Brewing Activities (2021)

When I initially built the keezer I had plans to keep it clean and just put actual brewery stickers on the lid and keep the rest bare. I ending slapping beer labels on it in the process of de-labeling bottles for homebrew. I never really thought of it as a visual record of my beer consumption until you pointed it out, lol. With the gaudy stickers and a new beautiful side pull faucet, I thought of it as my version of a 97’ Toyota Camry with a million bumpers stickers and spinner rims.

 

Are you worried about the bag hitting the heating element? Thanks, going to give this a try next time.

 

Not at all, the bag is protected by the mash holder which is stainless steel.

 

I use a bag in mine without the malt pipe and have never had scorching issues. Works great.

 

Got a lot of fun stuff in the mail today and was able to assemble the parts to build an O2 purgeable hop dropper (a few pieces are currently in use so it's not fully assembled yet) and a bull dog to eventually pressure transfer from my new barrel to a keg. I also waxed the outside of my barrel today.

 

Where did you get the barrel transfer?

 

Drinking one of my new favorite WC IPAs while getting a starter ready for a Monday Lager brew day.

TGIF:

 

I got 2 of the pieces from NorCal Brewing Solutions, had the T on hand and got the stopper and ball lock on Amazon.

You can get the entire thing from NorCal too but seemed a bit over priced for the full assembly.

 

Brewing a gf IPA today. This is a regular in my rotation. Haven't brewed it in a while because I was out of american hops.

Biscuit Rice 4L
Caramel millet
Quinoa

Columbus @60
Simcoe @10
Centennial & Citra wp
Simcoe & Citra dh

US-05

 

Picking up the last ingredients for this years version of Maibock
Pilsner
Munich
Marris Otter (this years twist)
Hallertau
Hersbrucker
Munich yeast
Cheers
all

 

That's an awesome setup.

 

Just bottled a hoppy amber. I dialed back the hops (basically followed the recipe) so as not to make it a malty IPA. The carared was not a good substitute for the caramel 80º, and I don't like the sweetness it has imparted. I was going for a more caramelly and slightly hoppier beer and did not get there. It also came in at 8.4% ABV due to increased efficiency, so it missed the 6.6% mark.
Normally, when I make an IPA, the uncarbed beer out of the fermenter tastes amazing; this one no as much. I am hoping it greatly benefits from carbonation and being chilled.

 

I can get a pretty good selection of Sierra Nevada where I live (love Bigfoot), but I find that their advertising usually misses the mark: Tropical IPA, Fantastic Haze...
This one is great though.

 

If that entire difference was due to an increase in efficiency, that would be huge. Did you measure/are you sure about the actual final volume used to compute the efficiency? Or was there some change in your process?

 

After I posted this, I thought, 'this is not going to make sense as written'. I normally round up the grain bill by 10 - 20% to compensate for low efficiency. Now that I've rigged up a system to hang the brew bag and sparge through it, it looks like I can start following recipes more closely.

 

First and possibly last lager of the year as I almost always do ales etc. Just kept it very simple.

100% Crisp German Pils
Roughly 35 IBUs of Challenger and hallertau mittelfruh (homegrown), with a bit of late HM.
34/70 pitched at 10c after rehydrating and attemporating it
step mash, 64c 73c . Didn;'t get the normal clarity I do out of the mash annoyingly, but got good extraction
1.049 OG

Was rather cold today so at least I got it cooled quickly.

 

YVH? Lots of those in my freezer. Check back with your favorites! I remember Barbe Rouge being a bit earthy out of the bag. Just threw in some Enigma on a WC with Nelson and H. Blanc.

 

Awesome, just got enough for a single hop HBC 630 brew. Have you tried 586 yet? I got lots of pepper out of the bag, thankfully it didn't translate to the beer, it remained pretty fruity generally.