What's brewing September edition

Their opening a Brewery in NYC(Mets Stadium) later this year so i'll grab one if i see it.

 

Kegged my IPA last night after 8 days fermenting. Steady at 1.012. Came in at 6.7%. Put 1oz each of Vic Secret and BRU-1 in the keg. I'll keep it at 68 for two days before throwing on the gas. Sample tasted really nice.

 

brewed another half pills half best ale brew. this time a full blown DIPA
with Nugget, Columbus, chinook, cascade and will DH with 8 oz of cascade.

 

Keg cleaning, and kegging, including kegging a possible Averagely Restricted entry. Tastes like a second place beer.

 

Mission accomplished!

Friday: filled my barrel with the imperial stout. Tasted pretty damn good going in. Hopefully the barrel treats it well. I can't wait to find out.

Also Friday: Baltic Porter day. Target OG was 1.089. I've been missing my OG target by a few points on bigger beers, and recently learned I should be setting the bewhouse efficiency lower (in Beersmith) on the big stuff. I've been using the default of 72%. For this beer--since I wasn't quite sure how much to lower it--I dropped it to 65%, and adjusted the recipe accordingly. I ended up over shooting by a point. Close. I guess I'll bring it up a tad next time, and see how it goes.

As mentioned in a previous post, this was my first time using lager yeast. I made a 3.25l starter with wlp830 German Lager. I wasn't sure what to expect. Pitched at about 3:00 PM into 50 degree wort; set the fermentation fridge to 53; by 10:00 PM there were signs of life. Activity ramped up a bit on Saturday. Today it's moving a full speed. So far, so good.

Today: Wise ESB day. I had planned to use wlp001, but I realized I had an extra wlp051 in the fridge, so I went with that instead. Dropped the mash temp down to 146 to make up for 051's lower attenuation. Over all, it was a pretty uneventful brew day. Although I spaced on taking a pH reading and adding phosphoric acid during the mash. Hopefully I don't end up regretting it.

And now I'm exhausted. But...BEER!

 

Big brew day this weekend. Killed 10 gallons of Red IPA in 2 weeks so I need to brew more. 2 mashes, 2 boils, 3 fermentations, 4 kegs of beer.

Doing 8.25 gallons of Dopplebock that will ferment with the cake from my Mexican Lager. After fermentation is done and lagering takes place, I will divide it into 2 kegs. 5 gallons in one keg of straight 8.8% ABV Dopplebock. The other will receive 2 gallons of boiled, chilled, CO2 purged water and the other 3 gallons of beer for a 5.3% ABV Munich Dunkel.

Second mash is 8.5 gallons of Imperial Red Rye IPA with Chinook, Simcoe, Citra, and Columbus, 2 kinds of rye malt, and 4 cara grains. Will boil, chill, split 5.25 gallons straight and dilute 3.25 gallons to 5.25 gallons pre fermentation. Should have 9.3% ABV IIRRA, and 5.7% ABV IRRA.

Have a brand new 3 tier stand with chiller that I have never used as well as a keggle with false bottom and recirc arm. This will be fun!!!

 

Interesting, let me know how that one turns out! Bet it'll taste very similar to a hoppy rye saison.

 

Trying an open fermentation on 2 separate 5-gal batches of wheat beer at the moment. 6 lb white wheat, 3.5 lb Pilsner and 0.5 lb Vienna per batch. Hopped exclusively with homegrown chinook to get around 15 IBU. One got an ayinger weisse strain, and i am getting a lot of banana smells out of the fermenter. The other had an extra 2 oz of freshly dried chinook in the whirlpool and is fermenting vigorously with a wild yeast. Fun times in the brewhouse!

 

First brew day in two months tonight. It'll be a 3.5 gallon batch of dark English Barleywine that'll go onto oak in secondary.

11lb Maris Otter
7oz Special B
9oz Dark English Crystal Malt 160L
8oz D180 Belgian Candi Syrup (leftover from a Dubbel, and I want to use it up)

Fuggles for bittering to about 40 IBU and WY1028 yeast.

 

5 days off work starts tomorrow. Got a day trip to Nashville tomorrow, an overnight stay in St. Louis Fri/Sat, bottling my pumpkin coffee porter on Sunday, and brewing an Averagely restricted competition entry on Monday.

 

Lager is finally done, so the kegerator is back at full capacity!

From the left: 4.4% Blackcurrent Kettle Sour, 5.4% Festbier, 4.8% Keg-conditioned Nut Brown Ale, and 6.7% Mosaic, Citra, and Azacca NE IPA.

I was going to take a break from brewing for a couple of weeks, but I picked up this guy yesterday, so it looks like I’m brewing .5bbl of something strong!

 

Heading over to an annual fund-raiser here with a keg of Prickly Pear Ale and a keg of Roasted Hatch Chile Porter...should be fun and open up some space in my kegerator

 

If there are two more Southwestern sounding beers, I'd be surprised.

 

Wish I could say they were full kegs ...but probably 2/3 each

 

Weighed out grains and got my equipment ready for brewday Saturday... A new DIPA with Galaxy, Mosaic and Vic Secret.

Got a new SST wort chiller to replace my copper one (being used as a pre-chiller, now) and will be doing some new stuff this time around to reduce oxygen. Grain conditioning, preboil and quick cool mash/sparge water, now having the ability to purge/vent my fermenter with CO2 after dry hopping and during cold crashing now that I have a second CO2 tank and regulator setup for my basement... Should be cool to see if I notice any differences.

 

brewing a dipa tomorrow 8%. 2 row Pilsner and oat malt. Vic secret Columbus and 007.

 

Brewed a porter, I tried implementing some of the LoDo techniques - smb/ascorbic acid/brewtan b in the mash etc . I did notice almost no smell coming off the mash which is what a lot of other people have mentioned, was a bit strange. Also my efficiency was down a bit. I continued my current anglo/german trend in design

OG 1.054
MO 80.6%
Crisp Brown malt 8.1%
Crisp Roasted Barley 4.8%
Crystal dark 4.8%
Torrified wheat 1.6%

mash - single infusion batch sparge

Bittered to 50 IBU magnum
450g Hallertau mittelfruh wet hops flavour/aroma
yeast crossmyloof kolsch yeastx2

 

Big month for my brew house, but not so much thanks to actual brewing. I did brew my first attempt at a Dry Irish Stout earlier this month. Fermented with lager yeast and using flaked rye instead of barley. I plan to bottle that today. I've got the ingredients for a Scottish Ale that I'm hoping ends up something like Robert the Bruce, but I'm eschewing both caramel malts and kettle caramelization, which I've read may be more historically accurate.

That brew day will probably have to wait until next weekend, though, as I have some upgrades to my brew house to make this weekend. I'll be installing a weldless ball valve with kettle screen to my boil kettle. Hopefully that means less trub makes it into my fermenter, if for no other reason than to get more beer out of it. Additionally, I'm finally the proud owner of a stainless steel immersion chiller. I've been doing ice baths for way too long, but when Phoenix tap water is relatively warm year-round, ice is necessary. That is why I'll be pumping ice water through my chiller. I'm hoping I can get away with using less than the 60-80# of ice I'm using today!

Next month, I'll be placing my annual bulk hops order. Of course, that means a new IPA is in the works. I'm thinking maybe a grist of 100% GP.