Brewing Activities? (March Edition)

I feel stupid. Just checked the keg today and all the sludge and hop material pretty much at the bottom. Just took a few days longer than I thought plus me pouring out a few cups. Looks dark cause of the lighting but I'm not trying to lie to myself or you guys and add filters like some jabrobies. Was pilsner, very little Munich, flaked wheat, oats, c10. Not really a New England IPA now that I think about it. More hazy unfiltered cause it's got a nice bitterness and definitely some dankness which I prefer. So happy that the hop and trub dropped finally. Thanks for talking me off he ledge of being dramatic.

 

Looks tasty! Glad it all worked out and you didn't dump it.

 

Kegged a Rye Brett NE DIPA and then reused the Omega Where Da Funk (4th generation) cake for a Red Brett NE DIPA I brewed this morning with a bunch of Summit, Centennial and local leaf Cascade from last year...smelled delicious going into the fermenter!

Cheers!

 

Just started a 70 minute boil on a Amarillo wheat 60% cmc pilsner 40% rahr wheat. Amarillo and us-05

 

Today I found my LHBS can get me Weyermannn Barke Pils, a 55# sack for $60. Better than the prices I can find online, not even including shipping. Excited to try that malt out in some future brews.

 

• Cream ale kegged. ReCombined the S-05 and K-97 half batches. Didn't feel there was enough distinction here to merit the footprint of two kegs in my keezer. Did I mention that I wish I went with a bigger keezer?
• Tropical pale ale brewed, pitched Sacch trois. Went with cascade whirlpool and will dry hop citra mosaic. 30% of the wort had been pre-soured with goodbelly. 1.047 hydrometer sample seems pleasant.
• Hydrometer/tasting sample of old ale with Brett c.. Down to 1.013 and tasting pretty good. There is a spicy, leathery thing going on, feeling pretty harmonious with residual sugars. Thinking about bottling, because it tastes great, but am a little worried about bottling a brett beer with this much remaining gravity and sweetness. Minimally, I guess I should wait a bit and try another gravity check.

Feeling good about all of these beers, in their different stages. Not feeling so good about the crap-ton of cleanup I ought to be doing right now.

 

Not really a Brewing Activity per se, but working on a step infusion calculator for BrewCipher.

 

Bottled imperial porter. Really smooth chocolatey roast, but the Merkur that had been kicking around in the freezer for a few years didn't lose as much AAs as I thought, so its a little more bitter than ideal. Oh well, it's intended for next fall/winter anyhow.

 

Just did up my next Imperial stout. Thought the day was going good until I got the wort from my tun to my kettle and had what looked like about .75 gallons too much... Figured I would just add half an hour to my boil. In the end, had just under 6 gallons, was shooting for about 5.25 in the bucket.... Not sure where I mis counted or did bad math, but this will be interesting. Made a mad dash to the store and grabbed a bottle of anti-foamer and gave it an extra amount, might need another one tomorrow just to be safe as there really is very little head space....

 

Brewed a maple maple pale, or that is 7 gallons maple sap, 8 lbs marris otter, .5 lbs L10 and.5 lbs Belgian buisket malt. 4 oz maple wood in secondary. Should call it mighty. Maple

 

Brewed up my new German Pils today. OG of 1.045.

Halltertau Magnum, Mittelfruh, Tettnanger and Spalt. Approx 35 IBU.

Went real smooth today, with brilliant clarity into the fermenter. Fermenting away at 48F!

 

Last weekend:

100% brett blend blonde ale with lemon verbena, will sit on 15 lbs blueberry for 8 weeks. 6.4% abv.

Next weekend:

Oatmilk Stout w/ coffee. Plan is for 15% fermentables to be oat milk, 10% flaked Oats, a bunch of other dark malts, English yeast, and then will condition 48 hrs on coffee blend of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Columbian Huila beans. 6.5% abv.

 

Bottled my POG sour, and brewed my beer with kveik. I boiled for 3 hours to go from 9 gallons down to 5 1/2 or so. Very dark and caramelly. The yeast is nuts. I pulled a quart of wort out and cooled to 100 and pitched the teaspoon of yeast, after 2 hours there was already a krausen! I pitched at 102 and wrapped it up in blankets in my 80 degree garage, and after only 4 hours it was blowing my airlock dry and smelled like a fresh sliced sweet orange!! Pumped!

 

Hydrometer check-in on my mixed fermentation sour pale ale. Down from 1.047 to 1.012.

To recap, I exposed part of 1.5 gallons extract-based wort to Lacto plantarum for 3 days in mason jars, then boiled as one would if canning, to stop souring. 1 week later, added to the boil of a different wort (40% Vienna, 40% pils, 6.7% each flaked wheat, flaked oats, and carahell). Whirlpooled 3 oz of cascade at 180F for 20 min. Pitched Imperial Organic Citrus (no starter) into ~4.5 gallons of wort.

Sure, it is juice-like in appearance, and is noticeably tart but not in your face sour. Pretty dry. I was hoping for a bit more residual sweetness. Can't say it is very reminiscent of any cascade hopped beer I have had. Perhaps the lactic alters hop perceptions? Will dry hop with mosaic and citra and see how that goes.

