What's Brewing & Doing - October Edition

Hoping to rattle off a Kolsch or Cream ale. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to make a bigger beer off of a first running here. I'd like to do a parti-gyle, but I've never done a large beer from German Pils. I don't have enough Kolsch yeast to do a Baltic Porter. Something with US-05, if anyone has any ideas.

 

Monday I brewed 10 gallons of Smoked Porter. Pitched 5 with WLP007 and 5 with Nottingham. Should be drinking Good at Christmas!

 

Started to cold crash my IPA to 35F this morning for the next few days... Going to bottle it up Saturday!

 

I do enjoy my speidel as well!

So been simplifying my brewing the last three beers, going "small batch" (5.5 gal), with all-gravity feed (no pump), only dirtying my kettle and 5 gal igloo cooler, chilling by sticking the kettle in an ice bath (no plate chiller)....no RIMS tube, batch sparge and loving it. Kettle is in ice bath in 2.5-3 hours. Milling the grain is quick, the clean up is quick. Next batch is a suppose to be a 16 gal DIPA...but having a hard time motivating myself to fire up the whole system right now.

 

Edit: would be helpful if I read the entire post by inchrisin...

With US-05, I would say an IPA-type beer would also be good. Maybe pick up some instant oats at the grocery store and some turbinado...

 

Always mix worts for partigyle imo, à la Fullers.



I've just started stepping up some bottle dregs for a future brew- poured some Hook Norton double stout, Hopback summer lightning and St. Austell proper job dregs in and will see what happens. Also planning a brew for this weekend, an ESB

 

Next brew is a Northdown / East Kent Goldings ESB fermented with Thames Valley yeast and floor malted Marris Otter. Probably this weekend. Definitely in October.

 

Just racked 10 gals of Comet, Citra, Centennial, Ahtanum IPA...next up, 5 gals of Wheatwine? (sitting on a sack of malted wheat)

 

How much Comet did you use and when?

 

Bittered with only 1 oz Comet (12.2AA FWH) and then used 1 oz @15 in a HopRocket with 2 oz Centennial ...10 gal batch

 

Brewed my third incarnation of The Raisinator last night. Pitched only the yeast+a pint or so of beer from the previous Raisinator secondary carboy (where it aged ~1 year) that I just bottled so I am most likely underpitching (1.070 SG). Hoping the 'stressful' initial primary fermentation makes some nice funky notes. If it doesn't take off in a few days I'll add some of my Deviation yeast cake to get it rolling.

 

Been dealing with massive dead space in my new rectangular cooler with bazooka screen, so I rigged up a super ghetto round false bottom that I think will work quite handsomely. I also picked up the ingredients for a dark mild I'll be brewing this weekend. The cake will be put to work on an English barleywine

Edit: It's using the round false bottom in this cooler that is pretty ghetto. Nothing wrong with any of the components

 

I've never tried blending. Maybe I'll be using all of my stock pots on Friday.

 

My label that I will be printing/applying this weekend when I bottle it:

 

Nothing ghetto about that setup. So this mash cooler originally had a rectangular false bottom that fit across the bottom? I think the circular one will work just as well. Let us know how it works on that dark mild and barleywine!

 

It originally had a bazooka screen, but it was sitting about 1/2 - 3/4" above the bottom of the cooler and I was getting a half gallon of dead space even with tilting the whole cooler. Using the false bottom from a 5gal igloo cooler seemed like an easier solution than a double elbow to lower the screen to the bottom (Vike's suggestion). I had to pickup some silicon tubing so it would lay flat on the bottom since the regular braided hose is too stiff, but I'm liking the looks of it. I'll probably trim the hose a bit and bring the false bottom closer to the spigot before I brew on Saturday. I'll have to toy with my brew house parameters over my next couple batches, but I'm excited about the setup.

Previous:

 

Please consider my "like" as a "dislike". I am morally opposed to adding labels to empty bottles :-)

 

Nice. I'm considering building a larger mash tun soon for a higher abv beer I've been contemplating. Since I've got the bazooka tube and false bottom in my circular igloo cooler, all I really need to get is a larger rectangular cooler and drill a hole in it, right? Although having a bazooka tube/false bottom for both mash coolers would be ideal.. i would hate to keep moving this equipment from cooler to cooler. This'll be a good winter project!