What I did for beer today

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Brewed a “Belgian” pale for an event in a couple weeks. Belgian malts but Voss under pitched for the orange and spice… we shall see. I can always dry hop if needed.
Are you using the dry or liquid version of Voss?

I tried to get orange flavor but couldn't from the liquid version, even with a way under pitch(still got cranking quickly). Been able to get orange flavor and aroma now a couple time with the dry version though.
 
Are you using the dry or liquid version of Voss?

I tried to get orange flavor but couldn't from the liquid version, even with a way under pitch(still got cranking quickly). Been able to get orange flavor and aroma now a couple time with the dry version though.
I’m using the dry.
 
Walked into the garage to find that 5G of lager that had been aging in the secondary had leaked out all over the floor. Apparently my 12-year old in a huff at having to carry clean laundry upstairs smacked the ball valve with the bag and opened it. Can 2022 be over now?

EDIT: Some quick work and clean up later; apparently the pre-teen standard of lackluster and apathetic performance held true, I only lost about 2 1/2 G. It's not bad for a lawnmower-style beer. Pilsner malt, Hallertauer Magnum, Saaz, WLP800. Citrus-floral nose; mineral, peppercorn, forest floor and cracker on the palate. About 4.5%. Brewed on 5/28, Cold-crashed on 6/13. Fermented at 50F, D-rest at 75F, was lagering at 40F, and now kegged and force-carbing at 36F.
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Are you using the dry or liquid version of Voss?

I tried to get orange flavor but couldn't from the liquid version, even with a way under pitch(still got cranking quickly). Been able to get orange flavor and aroma now a couple time with the dry version though.
I found using wet or dry Voss with a citrus-forward hop really highlighted the fruit.
 
This morning I brewed something out of the ordinary for me, a blonde ale. I'm sure I've brewed one before, but its records are likely in one of the boxes where I keep my old spiral bound brewlogs from before ProBrewer and Beersmith.

Normally, I'm amped about
what I'm going to brew, but this wasn't the case with this one. Basically, I really wanted to get my Fall UK season kicked off, but it's still at least a month too early for that--still too much August and September to go. Kinda hard to get stoked about a bridge beer whose sole purpose is to keep an ale keg occupied until the serious business of UK season can begin.

That said, I was very pleased with the post-boil sample. I think this'll be a nice beer and I'm starting to look forward to it.

Here are the first running going into the copper.
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And here’s my hopstopper at the end of the day. Love this thing!
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Ahem…pay no attention to the 50ml beaker. That’s perfectly normal, everything is fine.😉
 
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Glass recycles... ;)
lol!

I got lucky on that one, it didn't break. I've gotten into the habit of placing my 10min trifecta, whirlfloc, and nutrient additions inside a smaller beaker that I place within my 10min hops beaker.

In the midst of quickly doing the final pH chemistry from my 20min sample, I kinda forgot about that and pitched the trifecta/fining/nutrient beaker along with the 10min hops. Adding salt to the wound, a 10min acid addition wasn't needed.

It never fails to amaze me just how many steps there are in brewing and how just one innocent oversight can create absolute havoc.

Even if it had shattered, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal. There isn't much that you can count on in this world, but you can certainly count on your keg poppets clogging whenever given the chance. ;)
 
Friday I racked my Consecration clone to secondary with 2 lbs of dried currants like the recipe called for instead of frozen blackberries. Bubbles in the airlock had slowed to once every several minutes thanks to the 90f garage; the 3522 had done its hot, nasty, estery thing to the simple sugars and was having a nap. The dose of raisins and pitch of lambic blend woke it up within minutes, and it's been bubbling steadily ever since.

