Brewing Activities (2019)

Packaged my Dunkelweizen late last night. I was really paranoid about infection or other issues because my Tilt hydrometer was reading 1.002, when my expected FG was 1.014. I also used a "craft" yeast, The Window by Community Cultures. Their site says 70-75% attenuation, which should have put me in the FG range of 1.013-1.015. I mashed in at 156. Fermented at 66 for the first 48 hours, then 68 after.

Long story even longer, my Tilt must need to be calibrated before every batch, and the yeast attenuated more than expected. My "real" hydrometer showed a FG of 1.010. Sample tasted great with a balance of clove and banana that I liked.

 

It's been a few weeks, but have a yeast starter of 830 going for a Munich Helles this weekend. Will just be like 85% Pils, 15% Munich and about 18 IBU's with Tettnanger.

New kitchen remodel begins mid-January for 6 weeks or so, so will need to get my pipeline full of goodies to make it through that time when I can't brew. I hope to squeeze in a porter/stout of sorts and an IPA. If i'm lucky, maybe a Hefeweizen.

 

Brewing another hoppy Amber/red IPA thingy with a few tweaks.

Also bottling a Saison that's been sitting on raspberries, strawberries, blackberries & blueberries.

 

All Galaxy Pale Ale yesterday

Pils
20% pale Ale
2% Carahell
10% Carafoam
Acidulated
1.052
Galaxy @ 20 and WP
Vermont Ale

Tried using my horrible well water diluted with 50% RO and some phosphoric acid. Mash pH was a touch low but not bad. Haven’t had my water tested in a while but the old hardness and alkalinity numbers seemed to work.

Trying to make a 6.5% and 8% version of this same recipe in the future.

 

Brewed up an Imperial Oatmeal Stout (2-row, GNO, Crystal, roasted barley, pale chocolate with Willamette and 1056) and an Imperial Irish Stout (2-row, roasted barley, pale chocolate, midnight wheat, flaked rye with Northern Brewer and 1084) the past 2 weekends. Didn't have the smoothest brew sessions as I'm still getting the hang of using a pump for vorlauf but a tasty wort was still created.

These will be the 2nd beers in my current barrels and I was aiming for a lower abv barrel aged beer so aimed for 8-8.5% abv. Planning to bottle the other beers in a couple of weeks and then leave these in there for 4-6 months.

Next on deck will be a Belgian Blonde (starting a series of Belgian beers including the AP Dubbel and a Quad sometime in Winter or Spring) and a Strawberry Mango Milkshake IPA to help reduce the hop supply in my freezer. Might have to do a few IPAs coming up to help with that!

 

Going for a dark saison, aged on rum soaked oak cubes and dried zante currants. The inspiration for this one comes one of the dark saisons brewed by @OldSock , aka Mad Fermentationist. Been awhile since I poached one of his recipes.

 

I'm snowed in today, so that's a good excuse to brew up another beer. Time to replenish my American Stout inventory. Tweaking things a bit and using some new dark caramel malts that have just become available (gluten free). Hops are Crystal & Willamette. Fermenting with BRY-97.

 

Pale Lager of Sorts today, Czech inspired

Weyermann Eraclea Pils
10% Chit Malt
133/145->decoct->162/170
Sauergut in Mash and at KO
Saaz @ 75 and 20 for 25 IBU
2001/2278 blend

Gonna call it (c)heck. If any one knows anything about UT the overwhelming percentage of the population doesn’t drink beer and says “heck” instead of “hell”. Subtle troll.

 

Bottled up another mixed culture saison, basically just keep trying out different hop/yeast combinations as I improve my overall process. This one ended up being a “get rid of some leftover grains” grist, otherwise I like to keep it simple...

