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What I did for beer today

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Finally got this thing off the truck and inside, need to clear her up and remove the stickers/tag. Should be in commission soon.
 
Sniffed the airlocks from Saturday's brew session, Smog City's Monster Brew Day for local home brewers. 5G of Pilsner wort got reheated just enough for a whirlpool of Hallertau Magnum and Saaz. 5G got dosed in a 60 min. boil with extract, dextrose and agave syrup with CTZ, Nugget, Centennial, Cascade, and Chinook for a solid American Barley Wine. Everything smells as it should.

Yesterday bbq'd for family and they bypassed all the cans from local breweries I bought for their drinking pleasure to drink the hell out of my Session IPA. That didn't suck.
 
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I just bottled my batch of American wheat beer, 30 IBU’s and 5.1% abv. This was hopped exclusively with Azacca, with some tangerine zest late in the boil. For an aroma and flavor boost, I added a few ounces of tangerine infused vodka about 15 hours before bottling. I am trying to make a beer similar to Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat, one of my favorites. Next weekend, I’ll open a bottle to see how things are progressing.
 
Bottled a batch of cream ale - 55 12oz long necks. It's a variation of Cream of Three Crops, pilsner malt and some flaked corn and flaked rice.

Then suddenly decided I needed more hard cider so I ran to Aldi and bought a bunch of apple juice and made a 3 gal batch with SafCider TF-6 I had on hand. First time using that yeast--I want to see if it will give the fruit flavors they claim.

Cider is fermenting away in a 3 gal glass carboy in my downstairs office (no room for it in the ferm chamber now). Temp rose to 74, so put it in a tub of cool water with some 16 oz bottles of ice to keep it around mid-60s. The mfr says ideal range 59-77F, but I like to avoid having the temp go too high.
 
Worked from home today, with all intentions of getting everything together for taking the brewery on the road tomorrow for our semi-annual group brewday. Yah, got none of that done because, well, work. Then a long nap and dinner. So now I have to get up at the crack of stupid tomorrow to hit up the store for RO water and eggs to make my world-famous devilled eggs, HD for the barbs to finish the pressure lid, and then home to make aforesaid eggs and collect all my gear together and load it in the car. And keg a pale. Yep I like to be busy.
 
crack of stupid tomorrow


damn, i only got 5-6 hours sleep, and this morning smelt like...welll, but.......anyway.... :mug:


as far as beer goes, i've been tracking a packge to see if a $15 microscope is good enough to do a cell count, and a 600mg/2oz methylene blue solution good enough to quantify living vs dead cells....be pretty cool if i can post pics for you all!
 
be pretty cool if i can post pics for you all!


0.1mm grid...yeast cells are 0.010 or so....this is what i see...with the dye it should be a pretty good smell test to see how many are dead or alive....there's no way i'm counting them..

but that's what i did for beer today! got this photo op....

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so as far as know, if i add a couple drop methylene blue to the smear, give it a bit... the dead cells will revele themselves as dark cells....but honestly i'd be at a loss to tell you how many cells that is....looks like an avg of ~13 per 0.1mm square to me....i'd have to count all the squares....
 
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Finished removing most of the shelves from the door of my kegerator and improvised a cover for the exposed insulation. Left the top shelf for dry yeast. I don’t think I’ll add a fourth tap anytime soon but I did add another gas line so I can keep a fourth keg carbed and ready to serve, or serve from 3 and have one lagering.
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at least you have a place to keep your beer glass cold on a casual weekend of day drinking.... :mug:
 
I keep some glasses in the freezer, along with my hops. It annoys the “no frosted glasses” folks.
I personally don't prefer a frosted glass but why the hell would people get bent outta shape about the way you enjoy your beer?
 
I personally don't prefer a frosted glass but why the hell would people get bent outta shape about the way you enjoy your beer?
That‘s what I want to know.
Pro tip-rinse the frosted glass with cold water before pouring. Cold glass, less foam.
 
Unloaded the car from brewery road trip yesterday; Hefeweizen turned out great and is bubbling away this morning (no I didn't leave it in the car all night). And fixed the plate chiller; installed new garden hose swivels yesterday (old ones were shot) but didn't get them tightened down enough before chilling yesterday. This morning heated up some water to flush out the chiller, and tightened the swivels to reveal NO leaks (have had a small leak on the water-out side for a while). All four beers I brought to share with my buddies were well received, tasted some from them, just a great time was had by all. Next one is in August when I'll do something on Kveik, and the one after that in December our host will finally dip his toes into all-grain, something I've been after him to do for a while. Can't wait to help him dive down that rabbit hole! Offered the use of my grain mill, but he wants to buy his own.
 
Kegged my dark mild.
Cleaned the fermenter.
Cleaned and sanitized a kicked keg.
Cleaned keezer beer line.
Set some bottles in PBW solution (to get the labels off).

Time for a beer.
After a beer and a nap, I went back out to the garage and changed all my faucets from Perlicks to Nukataps
 
I've thought of doing that with a light-bodied lawnmower beer. What is your process? Is it as simple as dumping a bottle of Rose's lime juice in the batch?
Wish I could help. It’s my first attempt. Well, second I guess. I had luck adding lime peel in the boil once, but I’m planning on using some crystallized lime this time around.
 
I personally don't prefer a frosted glass but why the hell would people get bent outta shape about the way you enjoy your beer?
People get bent about a lot of silly stuff in homebrewing. Dirty glasses, the wrong type of glass, the correct yeast choice or pitching rate, the importance of oxygen mitigation, extract brewing, blah, blah, blah. It's been this way since the old bulletin board services were terrorized by the Reinheitsgestapo. Those were fun times to be a UK-inspired brewer. ;)

If you can believe it, there was once a big war about Star San foam--it got personal, really, really personal. The result was utter carnage.
 
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