I nearly wore out my patience trying to source black currants but it turns out Russian River doesn't use actual black currants, which are very hard to find; instead they use more commonly available "zante" currants which aren't currants at all, but small wine grapes. IOW, tiny raisins. Sun-Maid makes them, the local Jewel had them in stock. I was nervous about preservatives hindering fermentation but surprisingly they had just one ingredient, dried grapes. They smelled really good going in the mesh bag, and I'm suddenly feeling the urge to find a bunch of ways to use these in beers. Also, the Wyeast lambic blend I pitched has a sherry yeast strain so I'm geeked about how that might go to work on the grapes. Mixed fermentation is fun, and muddling wine grapes and wine yeast with oak aged sour ales makes my nipples go pointy.

Could also be amazing in a RIS, or maybe a chocolate-covered raisin stout? Who doesn't love Raisinets? I'm going to start hoarding zante currants....
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Pulled a gravity sample of the Lawnmower Blonde I brewed 8 days ago. 1.010, it’s probably done, but I’ll give it a couple more days. Out of habit I drank part of the sample. Didn’t have any real taste other than slightly bitter. Doh! Still dealing with Covid and nothing has any taste. One day at a time, I suppose…
 
Pulled a gravity sample of the Lawnmower Blonde I brewed 8 days ago. 1.010, it’s probably done, but I’ll give it a couple more days. Out of habit I drank part of the sample. Didn’t have any real taste other than slightly bitter. Doh! Still dealing with Covid and nothing has any taste. One day at a time, I suppose…
I hope your tasty buds make a full and speedy recovery.

Friend of mine went through that and came out the other side with a new penchant for pickled/fermented things. Sauer kraut especially, he went from canned to refrigerated to open barrels of kraut at the polish grocery. Now he's taking pickle juice shots and getting weird heavy into fresh kimchi from H-Mart, I think the experience has awakened a Renaissance man.
 
I hope your tasty buds make a full and speedy recovery.

Friend of mine went through that and came out the other side with a new penchant for pickled/fermented things. Sauer kraut especially, he went from canned to refrigerated to open barrels of kraut at the polish grocery. Now he's taking pickle juice shots and getting weird heavy into fresh kimchi from H-Mart, I think the experience has awakened a Renaissance man.
Going from having a reasonably well developed palate to not being able to taste even really strong flavored things, literally overnight, has been rather weird. My wife didn’t experience the complete loss of taste; she said that things just didn’t seem to have as much flavor as she was used to. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts. I feel a lot better today than I did 3 or 4 days ago but the taste buds haven’t reawakened.
 
Been busy with work and house stuff the last few days. Did an overly ambitious workday/brewday on Friday, with at least one mishap; didn't pay attention that the grain bucket was placed correctly under the mill, and about 4lbs wound up on the (fortunately relatively clean) garage floor. Saved what I could, and added a couple pounds of pilsner to make up the loss. This particular beer was supposed to go to a competition later this week, but that very morning got an email that it was postponed indefinitely (for my WA peeps, Best of the Bay in Bellingham).

And...it is official. Husband and I will be leaving next Friday for a 4-day trip to Boston, a city neither of us have visited; hell, the furthest east I've ever been is Disney World. Got our tickets for a Red Sox game (only team we like besides Mariners), and looking forward to seeing the history in the area. And of COURSE sampling East Coast beers!
 
Super busy brew related weekend. Won judges choice at the southern Vermont homebrew fest: kicked 2/3 things I brought while there, and the other one kicked at a friends house that night. So everything got cleaned, which in turn freed up a line for the sahti. So I racked that pretty quick to avoid spoilage, and will keep it nearly still as is the traditional way to serve. Also went in on a barrel with @Dgallo so had to go pick that up and refill it once I got home.
 
First day for the faculty to get together before school officially starts next monday.

Several coworkers asked what I made over the summer, to which all I could say was, "Nothing since May, because I had to complete a lot of unpaid projects for the school over the summer." Not only were they shocked, a few were pissed that I didn't have any beer to share with them. So, while I didn't do anything for beer today; beer (and my drinkers) did me a solid by giving me the impetus to keep on keeping on.
 
i don't know if it's for beer. but i've spent all day crunching the percentage difrence of sucrose at 1.59 SG and water at 1.000, and the molar mass of both, ~14 for water a molcecule, and ~342 per mol of sucrose...

weighing cups of difrent strength solutions...trying to reverse engineer the hydro reading i get....

