Brewing Activities (2019)

I’ve never done one and have never had diacetyl. Pitch enough healthy yeast and provide the with enough O2 and you never need to ramp the temp. If treated well lager yeast can clean up after themselves all the way down to 32.

 

Thought you said you'd never done a true lager before, though?

 

A true lager fermentation in the sense that it’s stepped DOWN at a specific attenuation, not stepped up and then krausened when transferring into lagering vessel (a keg in this case). I usually just let it ferment out at 48-52 depending on the strain.

 

Word, gotcha.

 

Finally got around to motorizing my ancient Schmidling Maltmill. I built it with little rubber feet on the bottom to hold it steady on the buckets when in use. I wanted it to be portable, but man, the whole thing together is kind of heavy. If it turns out I don't like that, I left room on the perimeter to build a frame/legs. The yellow gasket (cut from flexible kitchen cutting boards, actually three layers) under the mill raises it just enough to align the mill's shaft with the motor's.

 

Brewing up another gluten free Saison tomorrow that will eventually sit on a blend of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. M29 yeast. These fruited Saisons have been very successful!

 

@videofrog Please let us know how that yeast is!

Sampled a recently bottled prickly pear sour. I picked, peeled, and smashed before freezing about 10 pounds of the tunas. Added after primary to an all pale 2-row with Belle Saison with L. plantarum. It's better than I ever expected, a "red" flavor similar to Swedish fish. I expected it to be light on flavor, the fruit by itself is pretty bland. But this is packed with flavor! Will brew this again for sure.

 

I'll keg this today. FG 1.012.Slightly lighter amber color than the copper I was going for, which can be attributed to the uncertain SRM of the homemade invert syrup. Hydrometer sample shows slickness from the rye. There are herbal, earthy, and stonefruit notes, which I think are the pekko/cascade hop combo, the sizable % of rye malt, and London ESB yeast, respectively. There is also a somewhat distracting astringency I attribute to the braun hefe particulates at the top of the fermenter where I drew the sample from. The beer will need time in the keg to brighten up and allow some of that to settle out, but once it does, I think I'll call this a success.

 

It’s been cold, and time has been limited so I brewed up another stovetop extract recipe - an imperial stout, that’s been fermenting up a storm with S04 these past few days. Plan to age on bourbon oak cubes for a few months before kegging. After years of all-grain brewing, these extract kits have been a breeze, and are turning out fantastic.

Next up in the pipeline will be a no-boil berliner weisse dry hopped with 4-5 oz Azacca.

Early December I’ll be brewing 11 gal of 1.05ish saison wort, hopped with Denali to around 30 IBU, and split between hornindal and simonaitis strains. Really gonna try and stress the hell out of these yeasts and only pitch around 2 tsp per batch. Recent Kveiks I’ve brewed have been great, but I’ve always pitched sufficient starters. Not this time!

 

First go at a milk stout for me tonight!

 

Batch 5 of a Hoppy Pils yesterday. Had been going down the road of more Noble oriented hops but recently had some Timbo from Highland Park and was floored by it. The best Citra + Mosiac beer I’ve ever had and it was a pils. Supposedly it’s all Noble hops hotside and Citra+Mosaic DH. I generally despise that combo but Timbo was amazing. I understand why it won GABF gold.

Ereclea Pils/Carafoam/Acid
Magnum/Saphir hotside
Cashmere/Loral DH maybe
Super high efficiency 1.052 OG
TYB Hessian Pils
Ended up doing a single Decoction on it too
Fermenting away nicely at 45

Hazy/Bitter IPA of sorts today. Modeled after the more modern WC IPAs with a little more haze and a little less bitterness.

Rahr 2 Row/Carahell/Carafoam/Acid
Dextrose
Amarillo + Warrior @ 20
HBC692 @ 5
Amarillo/Columbus in Hopback
DH mostly 692 + Amarillo cryo maybe
Bell’s Yeast
Hopefully 1.066 and 7.2%

 

Timbo is maybe my favorite beer and the main reason why I love HPB so much.

 

fwiw Bob gave this recipe to Craft Beer & Brewing: https://beerandbrewing.com/highland-park-brewery-socal-pils-recipe/

No hot side hops, all knockout and DH. All Citra (or whatever combo they're using at the time).

I emailed them before this got posted and they gave me basically the same info.

 

Cleaning out the grain box so i threw a quick recipe together. Not even sure what to call it.

 

Interesting. The beer I had on tap at the China Town location didn’t taste like it had a huge whirlpool addition. It actually had very little hop flavor but the aroma was mind blowing. Never had that combo not stink. It was crazy floral/fruit. The cans I grabbed while good more closely resemble the beer in the recipe with considerably more hop flavor, which honestly I don’t really want. Could be just my palate or some other influence but I swear they were different.

I guess I took a little influence from the recent Schell’s CB&B podcast where the brewer talked about their latest Pilsner recipe. Large mid boil charge of Noble then whirlpool and actually a day 1 DH addition..

 

Bottleing spruce ale and Burton light.

 

Yeah, they've been doing a ton of pilsners lately. Pleasant Pils is also very good and sounds more like what you're describing.

And yeah, the aroma on Timbo is the craziest part. Pretty mindblowing.

 

Late post: Brewed a West Coast Red Imperial IPA this past weekend. Here are the steaming remains of the process.

 

Hmmm. No pic here.

 

Image doesn't display for me, either.
You said "streaming". Does that require using the media insert tool?