August Homebrewings and Doings

Going to crank out the now infamous Averagely Perfect NE IPA sometime in the next day or two. Just need to pick up my malts. I was able to snag the last of the Galaxy hops in my area, hopefully they're still fresh enough.

 

Knocked out the Averagely Perfect NE IPA today. Everything went smooth and hit my target OG.

 

What a crazy month of brewing and To-Do's so far!

Kegerator work:
- Bought a new shank and faucet to upgrade to three taps (dangerous territory now)
- Need to fix problem with my condensation drain/fan. (Bevair bm-23) I am taking in a lot of water now a days, and not getting anything in the drip pan under the unit.

Kegerator stock:
- Both my Lemon Lime Hefe and Centennial IPA kicked on Saturday... Of course I had a few people over as well. Oh well, had plenty of backup beer. These were my two first kegged beers in this system, so Sunday was all about refilling.
- Kegged up for Tap #1, one of the most complex tasting APA's I ever have had, much less brewed myself. Dryhopping with 4.5 oz of Misc. hops (Mosaic, Cirta, Chinook, Cascade)
- Kegged up for Tap #2, the last 3 gallons of the same IPA that kicked over the weekend.
- Kegged up for Tap #3, a Hoppy American Wheat Ale. Think of Hoppy Wheat by Great Divide. Pretty excellent tasting beer, except I wasted 4 gallons of it by not clearing out all the sani I had in the keg before racking.... Rushing mistakes. There was at least 3/4 gallon of sani in the bottom of it, so it was passed the "don't fear the foam" stage. Lol. Luckily we brewed up about 7.5-8 gallons worth, so not a total loss.

Brewing:
Sour "saison" 8.20 - 5 gallons, Kettle soured with GoodBelly Mango. Extract, equal parts light pilsner and rye LME. Pre-acidified wort to 4.8ish, pitched GoodBelly, held at 110 for 32 hours. Lack of sour presence at 32 hours, but letting the temp free fall to ambient temps of high 80's and let it ride until she's ready. This is my first sour brewing experience. Going to ferment with the Dupont strain. OG around 1.036.

SMaSH 8.21 - 5 Gallons, 13 lbs Irish Stout, 6oz Apollo hops. AG. OG 1.068. California Ale yeast.

Lemon-Lime Hefewizen 8.21 - 7.5 gallons, I forget the malt bill but it's awesome, Motueka and Sorachi Ace hops. Bittering and dry hop in keg. Limeaid addition to primary fermenter. Split batch and used washed (gen3) White labs Hefe 4, and White labs Hefe.

Sour experiments:
End runnings from LL Hefe were taken (1.038) and pitched lacto, then threw it up above the garage. Will be checking on it soon! Approx. 1 gallon. Thinking some watermelon addition and pitching some yeast and seeing what happens.

Planned:
The Great Pumpkin.
Another version of the AWA I messed up.
Something with fresh peaches.

Fermenting(previously):
Great Divide Yeti Clone
Funked APA
Centennial IPA
AWA

Things are a little crazy in the hobby, but taking off the next 3 weekends in a row from actual brewing. So had to stock up!

 

Realized I've got my hb club's oktoberfest coming up in three 3 weeks…gonna need to brew something this week for it…probably a good old-fashioned marzen recipe but will be using bry-97 just to get it cranked out in time.
This Sunday's brew was a bit rugged with the humidity, but the beer went into fermenter's just fine and both fermenters were churning & burning this morning, although my computer that ran my system officially died. ISO a new laptop for wednesday brew day...

 

Tapped my NE DIPA today. Outstanding! Needs another day or two to finish carbing up, but it's exactly what I was hoping for.

 

Last night I made my starter for the Dunkelweizen that I'm brewing this weekend. Using White Labs WLP300 Hefeweizen yeast.

I also assembled the parts so I can do closed transfers from primary to keg going forward.

Happy days.

 

Pulled some of my Solera last night onto Blackberries. Original fill was a Belgian Blonde with Pils, Aromatic, and Invert Sugar, 8 Brett strains, 3 Sacc strains, and Cascade's Lacto. 1 year later I pulled 5 gallons of quite acedic beer. Topped off with a Sour Stout with Pale, Vienna, British Dark Crystal, and a ton of Chocolate Malt fermented with ECY Bug County. It has been 13 months since that point now for this pull. Racked 5.5 gallons onto 6# fresh picked blackberries. The acedic isn't as prominent in this go round, tastes like Consecration. Topped off with a fresh batch of Amber Saison 100% 3 Brett house blend. Hoping to get this on a 6 month rotation instead of 12.

 

damn justin…i know where i'm going next time i'm in oregon!

