January brewing and doings

Just racked my oatmeal stout to the secondary over whiskey soaked oak cubes. Lots of coffe and roasted malts going on, hope to add another dimension with the wood and whiskey.

Cheers

 

Gravity reading on my cream ale... At 1.011 from 1.050, dropped another two points from my last check two days ago.

Kegged my Pilsner and currently at 32F for a few weeks of conditioning.

 

This past week I kegged a wheat DIPA version of my house IPA and a Chinook single hop IPA and I brewed a Hop Hash NE IPA today. Started keg hopping lately and it's still up for debate if I'll stick with it or go back to normal dry hopping...seems like it takes too long to get up to the level of hoppiness I usually get with dry hopping, but once there, I like it a little better than traditional dry hopping.

 

Went a bit crazy and finally purchased some equipment upgrades I've been eyeballing for a bit. New SS kettle, SS brew bucket, Hellfire burner, and a Jaded Hydra immersion cooler. Now the SS mash tun would look nice in the group......

 

I brewed a 10 gallon batch of a hoppy imperial brown ale a couple weeks ago and yesterday I dry hopped one fermenter with 3 ounces of centennial and to the other fermenter I added 8 oz. of medium toast french oak chips, 4 cinnamon sticks and 1/2 pound of maple toasted coconut that had all been soaking in some George Dickel Sour Mash Tennessee whisky

 

Okay last one for January (I think) brewed a Saison this morning. Went well, hit 82% efficiency which is good for me. I usually shoot for 72-75 on my equipment but my oatmeal stout I made a couple weeks back I was down around 68% I made this same beer last spring and it was good. A lot of Apple skin and what not, a little silkier mouthfeel to it using 3711. Thinking this time about throwing it on some fruit (Pear or peach). We will see.

Happy brewing BAs

 

Brewed a simple blonde (90% 2row and 10% oats) using summit hops and WLP007. Never used summit before and I've heard mixed reviews. Hopefully I get the tangerine flavor people have described and not the onion flavor.

 

Transferred 10 of 15 gallons of my None More Sessionable 13.2% stout into the barrel the other night. Going to dump the last 5 gallons into it this evening in a few. Excited to get the home barrel program under way, lol.

 

A small sample of Sunturnbrew before bottling



OG: 1.106, 25% peated malt
eaten 5 gravity points last week

 

Had a great brew day over the weekend with my 14-year old daughter. We were ambitious and made 10gal of NEIPA wort that we split into two 5gal kettles. Hopped one with Amarillo-Centennial-Citra, the other with Bravo-Citra-Ekuanot. Both fermenting with 1318.

She at least gave the appearance of having fun and was a huge help with crushing the grains (with my new grain mill xmas present), weighing out all of the different hop additions, mashing-in, sparging, and adding hop charges to the kettles. We hit all of our projected gravity numbers exactly!

Both beers are happily bubbling away in the cellar and it smells amazing. Good times!

 

Living life on the edge there with that gravity sample

 

Initially I wanted to ask you, "What the fuck are you doing to that beer." Then, I paused. For science. "Where's the bubble wrap?"

 

Sadly, I haven't been able to brew in months, but my first attempt at brewing a dubbel took place yesterday. Looking forward to brewing more in 2017 and seeing how this one turns out. Planning to transfer a gallon of it onto some rum soaked cherries...you know, for science.

 

I brewed my first 3 beers of the year starting with my Inaugural Porter. I then brewed a Pale ale followed by a citra IPA. Trying kegging for the first time as well and wondering if there are any tricks I need to know of. I also got a Last straw bottler and it worked pretty well but after 5 days of force carbonating it really wasn't all that carbonated. Wondering if I need to up the CO2 or leave in longer. Today it will be 7 days at about 20psi. Cheers to a new year of great brews!

 

I've only kegged a handful of times but I've had good success on stouts and a porter force carbing @ 30 psi for 2-3 days for what it's worth.

 

Thanks bud I appreciate it!

 

10 gal Cascade Citra Centennial IPA brewed a few weekends ago should be solid. 5 got us5 3 oz centennial 3 oz Citra. Other 5 got Conan citrus blend 1 oz Citra 4 oz cascade and 1.5 oz Vic secret. Trying to use up last years hops and couldn't pass up the 5$ lb of cascade when I was getting fresh hops from yvh

 

Just got done adding dry hop charge #1 to both of these batches and took a sample for SG. Both are at ~1.032, which is right where they should be at this point.

Both samples smelled and tasted incredible!!! Especially the Citra-Bravo-Ekuanot one. It's without a doubt the strongest mid-ferment tasting sample (in a good way) I've ever experienced out of all the NEIPAs I've brewed so far. Loads of orange/tangerine, ruby red grapefruit, pineapple, and maybe a bit of mango/apricot mixed in for good measure. Cautious excitement!!!!

Cheers!

 

From my experience it will take > 2 weeks at serving pressure to approximate appropriate carbonation. It will be drinkable if upping the pressure for a quick carb (40/25/15/serving) over 3 days, but a full 2 weeks carb is hard to duplicate. Porters tend to taste better early, imho because they are usually lower carbed. Welcome to kegging...it is definitely all it's cracked up to be.

 

Just bottled my stout. came in right where it should. sample tasted great!