Brewing Activities (2021)

Kegged a Dark Mild today. Here's the end-of-racking sample.

 

Big batch of cream ale brewed yesterday. I don’t think I’ve ever fermented US-05 this low (58ish) but it’s chugging along nicely. Will probably ramp it up to 66F or so as things begin to slow down. This one is sure to be a dad-pleaser beer!

 

Kegged Comet pale ale and passivated my new 14 gallon crucible fermenter by anvil. This thing is great for the price.

 

Extract saison w/ sansho and orange zest

 

Whole hop ipa today

 

I pulled hydrometer / initial test samples on this:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/brewing-activities-2021.653042/page-8#post-7197605

The experiment was Lallemand Munich vs. Lallemand Munich Classic. I was disappointed with Fermentis WB6 years ago and swore I never would use dry yeast for Weissbier again. But I think I am a better brewer now, and willing to concede that the fault of the previous beer may have been mine and not the yeast. So, I am revisiting weissbier dry yeast.

It struck me as curious that Lallemand puts out two different dry yeasts for this style, so decided to split the batch. Each 2.75 gallon portions of wort received 1 full packet of yeast. The yeast pitches occurred at 70 degrees F but the beer mostly fermented closer to 62-64 degrees F. I was going for a lower gravity beer here, with OG of 1.043.

Munich Classic finished at 1.008 and Munich finished at 1.006. Both beers come across as a little watery with light German weissbier character. The Classic sample was yeastier than the Munich sample; difficult to evaluate if that was a sampling bias or real. Classic had a slight banana aroma whereas Munich was less distinct. Neither are bad. They are refreshing but flawed session beers, due to the wateriness. I've gotten more yeast character out of White Labs 300 and Wyeast 3068, perhaps due to wort, pitch count, and fermentation differences, or perhaps because of yeast charater. Those issues must be acknowledge but cannot be isolated here.

This experiment was purely about preference and I don't feel more strongly pulled to one over the other. I intend to blend them in a 5 gallon keg today, so will never learn if carbonation would help me differentiate the two better. But I use less keezer footprint this way.

 

I'm an American of German descent. I home brew and prefer light domestics. I call them Bud Light Clones only because my friends may not think "Chuckie's Bathroom Swill" is all that palatable. My favorite German beer is St Paulie Girl. I've only been "brewing a couple years and am still cooking extract in the kitchen till I finish my brew room in the basement. Then I'll be mashing! I have no allegiance to anyone beer and it's mostly for myself to enjoy (thanks to covid). I like play around with the recipes I find. I am experimenting with steep grains, DME and LME, different hops (including some I grow myself) and yeasts :dry and wet. When I find the right products I can build a better beer

 

It's a great hobby.
Since you grow some hops, be on the lookout for a Homegrown Hops thread for 2021. Someone is bound to start one.

 

Bottled a berry wheat today (hey, baby). It's the most accurate batch I've made to date - the color was beautiful, the ABV was right on (first time nailing OG and FG), tastes great so far, got 54 bottles from a 5 gallon batch...

Feels good not to have to ask some questions like, why didn't I...?, how can I...? And then the good folks here like VikeMan don't have to explain to me 3 times why my imperial stout tastes hoppy.

Also dry hopped a west coast IPA with 3 ounces Centennial. Still a lot of krausen up top after one week in the fermenter.

May your brew days be fruitful!

 

Overage from the Brown Ale bottled today. Judging from this sample it feels a little thin, and it doesn't have enough brown malt. Pleased with the clarity though, which I attribute in part to cold-crashing with a Cold Crash Guardian, discussed briefly < here >.
ETA : this was my first attempt at any sort of cold-crash.



ETA again: Forgot to mention that some of the bottles were PET and I did the squeeze-it thing described in the video below. I left one bottle un-squeezed for comparison after conditioning

 

Threw 2 lbs of dark munich on the grill to do a Smoked Hell-ish. Tried to smoke some salt too but that failed.

 

I think it looks great. But I love brown ales the most so I’m biased lol.

 

I transferred the stout from the fermentor to the apple brandy barrel today. After dumping the water/sanitizer solution which also had a bottle 750ml cheap Apple brandy in it, I added a pint of 100proof captain Apple Jacks brandy before the transfer. The smell coming out of the barrel during transfer made my mouth water. I think I’ll leave the barrel in the garage until the temps are a consistent 70° then I’ll move it into the house. My reasoning is it was fermented under pressure. I’m not sure how the CO2 escaping will react with the barrel? I’m just worried about leaks. It held water for a couple weeks so I should be ok. The bung hasn’t shot out yet either lol.

 

Another whole hop ipa today. This time it was Columbus, nugget, cascade and chinook. Will dryhopping with homegrown cascades, still got a lot of them

 

Brewing a low gravity saison tomorrow morning:
OG: 1.043
Swaen Pils
Vienna
Flaked wheat
Hopped with Crystal and a little Azacca
OYL500 Saisonstein
Also going to pitch a bottle of Orval dregs in the keg for some Brett character.

 

Brewing a simple red ale tomorrow
Marris, Caramunich, Extra special roast, chocolate rye
Citra, 1318 yeast
From Beer and Brewing
Cheers

 

Doing a bourbon oak aged quad with home made dark candy sugar.