While BA Was Down

Brewed an Irish red ale for our club challenge Monday. The 24hr lag on an old yeast slurry scared me but all is well now. Also, I have gotten my morning barn chores done faster (I'm mostly on BA early before I head to work).

Homebrew42 must have cured all forms of cancer, pacified the middle east and figured out how to keep an IPA at its peak for 20 years while the forums were down!

edit: a small brag. I have been homebrewing for 25 years as of this month. It just keeps getting better!

 

Wait...you made a Brett beer, then repitched that yeast and was surprised it infected other beers?

 

Brewed and bottled a Maple Syrup Dark Ale. Intense maple aroma upon opening the fermenter and had to debate between priming with even more maple syrup or just using the corn sugar. Primed with the syrup, and in a few days I will open the first bottle to see if its any good. Kind of worried about it since I lost some hop materials during a boilover. May end up way too sweet!

 

I wouldn't worry about the maple syrup priming sugar adding too much flavor. I would venture a guess that most people would not be able to tell the difference between otherwise identical beers primed with syrup vs. table sugar.

 

What appears to be lacto jizz has been making cameos in my 2ndary fermentors.
I blame it all on the BA servers crashing.

Elsewhere...pipeline has been humming with truly tasty IPA knock-offs of Smuttynose 'FinestKind' IPA and Stone Brewery's Ruination. That...along w/Amarillo pale ale and the last of the home-grown raspberry wheat brewed in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene have been keeping the home fires burning.

 

My Scotch Ale's been cold crashing (and sitting on scotch whiskey infused oak chips) for the last week to help clear up the Windsor yeast. It should be ready for bottling tomorrow. Depending on the clarity level when I get home from work, I may have to pitch some gelatin in the primary overnight.

 

So you brewed a Saison that became accidentally infected, named it "Brett Saison," entered it in a national competition, and won 2nd place in category 16?

That's amazing!

 

While BA was down I ended up brewing my first AG batch- an oatmeal stout. Only 65% efficiency but that's what I was planning on so I hit my OG. 73% apparent attenuation put it at about 5.8% abv and the hydrometer sample was reasonably decent tasting last night. I'm glad I made the jump from extract and encourage anyone considering it to do so.

 

I made a DIPA last week and I think it's going to be great. also dry hopped my American IPA.

 

Kegged and carbbed my Hellesbier. Tasted, savored and wept. It was dvine.

I also brewed a run-o-the-mill Pale with British and German malts, along with American hops, and I'm currently witnessing the spectacle that is Wyeast 1272 in action.

 

Well hey, congrats on the win and here's hoping some of those accidental Brett beers also turn out well!

 

Bottled an English Barley wine. I was inspired by a thread from 2008 in which Homebrew42 described an all maris otter wort boiled down from about 7 gal to about 2 ish. I did something similar. At bottling it had a wonderful floral/orange blossom aroma and toffee/buttered toast flavor. Bottled it and will (try to) forget about it for 6 months.

 

Came close to placing at a pretty big local comp with a DIPA that was a first run recipe. My score was 35.5, with the top three beers scoring 36.5 to 39 - and I lost some points due to being very under carbed. I kegged this batch and individually bottle primed a few bottles and measured the priming sugar by volume instead of weight and went a little light for fear of creating bombs. Oh well. The beer was an absolute winner with me and my friends/family, which is all that really matters. I can get that medal next year.

 

Me too, I came upon some free, high quality, 2-row so I did BIAB for the first time. I only got 60% efficiency so I supplemented with a little LME. I just drank the first bottle and it came out great. Definitely looking to build a mash tun for the next brew session. I would also encourage anyone else that is on the fence to go ahead and give it a try. If you understand the basics of what is going on in a mash, it is really not that difficult.

 

Haha during the site down we didn't exactly win with one of our beers. Our American stout came in fourth out of four at our club competition, they all were pretty good but we were a tad low carb. and a bit too hoppy. First beer we've put to judges, it was very helpful to get comments from blind tasting.
Glad the site is up and running.

 

Ah, ok. The FG hydro sample didn't bring up brett character? That sucks man, nothing is worse than dumping a beer. I somehow screwed up batch cleaning 4 kegs once and 3 of 4 kegs had to be dumped. All that time and anticipation was a total loss. I only ever reuse yeast once, usually as a method to grow yeast for a big batch of beer.