Brewing Activities June 2016

Currently making a saison , weyerman pale malt, pilgrim to bitter and styrian goldings for aroma. Migh hoy some spices or some rhubarb in at the end

 

Heading there tonight, after we hit Beer and Fud

 

crazy busy brew day today.... but having hernia surgery this Thursday so gotta stock up!!

15 gallon brew day. 12 gallon batch in the keggle is gonna be a split batch, mittelfruh and saphir hopped, so german pilsner with wl 830, and the other half is dupont, brett c, WY farmhouse ale saison. While brewing I kegged a saison made with the same yeast combo, racked to keg with 5.4 oz of cane sugar, a portion was bottled from the keg with the beer gun into cork and cage bottles....some brown....some green.

In a separate kettle on another burner i did a hoppy NEPA with all Exp. Lemon Naughty hops. BIAB style.

This should fill the keezer up!!





**EDIT** I'm gonna finish around 3 pm and go directly to bed....

 

Brewed my APA/IPA today (5-gal)... Malt bill of 2-row, Vienna, White Wheat and 20L. Bittering with Columbus and late additions of Citra, Mosaic and Chinook. Ended up with OG 1.051 and pitched 1056 to ferment at 64F.

I have a hefty dry hop for this one, probably excessive, but we will see... 2oz Mosaic, 1.5oz Chinook, 1.5oz Citra and 1oz Cascade. I have been following 1oz/ABV for my IPA's and have fantastic results... This beer was supposed to hit 1.054 OG and end up around 5.8%, but my efficiency was a tad lower than I had projected.

 

Brewed 10 gallons of hefeweizen today. Long brew day since I did a decoction/step mash. My favorite way to do a hefe though so fingers crossed it ends up worth it.

 

Brewing up my first lager tomorrow. Doing a festbier, got the fermentation chamber with temp control is good to go. I am so ready for something new, I am over hops right now.

 

I've been that way for awhile now. I'm just now drinking my first IPA of the year, which I only brewed because I had Galaxy and Equinox hops from my winter hop order. It's a fantastic IPA, but I'm drinking it a little faster than I should because I'm ready to move on to something else.

 

I actually have trying this combo on my "brew to-do" list. Good to hear that initial impressions are positive.

Did you co-pitch at the same time and same amounts? Wondering if maybe a staggered pitch or different amounts might also be worth experimenting with...

 

Just got done setting up my first kettle sour (will be a Gose). As you can see, decided to use Goodbelly Mango. Have a starter of WY3711 French Saison going. I need to make a final decision on whether to split the 5gal batch and add a couple different adjuncts separately near the end of the ferment (can't decide between: fresh peach, mango, lime zest, or blueberries). Or just make 5gal and pick one of the above. I'll go think about it over a couple of homebrews, I guess...

 

Just kegged my first dipa. Starting gravity 1.072 and finished @ 1.010. 3rd pitch of yeast bay's Vermont ale yeast and got 85% attenuation, but I did add sugar on day 2 of fermentation. One of the best samples I've had.

 

I made a 1L starter with the 1318 the day before brewing, then tossed the "double-pitch" of Giga Vermont IPA into the starter at the start of brew day. So likely about even footing.

Liking the beer even more as it carbs up, initially I thought the 35 calculated IBUs (not counting whirlpool) was too low, but it is pretty nice as is!

 

Bottling day yesterday turned out to be a "Oh DAMN, this is a good beer" and quickly the tides turned to being a brew day!

Bottled up a slick Lemon-Lime Hefe, and brewed the recipe exactly the same, but added a few more points of everything to bring yield to 6.5 gallons. We took the yeast cake out of the fresh bottled hefe, made a quick starter, and filled up our 2L Flask to the brim and stirred it for a few hours (2ish). Hopefully that will wake everything back up. Filtered the trub out while adding it to the fresh Primary brew. She didn't have much activity this morning, which is interesting because the first run through we had a very vigorous fermentation, I am sure she's just lagging though.

Does anyone have any tips on how they reuse their yeast in a situation like this? I understand washing, etc for storage. But it was literally a 10 second decision to brew again.

 

Did you just take the yeast from the bottom of the primary or did you open up a bottle(s) and use that yeast?

 

We just took the cake from the bottom of that primary. Also we used some top crop that we salvaged from the previous hefe's primary fermentation. Sorry I didn't explain that fully.

 

That will work. No need to do a starter since the yeast cake was so fresh

 

Yeah I didn't really think so either. But we made a quick 200 ml or so of DME dissolved to some OG don't remember at this point. Just to get it on the stir plate and make things happy. Ended adding probably 2.3-2.4 liters of yeast slurry.

 

does a few hour starter really do anything at all?

 

I'd like to think it did something Drink!

Really wasn't relying on it for much, just to get the yeast cake out of the primary to clean it out really. But figured that any time is better than none in trying to re-engage the yeast.

 

Brewed a Extra Pale Ale yesterday with Galaxy and Citra. 5.8% ABV. 52 IBUs (including whirlpool addition)

Completely switched up my normal procedure/recipe. That would have included Pale malt, all late whirlpool additions, no cara malts and Cal Ale.

Today I used hops at FW, 15 and 10 minutes along with a 45 min hopstand @ 170 degrees. I used Pilsner along with 10% cara malts. 1318 for yeast and went relatively light by my standards with hops. Only 6.25 ounces for the whole batch.

Interested to see how this new approach tastes. The Citra and Galaxy smelled heavenly out of the bags.