Brewing Activities May 2016

Refractometer readings have to be run through a calculator to adjust for the alcohol to get an accurate reading post yeast additions.

 

Just bottled a batch that mostly followed OldSock's Hop Juice NE IPA recipe. Looks like it's gonna be a good one.

 

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 6.8% Started at about 1.054, but added candi sugar at high krausen, so the gravity was a bit higher. It went in the barrel around 1.007, but it's got the potential to drop more.

 

Yesyerday was a full day of brewing activities. Brewed 12 gallons of my strawberry beer, half wlp 550 and half wlp 565. Kegged 5 gallons for a homebrewing competition and bottle the last 4-5 gallons of it. Also moved 3 gallons of a witbier to secondary and added grapefruit and honey! Thinking about dry hopping the witbier with .5 oz of Amarillo and huell melon.

 

Racked/DH 10 gal of IPA to kegs and growlered the extra volume without DH using some old carb drops.

 

Brewed a Jarrylo / Ahtanum Saison with coriander, 3711 and Dupont dregs. Effortless brew day today. It wasn't like 5 hours of scrubbing the toilet.

Perhaps this cakewalk brew day was weather related? It was a beautiful day. Perhaps it was due to several people jumping on the Ignore Brew_Betty Bandwagon? It's hard to tell for sure. All I know is I brewed today and it was like I didn't even brew.

 

Built a Carboy tipper. Allows me to get almost everything out when racking. Also bottled the Quadrupel and Witbier.

 

Life got in the way of regular homebrewing the last few weeks...and all the kegs ran dry!!!

Brewed a "crisis mitigation" NEIPA...had lots of hops in my freezer and couldn't decide which to use...so added a bunch!

Used WY1318 w/ Galena for bittering, Amarillo/Azacca/Citra/El Dorado/Equinox at 15min and for Whirlpool. Planning to dryhop at ~4-5d of fermentation and then keg hop

 

Funny timing, but I found Sorachi Ace for the first time locally just yesterday. I picked it up at Gentile's Wine Sellers if you wanted to track it down for yourself.

 

Bumped the temp up on my big RIS... Still pretty vigorous fermentation going on, but I want to ensure the best attenuation possible. I was fermenting at 64F since Saturday (pitched yeast at around 62-63F). Raised the temp controller to 66F where I will keep it until it shows signs of slowing down, where I will then see if it will rise up to 68F to finish - but likely since my basement is on the cooler side it will just drop back down to 64-65F. Then I will hope that I am somewhere in the 1.024 ballpark and not stuck above 1.03 (OG was 1.116).

 

I have the entire place to myself for the next couple days which can only mean one thing..the elusive weekday brew.

This thing I'm brewing cannot be described - there is no style guide for such abysms of attenuated and malted lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order...

Call of Wakatu - a Wakatu hopped pale ale

 

Been to Gentiles plenty of times, stumbled upon it one evening after drinking at Four String. Just moved down to Clintonville, so all of that stuff is much more accessible!

Thanks for the tip!

 

Bumped up the temp a couple days ago on my Saison to finish off the last few points. Got some Bio-Fine today to use for this batch. I'm going to cold crash the beer for a few days then rack to 2 kegs. One will get DH, the other will get Bio-Fine. After the Bio-Fine clears it up I will transfer to a new keg with DH. Want to see what difference is made when the DH addition is done in a totally clear beer as opposed to a beer still full of my Brett strains. My Brett strains bio-transform hop oils and I'm hoping that this little experiment will give a difference between un-transformed and bio-transformed hop oils. We'll see.

 

I'm getting some starters going for a saison on Sunday. 565, 566 and a house strain, which is a combination of yeasts: sacch, brett and a wine strain. Fermentable will be a combo of pilsner, flaked barley, honey malt and sugar.

 

Transferred a gose halved onto raspberries and blueberries. Looking pretty nice. Next week I'll be ordering up ingredients for a tropical DIPA and racking my macraoon milk stout onto cacao nibs for a few weeks before kegging with coconut and hazelnut

 

Brewing 12 gallons of pale wort today. Half of the batch is gonna get BUGfarm and very minimal hops, half the batch is gonna get a heavy dose of Amarillo, Apollo, and Mosaic, and will be fermented with Dupont, 3726?, and Brett C.

 

Started brewing all some beers for my brother's wedding yesterday. Brewed a basic saison and got my sour mash going for a gose

 

Gravity reading and "tests" on my RIS... So, I pitched the yeast last Saturday, so it has been 8 days since. My OG was 1.116 and currently at 1.035... When I checked the gravity yesterday, it was at 1.037 - So the yeast is still working quite a bit. I will re-check next Friday and see how it's doing, but currently it's at about 11% ABV. I am hoping to hit 11.5% or even 12%, but not sure if it will make it. I don't mind though, the current beer is really, really nice. I would take it as-is.

For me "test", since I will be adding a tincture of vanilla bean and eagle rare bourbon and oak chunks (which I charred over flame, pre-boiled quickly and then soaked), I took my gravity reading beer and I put in some of the bourbon, few drops of the oak/bourbon tincture and a vanilla extract I had, just to see how the final flavors would (roughly) work. It's awesome! I am ecstatic for the flavor profile. I think once it has a few months to age/mellow it will be incredible.

Very happy how this beer is turning out, especially considering my biggest beer prior was 7.8% ABV... Stepping up to 12-13% was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Surprised how "clean" the fermentation is of such a high ABV beer with the US-05. Absolutely no off-flavors, it's not boozy/hot, etc... Especially after only 8 days since pitching the yeast into such a beer!

For those curious, I did two pure O2 oxygenation for the beer (one before yeast pitching and one about 8hrs later, both about 2mins long) and I pitched two re-hydrated packs of yeast for 5-gal.

 

Bottled a session yeast experiment. Made a 4.8 abv hoppy session, split the bat, fermented on with London ale 3 and the other with Nottingham. Better nose with the London ale yeast but the notty finished at 1.010, London at 1.013