56.6% Pils
6.9% Vienna
14.1% Wheat
11.3% Flaked Oats
11.1% Spelt

25 IBU Loral @60
2oz Southern Aroma @whirlpool

Imperial Rustic
Mainiacal Custom Brett/Pedio Blend
BB FW#3
3F/Tilquin dregs

0.3 oz/gal semi-dry riesling soaked French oak cubes throughout the entirety of fermentation/conditioning

Pitched Rustic at 70F and let that open ferment for ~4 days, then pitched everything else on day 5, then slowly ramped up to 78F and held for about 2 weeks before slowly bringing back down to 70F and let condition in primary for the next ~11 weeks prior to bottling.

Some black pepper, citrus, wildflowers, hay, herbaceousness going on, though this should develop quite nicely in the bottle for some time to come

 

Said screw it and started another brew. Gonna be up late tonight. Kind of a kitchen sink of base malt.

Mosaic 4 ways IPA
Golden Promise/Rahr Pale/Pils
Carafoam
145/162/172

Dextrose
Warrior @ 90
Mosaic T-90 @ 20/5
Mosaic Cryo WP
Mosaic leaf Hopback

Vermont Ale

Mosaic Noble on day 1
Blend of Cryo/pellet/leaf in DH.

Been adding bagged dry hops to a purged keg on day 1 and hooking it up to the fermenter to fully purge using fermentation then transferring when beer is done and yeast has dropped.

 

Just finished clean up after brewing a Scottish export with Maris otter, medium English Crystal, victory, and a bit of midnight wheat. I also reduced a gallon of the first runnings separately. Everything went really well but damn I am tired. Making a mental note not to run 4 miles before brewing again.

 

I’ve thought about doing this exact thing for dry hopping in a keg. How has this been working for you? My concern was the hops would lose freshness and aroma sitting at room temp for several days while purging.

 

Works great actually. Hops are in an O2 free environment pretty quickly. I was worried about degradation at first as well but this will be the third attempt with this method and the first two turned out awesome. Second attempt it still conditioning but the first one I was really stoked on. The hop flavor/aroma intensity has lasted longer than other methods. I don’t usually get too much loss in aroma/flavor with my other DH methods but this ones seems even better.

 

Brewed Pond Hopper IPA, west coast meets UK. Malts look like an ESB, mostly C hops.

 

I just brewed something very similar to that, all english malts (GP, and English cystal) and all C-hops. It's my winter ale. When your's is ready to drink I'd be curious to hear how it came out.

 

Brewing the CCC stout. Coffee, chocolate and coconut

 

I've recently made some changes to my brewing methods to get away from a brew-in-a-bag method. Although I was getting very good extraction efficiencies (> 80%), it was extremely labor intensive handling bags of hot grains with potential for calamity (think of a bag full of hot grain ripping open). I converted to a cooler mash-tun set up for batch sparging.

I decided to christen and start dialing-in my new setup with something rather simple: A Bell's Two Hearted Ale inspired brew:

75% base malt
20% pale ale malt
5% C-40
Lots of Centennial hops, about 60 IBU;s
Dry-hopped with Centennial
WLP001

OG: 1.058

It's sitting in the fermenter as we speak... and it smells AWESOME!

 

My Helles is in the keg to spund, got it racked over at approx. 1.015 (FFT is 1.012).

Cleaned some kegs, cleaned the keezer and the beer lines with BLC/Sanitizer and may be tapping my new Czech Pils later today.

IPA to be brewed this weekend with Columbus and Vic Secret... Targeting mid 6%.

 

@Applecrew135 , That brew is in my rotation, a great choice for sure!!!

 

Super long brew day today.
I maxed out my Grainfather brewing 6.5 gallons of NEIPA. Recirculation was definitely struggling and the sparge took an eternity. I also had to boil down quite a bit to hit my volume. Efficiency also took a hit, but I still fell into acceptable ranges. I'll split this into 2 fermenters before they land in my 3 gallon kegs.

All Columbus on the hot side:
#1 - Lalbrew New England with Bru-1 dh
#2 - K97 with Galaxy dh

Also kegged an Amber ale