What I did for beer today

[camonick]

I sourced some local 2-row spring barley from one of my fuel customers. I am going to stick my nose down the home-malt rabbit hole and see what it’s all about. My brother has an old vintage seed cleaner so I ran the sack of raw grain through it to clean it up a little bit today. I don’t know if I’ll get suitable malt from it because I has a little higher than desired protein level for malting barley because of the stressful growing conditions this summer. It measures 13.5% protein according to the grain tester at my local grain elevator.

 

[hout17]

Although I wanted to brew a Vienna, I decided that the safer play was another batch of fizzy yellow swill to see me through September. The tasty higher kilned malts will have to wait three more weeks.

Here’s my hopstopper doing its thing with pellets and an immersion chiller. Can’t say enough good things about it. Worth every penny.

View attachment 777702

I've been looking at getting one of those. You might have convinced me!

 

[seanjwalker1]

Here you go. I remember it from the movie Major League.

Sounds like something out of a 1970s Robert Redford movie !

 

[Jayjay1976]

Sounds like something out of a 1970s Robert Redford movie !

Hah, I've always thought it would have been a good title song for "Cool Hand Luke" if only Randy had written it for Paul, and it was set in the rust belt vs. the Bible belt.

 

[gromitdj]

Don't know the song but Cleveland was ok. It's like any other city, great neighborhoods and run down parts but like most big cities its going through rebirth gentrification. But most of my wife's family there lives in Shaker Heights which is quite nice. I liked it enough to want to visit it again.

I was in the Beachwood/Shaker Heights area this past February. Very nice area.

 

[seanjwalker1]

I was in the Beachwood/Shaker Heights area this past February. Very nice area.

Yeah. Beautiful parks around Shaker Hts. I liked it so much we may go back before the snow comes this year...or the floods...or the fires...

 

[camonick]

Picked a bunch of Cascade hops to dry. These will hopefully become part of this recipe in the very near future.
https://sierranevada.com/blog/pale-ale-homebrew-recipe/

 

[CJ-3]

Today I scored a Barley Crusher off of Facebook for $50. Everything works correctly and all it needs is a good cleaning. I'll probably make a new base for it though.

 

[HM-2]

Attempted to keg my Belgian Pale
Realised it smells and tastes like Bovril
Kegged it anyway
Threw in a packet of Brett Brux I had lying around
Stuck the keg in a warmish corner of my workshop with a 10psi spunding valve

I'll come back to it in about 3 months and see how it's doing.

 

[camonick]

The 31 oz of fresh hops I picked Monday afternoon yielded 8.25 oz of dry hops after about 48 hours of drying. Vacuum sealed in three- 2 oz, one- 1 oz, one- .75 oz and one- .5 oz packs.

 

[grampamark]

We had to stop harvesting for a couple of days due to wet grain, so I snuck in a brew day. I hadn’t brewed an Octoberfest of any kind for a few years so I brewed a Märzen. My preboil volume was exactly right but I should have boiled a bit longer/more aggressively as I was half a gallon long into the fermenter. Five points low on OG but I get a few extra pints, right?

 

[seatazzz]

Tomorrow I'll post pics, but we did get to visit Trillium's taproom today before heading to the airport and home. Had MANY good beers while we were in Boston; NEIPAs are, of course, everywhere you look; but we also found a couple of good West Coast IPAs, some tasty Wits, and hit up two Irish pubs where some very good Guinness was had, on nitro; also had my first Yuengling at a lovely pub called JJ Foley's. The waiter/bartender had the thickest Irish accent I've ever heard, and I was corrected in my pronunciation of Yuengling that it sounds like "yinling". This same gentleman, when I mourned that they didn't have Harp, stated none of the Irish pubs in Boston have it anymore, since the recipe was changed several years ago. He also brought me stickers without asking.

 

[ba-brewer]

Took another run at grampamark's Alt recipe today, came in short on gravity at 1044 vs 1049 but should still be a nice beer. Good news my hops did not smell like feet/cheese this time but they still did not smell as good as I remember Willamette hops smelling. I recall Willamette being more floral/herbal but these where more earthy.

Retired my little red cylinder of oxygen and replaced it with a cylinder I got filled with breathable oxygen at a local scuba shop.

 

[HM-2]

Brewed my hazy DIPA with Cryo Amarillo, Sabro and Simcoe. Smoothest brew day I had in a while.

I had a bit of trepidation as it's the highest OG I've ever tried to hit off a non-reiterated mash in my Brewzilla (1.076) and largest single mash grain bill (7.2KG) but I needn't have worried as my post boil OG ended up being 1.082. Just took things slow, elongated out to about 80 minutes at 67°C and threw in plenty of rice hulls as the recipe is about 15% wheat.

Was also my first time using Incognito hop...goop. Tell you what, 15g of Incognito Sabro and 25g each of Cryo Amarillo and Simcoe was about the nicest smelling whirlpool I've ever done.

Pitched two packs of WLP644 because I was too lazy to do a starter. Should finish about 9%, and I've got ~250g of Cryo hops and 15g of Spectrum Citra to go into the dry hop in about a week...

 

[Jayjay1976]

Not exactly beer, but..

Here is a pic of all of the low wines I've collected from fermenting 30 gallons of last fall's honeycrisp cider. Today I loaded it all into the still, diluted down a bit below 40% and now I'm running a slow spirit run to clean up the flavor and take the ABV up to cask strength. Half will age on oak, half I'll keep white, and when it's ready to bottle I'll back sweeten a bit with apple juice concentrate.

