was leaking at the regulator connect. Seems to be ok now. Holding steady at 12 pounds pressure to carb. Put up my metal beer wall art, wife is taking it hard...officially a beer cave now! !!

 

[seanjwalker1]

 

[kmarkstevens]

Your rig looks mighty sweet!

 

[itsnotrequired]

last brew day, smelled something hot in the electric brew area. poked around, didn't see anything obvious, moved on with the day. was wrapping up the day and recirculating some pbw when the panel suddenly shut off. huh? flipped the main breaker, nothing. opened up the brew panel, now i really smelled something hot. looked closer and sure enough, one of the 240v terminals on the incoming power receptacle had melted:

yikes! and of course, heat transferred through the copper receptacle stabs into the plug and melted that, couldn't even pull it apart (receptacle on bottom, plug on top):

this happened on sunday so i took the opportunity to check the other terminations in the panel. a few of them were loose. not crazy loose but loose enough to warrant cranking them down. chalked up my issue to the termination working its way loose after repeated heating/cooling cycles (56 brews on the panel). lesson here, periodically check your terminations, people!

order up a new receptacle and plug, showed up yesterday, wired it up this morning, everything looks good.

 

[Novacor]

I know I checked for leaks yesterday with soapy sudsey water...lost 1/2 of my co2 Damn it @!#%#!÷. Rechecked and was leaking at the regulator connect. Seems to be ok now. Holding steady at 12 pounds pressure to carb. Put up my metal beer wall art, wife is taking it hard...officially a beer cave now! !!

I used to get slow leaks at my regulator unless I attached it perfectly. I got one of these and I haven't had a problem since. Works way better than the cheap cardboard washer that they give me when I get my tank refilled.

https://www.homebrewing.org/CO2-Lea...Vaw3yXrB3Hn_Sqw25TRiW4r3a&cshid=1592580531175

 

[JAReeves]

Crashed the spunding Red Rye yesterday, so today, put the carbonation lid on the keg to see if it's ready in a day. I hope this device works as advertised.

Also dumped out the swell water from the new barrel and poured in about 500ml of cognac to season it; I will consider it my "daily exercise" to pick it up and slosh it every hour or so . It's a little bit heavier than a 16oz. curl, but I'm sure I can handle it. Hoping to get the wine started this weekend for the Christmas Port.

 

[BrewMan13]

Dry-hopped the DIPA the other day. Got a starter going early for the IPL to give it plenty of time; finalized my water additions. Looking to brew on Sunday...gonna be a hot one, but the brewing must go on!

 

[Redpappy]

I started the day with cleaning a keg, just to fill it with a cider, then keged a centennial blonde ale, then brewed a modified boston ale clone.

 

[seanjwalker1]

I used to get slow leaks at my regulator unless I attached it perfectly. I got one of these and I haven't had a problem since. Works way better than the cheap cardboard washer that they give me when I get my tank refilled.

https://www.homebrewing.org/CO2-Lea...Vaw3yXrB3Hn_Sqw25TRiW4r3a&cshid=1592580531175

Where does that go exactly? I really new to kegging. Been bottling for 16 years.

 

[seanjwalker1]

Crashed the spunding Red Rye yesterday, so today, put the carbonation lid on the keg to see if it's ready in a day. I hope this device works as advertised.

Also dumped out the swell water from the new barrel and poured in about 500ml of cognac to season it; I will consider it my "daily exercise" to pick it up and slosh it every hour or so . It's a little bit heavier than a 16oz. curl, but I'm sure I can handle it. Hoping to get the wine started this weekend for the Christmas Port.

I bought 2 carbonation lids, el cheapo from Wal-Mart, $35 one from Amazon...el cheapo working fine on my 3 gallon keg, more expensive one from Amazon blows. Rubber seal is fine, I've lubed it and repositioned and it just won't work. Leaks like a Soviet shower. Now gotta slow carb it for several days.

 

[OldDogBrewing]

Finished reading American Sour Beers after a couple days binge reading it, great book

 

[Novacor]

Where does that go exactly? I really new to kegging. Been bottling for 16 years.

Screws right into the outlet on the tank.

 

[seanjwalker1]

Screws right into the outlet on the tank.

Thanks so much!!!

 

[JAReeves]

Checked the Red Rye after one day with the Keg Carb Lid, and WOW! Unfortunately, that means I can't get any other beers into kegs until tomorrow, because I keep sampling from the Rye and marveling at how perfect it is.

My life is forever changed.

 

[orionol73]

Bottled a batch of IPA

 

[seatazzz]

Brewed another batch of what we're now calling the house lager; except this time fermenting at 55 instead of my usual 62-64. Lallemand Diamond lager yeast did a great job fermenting warm, now to see how it does cool. Pitched at 10am, and now at 7pm a nice fluffy krausen going on. Also ordered some chalk pens for the blackboard paint on the freezer door of the kegerator; gonna get all artsy fartsy tomorrow with those. The pens I'm getting will also write on glass, so there's my new yeast labelling system too.

 

[kmarkstevens]

My 1925 AK birthday recipe (thanks to Ron Paittinson, who had to go back that far on my birthdate to find a flavorful yet low ABV recipe in his database) is ready to spund in the keg as soon as I kick one. My kidlet got me this recipe a few years ago, and it has PA (1054), XK (1040) and AK (1032) partigyles. This year I went for the PA version.

I have too many English yeasts. Winnowing out the herd. Like to get down to just 4 or 5 (my English flock includes Fullers, WLP85, West Yorkshire, London ESB, S-04, Adnans, Whitbread slp017, Burton, WLP85, WLP026 Premium.) For example, I will use Nottingham going forward to substitute for Irish ale yeast because they are really close to my palate. Just pitched a West Yorkshire vs Adnan's split batch yeast off 10 minutes ago.

I don't like London III (dull and lifeless), Windsor (too fruity), Yorkshire Squares (beyond my brewing ability and comes off most of the time like a Saison)