What I did for beer today

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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 !
Every time I see a mention of Cleveland that Randy Newman song about the Cuyahoga plays in my mind. Never been there but it's on my bucket list.
 
Every time I see a mention of Cleveland that Randy Newman song about the Cuyahoga plays in my mind. Never been there but it's on my bucket list.
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.
 
Went to a beer fest today, and served my pale ale with the HBCs. Great weather for the outdoor event all the beers were good. Nice that events are happening again.
 

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Doing research for the next lager (Hoppy/Italian/West Coast/FF'sS, What's in a Name!) which I hope to make in the next couple of weeks or so. Found out one of my buddies is preparing for a divorce, so his equipment will be up for grabs. It's a basic setup, propane burner, boil kettle, cooler mash tun, glass carboys, all the little bits for measuring and whatnot.
 
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.
Here you go. I remember it from the movie Major League.

 
After my latest batch of American Stout - Rhinestone Carboy got infected, I started looking for weaknesses in my sanitation regimen. Since I have been distilling a lot recently, which amounts to extended boiling sessions, I've been a bit lax in my hot side cleaning. Today I did a thorough scrub down with a bristle brush while recirculating hot PBW, slowly actuating each ball valve through 10 cycles, then repeated the above with boiling star san and a double rinse. At each step more particulate in the rinse water confirmed some deep-seated gunk had been worked loose. Right now I'm cleaning a keg to package the batch of RC that I think smells like brett.
 
Harvested this year's grapes, 4lbs 11oz. Brix varied between 16 and 20. Two older golden muscat produced most of this, the black muscat not so much. Next year, I hope we'll get minimal amounts from the new vines: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Riesling, Carmenere and Pinot Noir. I don't think the Catawba is ever going to grow and will need to be replaced like the Petit Verdot and Sangiovese that didn't make it. What does that have to do with beer? We wild-ferment the grapes and add them to a wheat-based sour. These grapes will renew the yeasts and bacteria that we have been culturing for the last four years.
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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.

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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.
 
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.

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I've been looking at getting one of those. You might have convinced me!
 
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.
 
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? :cool:
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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.
 
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.
 
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...
 
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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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...
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Shutting it down for the night..
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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!!!
 
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!
 
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.
 

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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!

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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.
 
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.
 
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