Brewing Activities June 2016

Maltodextrin is completely unfermentable. I would think that the beer would have gotten a bit lower, but it is not out of the question that I may be done. You could always enter the wild side, and pitch some sour yeast or dregs and let it sit for a year.

 

Yeah, I can't imagine why it hasn't dropped to at least 1.020, I might add a bit more sugar to try and drop it more and just bottle.

 

Adding more sugar won't make the yeast eat the more complex sugars/dextrins that are left. It will just raise the ABV (and lower the FG very slightly due to alcohol being less dense than water).

 

holiday brewing. racking a ba porter to the secondary and brewing a chocolate stout tomorrow. they will be ready to go around thanksgiving.

next week will be my first go at a NE ipa. going to split the batch and add some mango

 

68F

 

I guess I wrote that wrong. Hopefully sugar additions will drop the FG enough to where I'm close to my original target (probably going to add sugar everyday until Thursday). We'll see... I had a stout that wasn't done that I bottled and two bottles exploded, don't want to repeat that mistake.

Other than that, going to brew a West Coast IPA this weekend.

 

Bottled up my stone fruit lambic this weekend - 2 year old lambic aged on nectarines, mangoes, peaches, apricot, apricot noyaux. Still sample is ridiculous.

Plan on kegging my rye whiskey barrel batch of None More Black this week, as well as my tropical triple IPA. When I rack over the NMB to keg I will add the oak from that batch to the other batch of NMB that is conditioning and also add cacao nibs and raspberries and let that sit for a few weeks.

Fourth batch of NMB will get brewed the end of this month, I think. Planning on splitting that half on coconut rum+almonds, and the other half on pinot noir or cab grape must.

 

Again, adding sugar will not make the currently unfermented complex sugars/dextrins suddenly appealing to the yeast. Back of the envelope, to drop your FG 8 points (1.028 to 1.020, by virtue of the difference between water and alcohol density) in a 5 gallon batch, you'd have to add about 4 lbs of table sugar, which would increase your ABV a whole bunch. Adding sugar is not the way to fix any under-attenuation problems.

 

Brewed a Hefeweizen tonight. The temperature in my basement is only about 62 degrees, so I'm using a fermwrap to try to get my fermentation temps up to around 70 degrees.

Some cyser and sauerkraut are chugging along to the left.

 

4 pounds it is!

I know, I just want to up the ABV a bit -- that was mostly tongue in cheek. I just hope this isn't too sweet.

 

Attempting my first Lagers using WLP-830 and Wyeast 2042. The Wyeast was good at 48 but the WL didn't start until 51 then brought to 50.

 

After 48 hours of fermentation, I did a temperature check of the Hefe with fermwrap on it. It was at 85 degrees. I had always read that fermwraps only add about 10 degreee to ambient temperature, so I guess I wasn't expecting that high of temp. I took a gravity reading (pretty much at final FG already) and a taste (good banana ester flavor), so I unplugged the fermwrap. I'll let it finish up for the next couple weeks at 62 degrees.

 

this week finaly made Sprutra a spruce tip/citra IPA, Ma's Irish stout and last night was the run and gun brew with a guest brewer. We decided to name it Dark an Spicy , a rye stout with brewers gold, tetnang and Willamette hops. Half went home with the guest. After ferment am going to give my half some hard maple/oak treatment.

 

I've heard that too, but I don't know where that rumor started. I use two fermwarps on a keg to raise the temp from ambient (70F) to 115F for sour worting. The wraps are on a controller, or the temp would easily go higher.

 

Just took my 1.5L starter off the stirplate this morning to cold crash a day or two before preparing the second step (2.5-3L) of WLP833.

I have a German Dunkel brewing next Saturday, followed by a Vienna Lager I am throwing right on the yeast cake of the Dunkel when done. It will be interesting to have those two side by side as both recipes are very similar, aside from the change in malt obviously.

 

Took 1L starter off of the stir plate this AM for cold crash to be used tomorrow in the Hefe I'm brewing.

 

I'm doing my first Hefe tomorrow. I don't have a fermwrap, do I really have to ferment at that high of a temperature? The yeast I'm using WLP300 says 67-72 degrees.

 

Brewing a Hoppy Pale Wheat tomorrow. No idea what hops I'm using at this point...I have a bunch of year old pellet in the freezer, and I need to see what's still good.

 

Really curious to hear how the spruce IPA turns out, I've been very curious myself to use spruce in a beer.

 

Kegged up my IPA on Wednesday night. Tossed the dry hops in the kegs, one got 3 Habaneros with the tops cut off. Both kegs are sitting in the garage infusing with all their goodness. Will drop the kegs into the keezer tomorrow more than likely and get them carbed up before dinner with a potential business partner next Tuesday!