Brewing Activities (2020)

Brewed an English Bitter yesterday. Hit my anticipated OG of 1.042. Only negative was some scorching at the bottom of the kettle that I didn't notice until cleaning. On the bright side, my puppy enjoyed her first brew day!

 

@MrOH @OddNotion i found Jovaru to be a little boring. I expected much more expressive yeast flavors. I’d push it to the top of the yeast limit. Normally I save liquid yeast for another brew since it’s more expensive and I didn’t even bother

 

@videofrog cool lookin dog

 

From what I've read, Jovaru is naturally a bit less expressive than a tradition Saison yeast, which is kinda what I was hoping for. I underpitched, and am keeping it at 70 ambient, so I'm thinking that'd be about what I'm going for in this beer (saison, but with smaller yeast contribution, fair amount of pseudo-noble hops to make it a lawnmower beer for a hophead). I have a pretty good idea of the malt and hop contributions on this beer (I've done the exact same before with Belle Saison), so I'll be well positioned to see what Jovaru is about.

 

@MrOH if that’s what you are going for it should do the trick.

 

I was drunk last night but I brewed the “All in this together” IPA didn’t have some of the hops so I did El Dorado, Galaxy, Simcoe. I did follow all the water and grain bill so I think that will work and may be even better.

 

Starting up my Kolsch at the moment and placed a nice order with MoreBeer with about 95lbs of malt (55# sack of weyermann pils, 10# vienna, 10# both munich light and dark and other specialty cara and roast malts). Plus some lager yeast, 2oz of cryo hops to try for keg hopping on my next IPA and some misc. supplies. Morebeer is awesome, only $24 shipping for everything!

 

Yes, another Drunkin Brewer series. Excellent.

 

Transferred by Simcoe/Amarillo/Centennial IPA to my dry hop keg last night. Pretty happy with the samples. Stupid human error though. I have a nifty closed loop setup for my SS BrewBucket. I cleaned all the disconnects prior to transfer. Hook everything up and let it rip. When it was done, I realized the o-ring for the liquid disconnect fell out before I screwed the top back on (the one connecting the Brewbucket to the keg). So yeah... I guess we'll see how much O2 that let in. Pretty bummed about that.

 

Finally updated my brewing log sheet, so I’ve been putting together recipes for my next four beers (to fill my three empty and one nearly empty kegs):

(1) German Pils with Hallertaur Mitt. And Saaz hops, W-34/70 yeast,
(2) John Snow Pale Ale (see BA Homebrew Recipes) with Azacca subbed for the Citra, Notty instead of US-05,
(3) Tripled Hopped Lager Clone (Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook), recipe mostly based on reviews on BA,
(4) Upteenth installment of Reiff Bro’s. Brown (also see BA HB recipes).

Goal is to get all of these brewed with the next month.

Cheers!

 

This morning I brewed my first beer in over a year after 2 moves and 3 transfers. Easing in with an ESB extract brew.

Pale DME
Carastan
Medium Crystal
Kent Goldings
M36 Liberty Bell

Bubbling away nicely but turned out quite a bit darker than I expected.

 

Kolsch FFT was 1.008, fermenter at 1.024 this evening. Dropping 12 points per day, so should be moving this into the spund keg tomorrow night.

Soaking three Madagascar vanilla beans in some bourbon for an upcoming imperial stout I plan to do in a few weeks. Will also add a charred oak tincture and additional straight bourbon into the keg, a few ounces. Referencing a past stout I did just like this, so using my tasting notes to adjust my quantities, techniques and volumes of adjuncts.

Girlfriend got me a new 15 gallon kettle for my bday upcoming, which will enable me to get a 3hrs boil going on the stout, which has a 10 gallon preboil volume. Big beer! Expecting an ABV around 12-13% by design at least.

Also give me more kettle headspace when doing any beers, as my preboil is usually 8 to 8.5 gallon in my 10 gallon kettle. I do a bit more volume so I can keep my pickup tube above all the break material to get better, clearer wort into my fermenter. Especially for my lager.

Excited to try it out on my next brewday (My house German Pils).

 

Kegged my Hallertau Blanc/Huell Melon saison and it's tasting great but taking a while to drop clear. Not sure if that's a Belle thing or if I just kegged it sloppily and got a bunch of trub/yeast in there.

Brewed a quick pale ale with all HBC 431 on Tuesday. It's truckin' along.

 

Bottleing pale and ipa this weekend.

 

Made a "closed xfer" keg injector, for gelatin, tinctures, etc. Got the idea from another forum, where it looks like it might be an almost common thing. But since I don't recall ever seeing one here...

 

It's all go around here: bottled a bretted Imperial Stout (1914 Courage recipe) on Tuesday after about sixteen months off bulk aging. Bottled a straightforward sacch trois / simcoe table beer on Thursday. Today I'm brewing a sort of farmhouse-ish Belgian-ish table beer (pils, Vienna, rye, Saaz and Bastogne yeast), most of which is going to get transferred after primary into the carboy that was freed up by the RIS to spend some quality time with some more Brett.

Then relax.

 

@VikeMan super cool idea

 

That's a great idea!

 

Garlic butter, or Cajun spices? Mind your pressure or you could have a projectile!
But yes, that's a cool idea.