 

[Jayjay1976]

Not exactly beer, but..

Here is a pic of all of the low wines I've collected from fermenting 30 gallons of last fall's honeycrisp cider. Today I loaded it all into the still, diluted down a bit below 40% and now I'm running a slow spirit run to clean up the flavor and take the ABV up to cask strength. Half will age on oak, half I'll keep white, and when it's ready to bottle I'll back sweeten a bit with apple juice concentrate.
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And here's how it's going. Collecting pint 20 and still head temp is just approaching 180f. No idea what to do with this much hearts...

Shutting it down for the night..

 

[DBhomebrew]

Stopped at The UPS Store.

Clerk: What's in the box?
Me: Food.
Clerk: So, no alcohol? Cuz, I've had like seven people try to ship alcohol today.
Me: It's food.
Clerk: Uh, ok.

Spoiler...





It's alcohol!

 

[JAReeves]

Harvested what hops I have. Will see dry weight in a day or so.

 

[grampamark]

Last night, actually. Kegged the Cali Common I brewed about 10 days ago. I think the sample tasted pretty good; still can’t taste much.

 

[seatazzz]

Today installed the second bent diptube I got from brewhardware; first one (that was originally in the BK before I did some stupid sh*t) is now in the mash tun. Love those things, drains a kettle or tun almost dry. Worked from home today, and will be tomorrow. Sent husband to LHBS to pick up hops for Saturday's group brewday, with explicit instructions NOT to buy anything else, even if he thinks I need it; he complied, amazingly. Trying to distract myself from thinking about tomorrow, when my new e-bike will arrive. Can't wait!!!

 

[Jayjay1976]

Today installed the second bent diptube I got from brewhardware; first one (that was originally in the BK before I did some stupid sh*t) is now in the mash tun. Love those things, drains a kettle or tun almost dry. Worked from home today, and will be tomorrow. Sent husband to LHBS to pick up hops for Saturday's group brewday, with explicit instructions NOT to buy anything else, even if he thinks I need it; he complied, amazingly. Trying to distract myself from thinking about tomorrow, when my new e-bike will arrive. Can't wait!!!

Congrats on proper training of the husband and please post a pic of the new e-bike!

 

[seatazzz]

Congrats on proper training of the husband and please post a pic of the new e-bike!

Mine is on the right (girls bike). Just took them for a short ride, batteries need to fully charge. One hell of a lot of fun, especially going up hills. And because I could, already tweaked the maximum speed up to 24.8mph. Very nice ride. Both from RadPowerBikes in Seattle. Won't mention the price (eeek) but if it gets my fat butt out and riding again, I'm happy.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

Finished adding a sink to my beer room. There's a common wall with the kitchen, so it was fairly simple. The hard part was installing things in a manner that was not intended. All in all, I'm probably south of a hundred bucks on this and well worth every penny.

Now I can connect straight to my chiller instead of a pump from the kitchen sink and back. Lengthened the legs on the little wire shelf, added a GHT adapter with quick-connect to the faucet, dropped a prep sink right into the modified shelf, and Bob's your uncle!

 

[HM-2]

Dry hopped my hazy DIPA. I already hit it with 15g Spectrum Citra liquid dry hop when it was still at 1.020 down from about 1.082 as its supposed to be added during the end of active fermentation. It's been 1.016 for 3 days now so felt it was time for the main event. So today in went

50g Simcoe Cryo
50g Sabro Cryo
25g Amarillo Cryo
50g Amarillo T90
50g Sabro T90

Even without the main dry hop charge the sample I took was brilliant, by far the best hazy I've ever done. Bursting with juicy tropical and stone fruit, sweet orange and just a hint of tartness from the warm fermented 644.

I can't dry hop as cold as I'd like because my Fermzilla doesn't fit in my fridge so I'll be keeping contact times super short at 24 hours before I transfer and cold crash.

 

[leedspointbrew]

Bottled my Devil's Dunkelfest. It started out as an Oktoberfest-style ale w Lutra, darkened slightly through operator error, and ended up tasting pretty good from the green sample I tried.

 

[seatazzz]

Today is another purge of the garage. Between all the empty boxes and random house stuff that finds its way out here (quick take that stuff out to the garage, company is coming!), it's going to be at least two dump runs. So far I've found my big funnel, about 5 keg disconnects, my old wing capper, several cracked airlocks, my first bottle filler, enough empty bottles to fill a rubbermaid tub, and 6 bungee cords that we of course needed to find BEFORE the dump runs, but appeared AFTER the husband had left in the truck. Also, after moving the grain mill to get at some other stuff, found enough grain on the floor (it lives in a very populated area of the garage) to brew a 2g batch, not that I would. Later have to clean the equipment from yesterday's group brewday and keg a lager.

 

[HM-2]

Dry hopped my hazy DIPA.

Now in the keg to cold crash and carb. A 24h dry hop has resulted in very little hop burn, very much looking forward to this one being ready in a week or so as again the sample from the keg post transfer is tasting great.

 

[Drinkerbell]

Started a new Cream Ale with Pilsner, a splash of honey malt, bit o corn, a little rice, Azacca hops and WLP080.
Thought I'd break in my new *3* gal fermenter that's actually only 1.5 gal, so bonus, get to make another batch.

 

[Sunfire96]

Drank some homebrew and made some homebrew. A good day

 

[Beermeister32]

Just stocked up the garage refrigerator.