 

Update on my LODO experience…So not really a "brewing and doing" but more of a status of techniques. Didn't want to create a new topic for it, so I thought this would be a good place to drop it.

For the past 4 brews currently on tap or gone already (IPA, Czech Pils, Kolsch, IPL), and two currently in the pipeline (Festbier and German Pils) - I followed the LODO practices as best as possible. Including but not limited to:

1. Pre-boil, quick chill, treat mash water with SMB at 25ppm during chill

2. Mill grain right before use. Grain is purged with CO2 prior to mash in.

3. Underlet into mash tun and utilize a mash-cap.

4. No splashing during transfers. Ensure tight fittings. Minimize any O2 ingestion.

5. Sparge water treated same as mash water with pre-boil, chill and SMB (Batch sparge).

6. Kettle 80% covered during boil at approx. 10% boil off rate

7. Drop kettle pH down to 5.1 near end of boil

8. Post-boil, quickly chilled with SST chiller down to yeast pitch temps.

9. Allow trub to drop to avoid carrying over into fermenter, transfer beer onto yeast already in fermenter. Fermentation starts very quickly, practically immediately by pitching large, active yeast starter (decanted of all oxidized starter wort).

10. Ferment at 48F with no temp rise at all. Fermenting in SST fermenter (no plastic).

11. Near FG, rack into purged spunding keg. Allow to finish carbonating and then chilled to 30-32F for a few weeks if a lager. For the IPA, I added a bio trans hopping at day 2 of fermentation and then put my remaining dry hop in the keg in a hop screen, which was purged with CO2 prior to racking the beer into it before the beer was at FG.


In my experience, so far…

1.) Wort tastes great (as always), don’t really notice anything special about the quality of the wort at this stage. I’m sure people will claim I must being doing something wrong as I don’t get the “magic” flavors, but honestly, it’s good as it has always been. Perhaps it’s more intense or something like that, but I don’t notice?

2.) Color of the wort? I personally don’t notice it being any lighter than my beers prior. Perhaps I was careful enough already, but I have yet to be shocked at wort being lighter than expected.

3.) Foam quality is good, it is more “whippy” with finer bubbles and great head retention. This is something that has shown improvement likely due to the spunding and natural carbonation.

4.) Finished beer quality is fantastic, however, I do not notice any significant flavor improvements over what I was always doing before adopting all these LODO techniques. I feel the quality of my beers before and after LODO are not drastically different. But again, I am only a few batches in and continue to refine my processes and such.


I will continue to do my beers with the LODO methods, as I am not giving up on it and think any O2 reduction is beneficial of course… I just don’t get the night/day difference as one is constantly led to believe based on my experience so far. I still am tweaking my process to improve even further, so I will update after a few more attempts to see if my experience changes any. Always room to improve, so I am after it.

 

Somewhat of an interesting development today, for me anyway. After being away from brewing for 6 months due to injury, I decided to ease back in with a fairly straightforward Mosaic/Columbus IPA. My LHBS was out of 1056 (didn't know was possible) so I took a flyer on Northwest Ale 1332, knowing it had English origins, but having never brewed with it.

Pale Malt 90%
White Wheat Malt 10%

Mash @ 151F

1.064 SG

Mosaic/Columbus @ 60
Mosaic/Columbus @10

Whirlfloc @ 10

Mosaic/Columbus steep @ 170F for 15 min

Fermentation at 66F

Mosaic/Columbus DH on day 14 at 1.012 for 5 days

I take another gravity reading today (after 5 day dry hop) and she's still at 1.012, so I transfer to the keg.

I certainly wasn't expecting a totally clear beer, but also wasn't necessarily expecting the haze as it was my intention to dry hop after fermentation was complete. It definitely has a fruity ester to it that would compliment a NEIPA. I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops over the next couple weeks and noting how the appearance holds up. Anyone have experience with IPAs using WY1332?

Pic of the keg sample from today.

 

Just dry hopped an American Barleywine that’s been in secondary for 6 months with a shit load of Simcoe, Citra and Amarillo, same DH combo as the bittering hops.

Also moved my RIS to a purged keg to age on some oak barrel pieces. Doesn’t say it on the label but the description on the website said the barrels first fill was Jack Daniels before being sold to Appleton Estate to hold rum for years.

 

Just kegged a DIPA after a sizable dry hop of Amarillo and Mosaic. The plan was Citra and Mosaic but the lhbs can’t keep Citra in stock. First time combining Amarillo with Mosaic and the sample smells wonderful.

 

Decided to reduce my keezer temp from 40F to 38F, as my pipeline will be full of light lagers for summer (and beyond!). Plus, prefer to start cooler and allow to warm up as well. So I have been adjusting all my pressure and such for the new temp.

Also, I typically use about 2ft Bev Seal Ultra line to my flow control faucets. Decided to try throwing a 16ft line on my Berliner to see if I get any improvement in pouring. It's not bad with the flow control as is, just seeing if it gets better.

 

Looks awesome - how many oz of hops are in there? 5 gallons? Did you do starter for the yeast?