What's Brewing & Doing - November edition

I racked a couple of beers this week and maimed my hand. I am oaking an American Barleywine: http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/the-best-american-barleywine.226911/ I needed to boil an oak staff, but it was too big for my pot. I went to break it in half with my bare hands and when it broke it pinched the shit out of my hand. I should have gotten a picture of the red lines engraved in my palm. LFMF cut oak to size!

I'll be back on brewing by Friday. Double batch of Kolsch.

 

Just purchased 6.5 lbs of hops from Yakima Valley... Should be stocked up for most beers all of next year. Order included (all 2015 crop):

Citra
Columbus
Cascade
Chinook
Centennial
Mt Hood
Azacca
Nugget

 

Collected about 2.5 quarts of my ice beer this morning. It's really boozy and I get a lot of caramel malty sweetness. However, this is definitely going to require some aging. It has a weird bitter taste.

 

I will be hosting a new homebrew club at my house to do Teach A Friend to Brew Day on Saturday. It is the clubs first meeting, and other than me, no one has brewed before. Will do an extract batch milk stout, it is actually the same recipe I brewed for my very first beer. It will be partial boil, steeped grains, ice batch chill, dump through a funnel, and top off with cold water (still pitching sufficient yeast). I am also doing a 10 gallon AG Biere de Garde test batch alongside it.

 

Earlier this week I dry coffee beaned and bottled up a stout that was already hit with a bourbon/vanilla bean tincture. I'm hoping it's carbed up by Thanksgiving.

 

Had to postpone my Mounds bar Stout minus the Mounds bars. Brewed a Wakatu, Simcoe, Amarillo beer instead.

 

I break spirals for soaking in liquor (I use mason jars for this), and learned really quickly to wear work gloves when doing it.

 

Lambic split onto passionfruit and pomegranate concentrates from The Perfect Purée. Really quality concentrates with amazing flavor.

 

I read the word "concentrate" and worried that you're making ice lambics.

 

There's an idea....

 

Brewed up the bb sour quad I had planned tonight. Pretty fun brew, including steeping raisins post-boil. Tremendously tasty sweet-wort. I can't wait to see how this tastes after the abbey ale yeast ferments it out, and before I rack it onto more raisins, figs, and tart cherries and start souring it.

My target OG was 1.096 assuming I would have a 5 gallon yield and nailed it right on after boiling down from 7 gal to 5.5, and then straining out the hops, and guesstimating that the steeped raisins would soak up a good amount of wort. Should be a nice big boozy sour

 

i searched but i havent found a recipe from you.
would you be willing to share a recipe for none more black?

 

Just removed Kona coffee grounds from my secondary for a brunch stout. Coming it at 8.5%

 

Subbed in 5.6% sugar for some base malt in German Pils recipe per Brewing Classic Styles ...I want this to finish dry and crisp...will decide on possible dryhop later

 

Planning out brew days for two really stupid beers (A brandy barrel aged wheatwine, an oatmeal stout with 90% oats).

Also getting ready to do the annual SMaSH barleywine, and trying to decide on a barrel and grain composition. Last year was a rum barrel and optic, thinking bourbon or brandy barrel this year and either marris or pearl. Wife wants optic and rum barrel again, but who brews to please their wife?! Oh, wait....

 

Yesterday I bottled a SMASH for my club's malt experiment. Different malts, bitter with magnum at 60, then fermented with Wyeast 1098 British Ale. Tomorrow I am heading to the LHBS for Learn to Homebrew day to hang out and pick up supplies for Sunday's brew day. Brewing a Porter, recipe from Brewing Classic Styles, the black widow porter. I figured I would want something that I wouldn't mind drinking throughout the winter.

 

Just brought a completely fermented ESB into the kitchen for racking into a keg tomorrow morning. This s a very simple beer compared to all the (good) craziness going on in this thread. Cheers!

 

I haven't posted my recipe, per se, but what is most important about that brew is the process, which I posted in great detail a few times on here. The base beer is just a real nice roasty, and hoppy, imperial stout.

 

BA RIS stout aged for 3mo in Portuguese oak.
Added 2lb/gal blackberries all smashed up and reinoculated, she's happily fermenting away.

A week or two and I will rack and cold condition.
Eventually finding its way to bottling for christmas.

 

Just finished bottling my grapefruit IPA. I'm drinking the dregs from the bottling bucket - tasting great so far.
The joys of bottling - close to pulling the trigger on kegging...