@Silver_Is_Money would straighten my head out i'm sure. but right now i feel like i'm playing a shoot'em up...


i did add 12lbs sucrose to ~9 gallons of water, and all my calculations for a gravity of 1.062, put's it at 13.5 lbs....but damn, i'm getting close to dialing it in! because one cup of it weighs 247g's instead of 227...should be enough to calculate the densisty difference right? so it's 20 grams more dense, but a mol of water is 14 grams and a mol of sucrose is 342....sucrose has a densisity of 1.59 water 1.000....i've been head bangin to this puzzle all day! ;)

hey at least i'm not angry when i'm drinking!
 
I hadn't brewed in 2 months because of the heat and my wife can attest that my lack of hobby time was turning me into an intolerable pain in the ass. I got to make brew to feel normal, anyone out there know what I mean?
I certainly know what you mean. One of the things that I enjoy most about brewing are the various rhythms associated with running a brewery. Three rhythms dominated my brewery, that of the yeast, the seasons, and maintenance. I learned to brew in the Pacific NW in the early 90's, so I learned the UK school of brewing which is very much a brew and re-pitch methodology. You're brewing to the rhythm of your yeast.

One level above that, I've been living in the Mid-Atlantic for over twenty years, so spewing out bitters, porters, and IPAs all year long isn't an option. An IPA, much less a dunkle, isn't terribly appealing when it's 96F and so muggy that you rue the day that the zygote version of yourself thought, "Nah, I'm not going to need gills." Fool!

Then you've got your maintenance rhythms. I always look forward to my big September clean up, when I strip down my brewery for a deep, deep cleaning and switch my yeast strains over for the Fall and Winter. I get a lot of pleasure from working within these rhythms. It's all very calming.

I spent three weekends in July with full kegs and both fermenters idling. I felt like a bum.

So, yeah, I know what you mean!
 
Been procrastinating on bottling some beers for the State Fair that have to be turned in by Friday; one of them is already bottled (5-month-old mead), and only need two bottles each of the other three entries. Bottles are clean and ready, just don't feel like doing it. Did heft the kegs to make sure enough left, and sampling them all tonight to make sure they are good to go, at least that's what I'm telling myself. More excited about upcoming Boston trip. Husband upgraded us to Delta's version of Business Class, mainly because otherwise we wouldn't be able to sit together without making awkward inquiries of the people we got stuck with; now we get 3 inches more legroom (wow, such room, much space), and complimentary beer, wine, and spirits (will go well with the advil pm I'm gonna take so I can sleep on the flight). Did I mention I'm a little bit looking forward to this trip?????
 
I took 2 of those Advil PM’s once, was groggy until Noon the next day. Not advised with booze. Sounds like an early grave.
It’s just Benadryl, not that I’m advocating taking medicines with alcohol, just that benadryl is regarded as mostly safe, alcohol will increase the drowsy side effect. With that said, everyone is different and if it doesn’t agree with you, nuff said.
 
Had to put brewing plans on hold last week as my wife's family Matriarch demanded we all come to her high rise condo in Cleveland Ohio right on the shore of Lake Erie. Boy was I out of sorts to say the least ! Ohio for God sake ! About as behind the lines in enemy territory as a Michigan bred Wolverine die hard can be !!!! I hid all my Wolverine gear deep in our closet before we left so I wouldn't accidently wear a bullseye 🎯 for all the haters ! But couldn't hide the Michigan driver plate ! Every Ohio cop car we passed I broke out in a cold sweat ! I just knew they were looking for a wolverine to mess with !!! But no such nightmare materialized and it turned out to be a great 4 days. Maybe it was the disabled veteran plates that saved me ??? All in all had a great time in Cleveland and North Olmstead. I guess Ohio ain't as bad as us Michiganders have been taught since teething days ( Wolverines forgive me ! ). That said, gathered all my equipment in the garage , blew off the 6 months of dust in prep for a brew day tomorrow or Fri God willing 😊 🍻
 