 

First taste last night after racking into kegs. Very pleased with the results. The mesquite smoked malt isn't all that different in terms of flavor, aroma, or intensity from Briess' cherry-smoked product... at least as it comes through in this recipe. Used 2 lb in an 11.5 gallon batch (~10% of grist), and it comes through prominently but doesn't overpower the other malts. As for whether or not the sodium enhanced the malt profile vs. my old water w/o? I'm inclined to say it did - but maybe I'm just imagining things. In either case, I can say that it certainly didn't seem to *hurt* the beer.

cheers!

 

For sure, I'm on the list from the other thread.

 

Double brew day this weekend. Doing a 100% Brett (3 strain blend) Belgian Quad to see a Bourbon Barrel, 3 hour boil. Also doing a 100% Brett (single strain) DIPA with as many Wet Hops as I can pick from my Columbus and Chinook.

 

Yesterday a beer friend was over for a day trip to a brewery, so I decided before we left to drag out my 12.1% RIS keg out of the basement from conditioning, drop it in the keezer and allow it to chill/carbonate somewhat while we were gone for the day. This beer I brewed back in early May to be put on tap in fall around Sept/October. It is a Vanilla Rye RIS brewed with a grist made up of 2-row, dark munich, roast barley, chocolate rye, flaked rye, mix of 20/60/120L crystal malts, victory, black patent and carafa special III. Aged on charred oak, fresh vanilla beans and eagle rare 10yr bourbon.

I was quite shocked on the end result of this beer… The bourbon is very faint (which I expected) as well as the charred oak, just being an addition to the complexity vs. a driver of flavor. The vanilla is there with just the right intensity, not too weak nor strong. The shocking part is the finish of this beer, having a very intense chocolate fudge/cake flavor. It’s incredibly decedent and is the first RIS that I honestly consider “chewy” in mouthfeel being so rich and viscous. More chocolate/fudge than I have ever had in any big stout, completely unexpected.

Completely jet black in appearance, it looks like used motor oil in a glass. No booze heat at all for the 12.1% ABV. My buddy said its downright dangerous just how well the alcohol is hidden in this beer and I agree completely. It came out different than I had expected in the final flavor profile, but in a good way. It’s unlike anything I have had before. A killer dessert beer!

I plan to take this beer off tap for a few weeks until my other porter kicks, but I am so happy this beer being so expensive and time consuming to make (for what I typically do) ended up so awesome.

 

On Sunday I brewed for the first time since March, it was a lot of fun and of course I made some stupid rookie mistakes. It was also the first real rainfall of the year so I collected 4 gallons of rainwater for 1/2 of my strike water. Our rural co-op water is extremely hard so this will be interesting. The beer is a basic rye IPA using Northern Brewer(I had an open bag I needed to use up). And I may dry hop it with my homegrown Cascades..

 

It's stories like this that inspire me to keep trying to make better beer, and upgrade equipment / move into all grain. This, and my love for good beer (and all things food and beverage for that matter).

 

Only my second month into serious homebrewing...loving it.

Just bottled an american porter conditioned on cacao nibs and french oak chips.

In secondary:
- saison hopped with UK ekg and Styrian Goldings and used danstar belle saison yeast. OG: 1.054
- american ipa hopped with simcoe, amarillo and citra. OG: 1.064 (dry hopped it smells incredible)

In primary
- a mosaic double ipa brewed with mostly mosaic hops, flaked wheat and wlp 001. going for that big, hazy and juicy NE double ipa. (OG was 1.094!!)

 

After three weeks in the fermenter, this week I bottled up the Belgian Strong Dark Ale that some of the pros helped me smooth out in this thread: https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/belgian-strong-dark-ale-recipes.437909/

The attenuation was higher than expected as the FG finished out at 1.020. Brewer's Friend calculated FG at 1.026, so I'm not sure what happened there. It has a bit of heat at 10.5% ABV. I drank the last 20 or so ounces that were left at the bottom of the bottling bucket, and I was definitely feeling it. I'm planning to let that one sit in the bottle for a few months so that it'll make a nice cold weather brew.

 

As long as the heat dies down, the higher attenuation is a good thing with a BSDA. The OG on them is supposed to be in the 1.010-1.020 range IIRC.

 

Brewer's Friend doesn't consider the differences in fermentability due to grain bills and mash length.

 

Oatmeal Stout today. Haven't brewed anything really roasty in a while.

 

Welcome to the obsession!

Just out of curiosity, was the porter your first brew? It would only seem appropriate given the last name! I wonder how many Browns, Flanders and Schwarz home brewers' first beers were influenced by their surnames. Destiny or choice?