What I did for beer today

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Thanks JAReeves & Yaakov. I worked my butt off on this brewery. Designed and built everything myself with a little help from my friends and family.
How I have to clean up from yesterday's brew. I have the girls set and fermentation should kick off tonight. Scottish Export.
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I forgot about this hose and left it in StarSan for like a week. It turned purple. Should I no longer use this hose?
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Finished the Blonde Ale, put the Barley Wine on gas to bottle for Christmas. It is 12.8%, 100+IBU's (intended to mellow with age), several months on oak, and honey and blue agave as adjunct sugars to boost ABV. It has an amazing complexity (including a peppery cactus flavor) that I hope I can do it again. I would hate for this to be a unicorn.
 
Well... it’s been one of those days. This rubber stopper was sanitized before it fell in there. I had just finished a closed transfer on this cider from primary to secondary, and when I went to airlock it, woops. Was planning to age this out for a month in secondary. Will the rubber stopper in there cause any problems or affect flavor? I could just keg it today, or closed transfer it to another secondary.
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Well... it’s been one of those days. This rubber stopper was sanitized before it fell in there. I had just finished a closed transfer on this cider from primary to secondary, and when I went to airlock it, woops. Was planning to age this out for a month in secondary. Will the rubber stopper in there cause any problems or affect flavor? I could just keg it today, or closed transfer it to another secondary.
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If you take a long racking cane and position the stopper so you can push the cane in the hole and pull the stopper up then grab it with neddle nosed pliers. If you can't get it with the pliers try inserting a screw in the stopper and pulling it out. Hope this helps
 
Had an unexpected day off today. Cleaned the entire brewery space.

Organized all of the bottles and labeled them for whichever Christmas beer/wine they will eventually be filled with.

I have been fighting a slow CO2 leak for the last two months, so I changed the O-Rings on 4/6 kegs (the other two are full of beer that is carbonating up and I daren't open them!).

Played with the mineral additions for future brews, trying to get a more Burton-style DIPA and a London-style stout.

Started talking up Learn to Brew Day on November 7 with some friends; hopefully someone doesn't mind coming over and wearing a mask for 6 hours while we make the stout!

Also hit the local Off-License (T.W.) and picked up a selection of British beers for style tasting.
 
I was about to switch my kegs from force carbing @ 30 to serving pressure and tap that, when realized I failed to throw open the CO2 valve... so no force carbing. To make myself feel better, I dressed my yeast up as a new rap group called “The Yeastie Boys”.
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Kegged my milk stout. Hydrometer sample tasted great. Nice chocolate and coffee notes and just a hint of sweet from the lactose. Can't wait for it to chill and carb up. I think this was my best brew to date numbers wise. nailed the predicted OG and was only one point off on FG.
 
Set the ferment fridge at 48 yesterday to crash the lager and the pale that are currently residing there, with an eye to kegging both today. Lager is damn near perfect, but the pale tastes funny. Hoping that crashing helped a bit. Need something to occupy my overexcited brain until this afternoon, when I get to go pick up our new car. 2019 Hyundai Tucson with only 7200 miles on it, got most of the bells & whistles (including heated seats, oh yes). Only the second time in 15 years of marriage that Mamma gets to drive the new vehicle; I smoke, he doesn't, and I promised I wouldn't in this car. I didn't promise not to vape in it, though...
 
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I’m not sure if this counts but I bought these bottles. I couldn’t believe I found them at a Wegmans grocery store a few towns over. It’s a style I’m getting interested in and have seen others here enjoying them. So I had to give it a shot.
So I added more bottles to my cellar today.
 
Having returned from a week in the mountains with my kids and grands - and away from my humble brewing - I was ready to dig back in and get this beast finished!

Today I installed the system controller and power module and ran another functional test on everything including the lighting (passed). Then I ran all of the tubing for the beer lines, gas lines, rinser water, drip tray drain, and catch tank vent.

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Only thing left is installing the (8) temperature sensors. I'm going to take the time to pick out a matched set of ds18b20 probes from the ~dozen on hand that aren't being used elsewhere. I'm pretty sure one of the original 8 keezer probes was an outlier and being picky is kinda my thing ;)

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Cheers!
 
Finished the hopping schedule of a couple beers I'm brewing soon and only had the grist and yeast selected

Finished reeding Brew like a monk today too
 
Almost almost done! :)
All temperature sensors installed and working, motion sensor is tuned up, and K3 has assumed its rightful place in the house.
Only thing left is to install the lid gasket, then connect the compressor and get it chilled down enough to stick some kegs in it...

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Cheers!
 
K3 is fully up and chillin' down! :ban:

Today I calibrated all (9) temperature sensors together to a tenth of a degree F, installed the lid gasket, filled and tested the rinser, drain and vent, then connected the compressor to the control system and turned it on. After nothing happened for a couple of minutes - and a split moment before panic could show its head - I realized I had the freezer thermostat set to the "Off" position (dumb ass ;))

So...I used a 3/8" thick inch-wide "dual D" closed cell foam weatherstrip recommended by a fellow HBT member - and didn't split the twin "D" strips, just applied them together for a double-course of stripping.

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Went with 45° cuts at the ends and jammed the ends together. Hopefully they squish together tight where I can't see 'em.

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With the gasket in place I set the lid down, then loosened the hinge screws and went around the lid with an inside caliper to get the gap set to a uniform 3/16" before tightening the hinge screws down.

Down in the luxuriously spacious bidness area I have two EVA Dry E-500s (with 40mm fans driving cabinet air into them for much better performance), a 120mm fan on the hump blowing lengthwise down the aisle, and a small plastic container with the "Lower Cabinet" temperature sensor tie-wrapped to it sitting on the floor.

The shorty kegs on the hump are the rinser water supply (2.5g) and the rinser tray drainage catcher (3g). Getting these both on the hump saves floor space for actual beer kegs :rock:

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Filling the 2.5g rinser water keg with 2 gallons of fresh water. I use a scale tared with everything attached then fill to ~16.5 pounds, while using my spunding gauge to keep the head space pressure below 60 psi. This keg feeds an adjustable regulator (seen at the top of the previous pic) to drop the pressure at the rinser valve to 15 psi as recommended by the manufacturer. The "catch keg" is vented outside the cabinet through another bulkhead.

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Rinser in action...



So, now I wait for the beast to get down to 36°F, at which point I can stick a few kegs of beer in it.
Then I'm gonna be brewing like a maniac to get my pipeline going again - I have 12 empty kegs, a turrible situation! :D

Cheers!
 
Squeezed in a late night brew day and did a milk chocolate Stout and a party guyle that turned into a 1.037 whoppers (the candy) brown ale.
We have a ton of Halloween candy, and I love to do experimental stuff with party guyles, so I decided to crush up 14 or so packages and toss them in throughout the boil. I also added a few pellets of 12%aa loral hops just for a tad of ibu. The sample tasted pretty good so im going to go with it. I have some sa04 that I think will go well with the overall vibe.
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Do you have some sort of safety on the rinsate catch keg? I see you have larger volume in your catch keg than in your rinse water keg but I'm speculating there may be other stuff (beer from a foamy pour, cleaning solution to clean up the beer from the foamy pour) that goes down that drain. How will you know it is full?
 
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