Brewing Activities (2020)

Yea I actually ended up with around 11 gal on this batch, so 5.5 gal into each fermenter. I just brewed it yesterday so haven't done any sort of coffee addition to it yet. I plan on doing a quick dip of the espresso beans in star san, and then throwing them straight into the primary fermenter like dry hops. From what I've read, whole beaning makes it easy to rack off of, they lend a smoother coffee flavor than ground, and it seems a lot simpler than adding ground coffee to a strainer bag and hanging it in the fermenter. BUT, I've never done this before, so I'm just going off my own research! No secondary. I'll just taste it between 24-48 hours to see how the flavor is coming along and then bottle from there.

My cooler tun is the standard 10 gal IGLOO cooler. Surprisingly, I was able to fit 6.5 gal of water, and 26 lb of grain into it! I saved some of my pale malt, and the oats just in case I ran out of room. So a pretty thick water/grain ratio of .25 gal per pound.

 

Brewing a porter- I’ve been meaning to give this one a go for a while:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...atmeal-porter-robust-porter-all-grain.248363/
posted by @honkey .
I had to modify a few things due to LHBS availability and I wanted to scale back the crystal malts a little.

 

Follow-up on this -- the Saison/Wine hybrid bottles -- I called it Gamaison -- were fantastic. Great cloudy pink color, nice tannins from the grapes, plenty tangy from the Saison yeast. Had too much fun drinking them to take pictures, unfortunately.

Still, for any of you who do double-duty making wine and beer, I recommend the style mix!

 

Post a pic!

 

Transferred my Barleywine (11.3%abv) to two separate 1 gallon fermentors. One with a bourbon soaked oak spiral, the other with sherry and madeira soaked spirals. Planning on letting them rest in the basement for 5-6 month's and blending in the future.

Dry hopped my hoppy blonde with Citra/Simcoe/Pacific Jade. Kegging this weekend. Smelling goooooood.

 

@honkey I also have a question, he used a % of crystal II and he says it was all Thomas Fawcett malts. I can’t find this ?

 

There's two TF Crystal II, Crystal II and Dark Crystal II:
https://www.mdhb.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_27_38&products_id=453

Just to add to the confusion

 

Bottled Pumpernickel Saison yesterday; I think I'll have to just call it an Amber Rye Saison, as I don't think I'll be able to get anymore color into it without it getting too roasty. Other than that, exactly what I was going for- Bready, earthy, spicy, with a hint of cocoa. We'll see once it carbs up.

Batch of cider with local raw cider and BE-134 today.

 

Just wanted to post a pick from the White Labs kitchen and tap. Kid in a candy store

 

I just bought a whole lot of Mosaic and Wai-iti. Has anyone ever used these together? I was thinking of doing something simple to see how they do as a duo. I've done a Maris Otter & Mosaic SMaSH before and I really liked it, so I'll probably just add Wai-iti to that. Somewhere around ~6% and 40ibus. Thoughts?

What kind of candy did you go with? Or maybe the better question is: how much more did you spend than you meant to?

 

Brewing my first stout today, a 2.5 gallon batch with:

7.5 pounds Pale
2 pounds chocolate malt
1 pound dark choc.
1 pound crystal
1 pound roasted barley
1 pound oats

I don't know if this malt blend is 'too dark'. Most seem to aim for 70% pale malt and this one is closer to 60 (weights are rounded from kilos/grams). I will be using 3/4 ounce of Magnum hops, and later will add bourbon-soaked cocoa nibs and vanilla beans.
It is supposed to finish at 10% ABV.

Last night I tried my first cranberry saison, made with powdered cranberry. As Murphy's law would have it, at the Costco that just went up outside Madrid they now have fresh cranberries. The color is nice, kind of like a rosé wine (like I was hoping). I am a little disappointed with the amount of sediment in the bottle (which is an ongoing problem I have to work on). I used whirfloc for the first time, and it's fairly clear if you pour it carefully. However, the powdered cranberry, added to the fermenter, rehydrated enough to leave tiny chunks and seeds. I will try to post a photo to the original post where I asked about using powdered fruit.

 

Gluten free IPA brew day:

Biscuit Rice 4L
Quinoa
Roasted Goldfinch Millet
Columbus
Apollo
Simcoe
Bry-97

Also dry hopping a NEIPA with Mosaic & El Dorado.

 

That is going to be a very roasty stout, but should be good. If you haven't already mixed the grains together, you may want to keep the chocolate, dark chocolate, and roasted barley separate from the rest of the grist, and add them once you start to vorlauf. It will help to keep it from being too harsh/acrid.

Try putting a sanitized nylon paint strainer bag over your racking cane/auto-siphon to keep chunks out of the bottling bucket and eventually bottles.

 

Yes, that is a lot of dark roasted grains. Whether it's too much is up to you.

 

I will make a note of this when I can upgrade my equipment. Right now, I'm doing BIAB.

Thanks.

 

A petite saison today

75% Crisp extra Pale
25% Weyerman Munich 1
28IBU Hallertau mittelfruh@60 mins
another 5 IBU or so @15mins
OYL-042
og 1.041

I do have some brett C which I will either bottle with this or make a bigger saison with the yeast cake and pitch it with that. Not decided yet