• Please visit and share your knowledge at our sister communities:
  • If you have not, please join our official Homebrewing Facebook Group!

    Homebrewing Facebook Group

What I did for beer today

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Cleaned and sanitized an empty keg. Tapped my Obi Ron's Wheat beer - delicious too! Then replaced one of the 10 ft. beer lines on my kegerator (first time in 6 years since purchase). Found the flared nylon washer to be very brittle and worn out inside the barbed swivel nut. Overall, the beer line was discolored, but it was time to replace. It helped to extend the life by cleaning and flushing with Beer Line Cleaner (BLC) after every kicked keg. Note the yellow zip tie next to the fitting. I color code each beer line and faucet this way as it helps to avoid confusion on what line serves what tap.
 

Attachments

  • 20201228_150635~2.jpg
    20201228_150635~2.jpg
    1.8 MB
Picked up the latest order from the LHBS
Ordered vanilla beans from Amazon
Finished the tap handles. Granted they are amateur in comparison to others on here but I'm a plumber, not a carpenter.

One has her tag on it because Diamond is over the Rainbow Bridge now. But these 2 pups are who I named my home brewery after.
20201228_191057.jpg
 
Replaced the weldless kettle bulkhead o-rings for the ball valve and temperature element on my 8 gallon Bayou Classic. Now I need to order spares to have on hand for emergencies.
 
I thought it was a requirement to drink from the measuring tube? Promptly quaffed this after recording this value today!!!

01C75A01-BE54-450F-9979-61F470516DB0.jpeg

Racked to keg today. This one sucked...I ended up having to switch out the lid with floating dip tube because...I did a #*\>#£¥]*#% job tightening the bulkheads, which decided to loosen a bit after the FDT decided that it didn’t want to sink and only suck down beer from the surface, resulting in a lot of transferred foam, co2, foam...crappy gurgling noise...over...and over...tilt fermenter, ok good...nope..tilt fermenter more...ok that only gave you 15 seconds sucker....🤬 All that work to keep o2 out and had lapse for a bit during transfer...bah.

4EA21435-C681-4F67-98B3-3A5A55C3A827.jpeg
 
Sitting here after an 11-hour day at work thinking out my New Year's Day recipe. Asking for opinions here; going for a nice APA with a strong malt backbone, and hops to hold it up.

10lbs two row
2lbs light Munich
1lb Carapils
1/4lb Crystal 40

Mashed about 150. Hops would be 1oz Cascade at FWH, then 1oz Cascade at 10, 5, and possibly flameout, dunno yet. Whadda yall think about this? I've got lots of Cascade and can up the amounts if needed. I don't want it to be a hop bomb, just a nice balanced ale. I did a similar recipe a few months ago without the Munich and liked it, although it was initially quite bitter but mellowed out into a nice one. Thinking the Munich addition would add some maltiness to counteract the hops.
 
Also forgot the wife had a zoom appointment at 11:30. Apparently that’s a bad time to be blasting RATM in the basement?

I dunno I can see it working! Meeting with the boss and just happens to be “**** you I won’t do what you tell me!!!” in the background. Perfect passive aggression! 🤣
 
Brew day. Back to work next week so I figured I’d get one last one in 2020.
View attachment 712331
Also forgot the wife had a zoom appointment at 11:30. Apparently that’s a bad time to be blasting RATM in the basement?
Could be worse-I had to explain Tool to my boss one day while I was grading student work.
 
working from home due to covid I have started listening to music to make up for the isolation. On a call with one of my account reps and he asks “is that Janes Addiction in the background.” +1 for astute ears :)

kegged my spiced saison today (coriander and peppercorns). was concerned I may have pulled it a bit early but gravity reading had me down to 1.005 where recipe was predicting it would finish around 1.01. Means I have a nice 6.7% saison to warm myself with once it carbs up.
 
A little late to the party on this one... Last night we had a couple pours of my latest batch from my first run at kegging. I don't know how I could ever go back to bottling. The batch tasted great and was even greater to have it without having to wait several weeks for bottle conditioning/carbonating. This batch was a chocolate coffee stout. I used whole beans from a local orchard (Delicious Orchards for anyone in NJ). Their maple nut crunch coffee sounded and smelled too good not to incorporate into a beer and it surely delivered. This batch will not last long.
 
I don't know how I could ever go back to bottling.
Congrats! If you’ve never used one before, pick up one of those Blichmann beer guns and a double-valve regulator! You can hook the beer gun up to the 2nd side, connect it to keg’s out, and use it to purge then fill bottles with already-carbonated beer. Super easy and no sediment! I love mine!
 
Congrats! If you’ve never used one before, pick up one of those Blichmann beer guns and a double-valve regulator! You can hook the beer gun up to the 2nd side, connect it to keg’s out, and use it to purge then fill bottles with already-carbonated beer. Super easy and no sediment! I love mine!
Any chance you could post a picture of what you mean? I have a beer gun but have not used it yet.
 
Any chance you could post a picture of what you mean? I have a beer gun but have not used it yet.
Sure thing! Here's the gun all connected. The line on the back of the gun connects to the keg's out side, and the bottom of the gun connects to the 2nd CO2 valve. When you use it, you just put the gun all the way down in an empty bottle (all sanitized of course) and use the thumb pad (located near where a safety would be on a real pistol) for a few seconds to purge oxygen from the bottle, then pull the trigger until the bottle overflows, then cap. Done! When you pull the gun out of the overflowed bottle, it will create the perfect amount of headspace in the bottle. Sometimes m'lady has friends that want a 6 pack. This makes it easy. :) . Most of the problems people tend to have with too much foam = over-carbonated kegs. In my experience, if my CO2 is at the right level in the keg, it works beautifully.
BG.JPG
 
Last edited:
I've had a busy 48hrs.

Yesterday, I kegged a Czech Pils (or whatever Gordon Strong wants us to call it these days, I can't keep track anymore) and made a Vienna Lager. Today, I did a repeat of the thing I made last month: 70% Barke pils, 30% corn, an oz. of Clusters split between 90 and 5min, with WY2112. I don't recall the last time I slaughtered a keg within three weeks. Suffice it to say, I found it to be rather pleasant so I turned around and made it again.
 
Is there a name for the beer you make when you look upon shelves of random leftover grains from various brews, and decide to hooch it all together with leftover hops and whatever random yeast is surviving in the fridge? Is there a name for that?
 
Back
Top