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Been procrastinating on bottling some beers for the State Fair that have to be turned in by Friday; one of them is already bottled (5-month-old mead), and only need two bottles each of the other three entries. Bottles are clean and ready, just don't feel like doing it. Did heft the kegs to make sure enough left, and sampling them all tonight to make sure they are good to go, at least that's what I'm telling myself. More excited about upcoming Boston trip. Husband upgraded us to Delta's version of Business Class, mainly because otherwise we wouldn't be able to sit together without making awkward inquiries of the people we got stuck with; now we get 3 inches more legroom (wow, such room, much space), and complimentary beer, wine, and spirits (will go well with the advil pm I'm gonna take so I can sleep on the flight). Did I mention I'm a little bit looking forward to this trip?????
You'll have a blast! I really enjoyed Boston when I visited and Fenway is quite an experience for any baseball lover.
 
It’s just Benadryl, not that I’m advocating taking medicines with alcohol, just that benadryl is regarded as mostly safe, alcohol will increase the drowsy side effect. With that said, everyone is different and if it doesn’t agree with you, nuff said.
I have trouble sleeping on planes, actually anywhere I can't lie down; so I'm hoping this will help. Flight leaves at 10:30pm and we get in to Boston at 6:45am their time, and can't check into hotel until the afternoon, so if I don't get a nap I'm gonna be one cranky-ass wife looking for a fight. Never a good situation! Especially since my body will be convinced it's only 3:45am.
 
Yesterday dropped off State Fair entries; thought I had everything I needed, until my good friend who owns the LHBS asked if I had a copy of the receipt for my entries. Oops. Never fear, work laptop is here! Got hooked up to his wifi and printer, and we're good to go. Kegged my latest Citra/Sabro IPA last night, been pulling the PRV all day working from home and it will be ready to tap when we get home on Wednesday. Haven't done a night flight in many years, it's weird to still have a couple hours before we have to leave. Sipping on a few homebrews (I am NOT driving) as I will miss them terribly.
 
Had to put brewing plans on hold last week as my wife's family Matriarch demanded we all come to her high rise condo in Cleveland Ohio right on the shore of Lake Erie. Boy was I out of sorts to say the least ! Ohio for God sake ! About as behind the lines in enemy territory as a Michigan bred Wolverine die hard can be !!!! I hid all my Wolverine gear deep in our closet before we left so I wouldn't accidently wear a bullseye 🎯 for all the haters ! But couldn't hide the Michigan driver plate ! Every Ohio cop car we passed I broke out in a cold sweat ! I just knew they were looking for a wolverine to mess with !!! But no such nightmare materialized and it turned out to be a great 4 days. Maybe it was the disabled veteran plates that saved me ??? All in all had a great time in Cleveland and North Olmstead. I guess Ohio ain't as bad as us Michiganders have been taught since teething days ( Wolverines forgive me ! ). That said, gathered all my equipment in the garage , blew off the 6 months of dust in prep for a brew day tomorrow or Fri God willing 😊 🍻

Four days with a capital "M" Matriarch that makes demands that people actually respond to...and she lives in a high rise with a scenic view over a large body of water? You were going up against an archetypical villain and you were worried about Ohio?!
 
Four days with a capital "M" Matriarch that makes demands that people actually respond to...and she lives in a high rise with a scenic view over a large body of water? You were going up against an archetypical villain and you were worried about Ohio?!
We were only at her mercy for 1 day and about a thousand family pics. She paid for all of the family to dine in some fancy schmancy private club which was in the top 3 places Ive eaten where the food should have been outlawed 😯. After that she washed her hands of the peasant serf side of the family and sent us off to stir up trouble in the seedy low life haunts of Cleveland !
 
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