November homebrewing

Ha, me too for the imperial stout, debating the wood-aged category or specialty category due to the vanilla being added. Unfortunately my lambic OG was 1.055, not high enough for that competition.

 

Brewday was going smoothly, so I ended up cleaning 5 kegs, and on a whim kegged a RR Temptation Clone that is about 17 months old. Had been putting off bottling it for far too long, so decided to go a different route. Smelled great and can't wait for it to be carbed up.

 

Beautiful morning and brew day so far. Starting the mash for my New Zealand IPA.

 

Moved oatmeal milk stout to keg at FG of 1.030. Nice to see it go that low; was afraid I'd finish at around 1.040 due to heavy lactose addition. Sample was delicious, can't wait.




Cleaned carboy and empty keg then flushed beer lines. Need to get a better system going for cleaning. Hard work...or I'm just getting old.

Picked up ingredients for next batch - English Pale Ale (Tom Thorpe's gold medal recipe from Zymurgy). I wanted to go all Nelson (3.55g) but the LHBS only had 3oz so I snagged those and plan on using .55 - 1.00g of unopened mosaic I had. Not sure where in the process to add the Mosaic - 60min, FO, dry, mix a little at each phase? Happy to have most of this be Nelson though as I really want the Nelson to shine through.

Currently looking for a Saison recipe. Busy. Fun. And NERAX North is in a few days. It's the best.

 

November will be be busy for me!!

> Bottle conditioning Averagely Perfect American Stout in my *NEWLY BUILT* fermenting chamber.

>Just put an order in at the LHBS to make 4 batches: a not very pale IPA W/ 100% Belma hops, "Your Father's Mustache" from Palmer's book (1st attempt at a Lager), a Belgian Dark Strong Ale, and an Old Rasputin clone.

It may carry on into December!

 

Brewed my ginger bread (nut brown ale) and added molasses and spices. Hit numbers right on the money, 5.5 gallons 1.073 OG. Also kegged @VikeMan cocoa banana stout. Tasted great going into the keg.

 

Checked gravity on my first barleywine. Went from 1.10ish to 1.018 in a week. The sample tastes great, although you can detect the booze (~11% ABV). I fermented with WY1968 at 66 for a day then gradually ramped it up to 70 over a week. Surprisingly, I detect no diacetyl after fermenting. Chalk another great fermentation up to oxygenating wort, pitching a proper cell count, and temperature control.

 

This weekend I brewed up a SMaSH IPA with Marris Otter and Pacific Gem, dry hopped a wheat and rye session IPA and added cacao nibs, toasted coconut and a vanilla tincture to an imperial porter for an upcoming comp. I'll also be brewing the BYO clone for Double Sunshine either tomorrow or Tuesday since I have a couple of days off, along with installing a new 4 way distributor in my 4 keg clean beer kegerator and installing the 3 way distributor I'm taking off of that kegerator into my 3 keg brett/sour/wild kegerator.

 

Brewed my Christmas Ale this afternoon. First attempt at partial mash/BIAB and it could have gone worse. I used C120, Dark Chocolate, Extra Special with a hint of carapils so even if it didn't convert well it shouldn't matter too much. Added 4oz of Mulled Spice @3min to give it that Christmas feel. Little bit stronger smell than I anticipated.

 

I was trying to decide whether I wanted to brew an imperial smoked stout or a Black Tuesday style stout for my next strong ale. Then I thought, what if I did a 16-18% smoked stout... @stealth how do you think some smoked malt would work in the None More Black recipe?

 

Checked my Chocolate Vanilla Porter's SG, came out around 1.018 (expected is 1.017) will rack to secondary and put the vanilla beans in on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Went to the LHBS today to get ingredients for my Brown, the guy in front of me took the last .5lb of Carafa II..... did a sub of chocolate malt. Just finished filling the tub to cool it off. Will have OG in about an hour.

 

I not too partial to smoked brews, but I bet it would be tasty. NMB tends to run on the sweet side like big abv stouts do, and smoke tends to pair well with that.

 

Can't seem to find the edit button so quoting my self here for the update:
First off: my Brown came in right at it's numbers. OG of 1.052.
Second: went to enter my numbers in the CVP in Brewcipher and noticed an error in a grain amount (makes me wonder how I got the right ingredients) but actually ended up spot on for both OG and FG where I thought my OG was .01 low.

 

Kegged the 8th iteration of my NEIPA. While I'm a bit bored with this style, I'm trying to hone my ability to repeat results.

Started with 6 gal. using 1318 @ 65*F. Dry hopped in the conical @ 5 days with 2 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Simcoe, 2 oz. Mosaic. Dry hopped 5 gal. in the keg w/ same amount as above.

Storing at room temp (~72*F) for the next 5 days, then moving to the keezer and force carbing.

Also made use of the CIP system for the conical... love being able to enjoy a beer while cleaning .

 

Bottled 10 liter Galaxy IPA





and soon setting a starter that will be some sort of smoked beer for tomorrow

 

Kegged my Schwarzbier this weekend and got a yeast starter going on my WLP002 for a bitter-type beer to be brewed on Wednesday.

 

Kegging a coffee porter this week and saving some WLP013 slurry to pitch in a barleywine this weekend.
The barleywine will be 2 row with some C60, Special B, and Victory. Hops will be Nugget and Centennial. Should be about 9% abv when it's done.

 

Brewing a 3 gal batch of what I'm calling a "Belgian Bitter". It's primarily English ingredients with a Belgian yeast (WY3787). Afterwards the yeast cake will be re-used for a Belgian Quad I'll brew in a few weeks. Said Quad may or may not get some Brett added to it, I haven't decided yet. And/ or possibly some sort of spirit soaked oak cubes.

 

Bottled my take on the APNEIPA on Saturday. I added half a pound of cane sugar, 5ml of CTZ hop resin at 60 mins, and used southern hemisphere hops, but otherwise brewed the recipe more or less as is.

Now I'm taking a short break from brewing to save some money and drink up my stockpile. Nothing in the fermenter at the moment, but I picked up a dedicated beer fridge on Craigslist. Turns out the condenser fan is about dead, so my next homebrewing project has presented itself.