Brewing Activities? (March Edition)

Made a 2L starter of WLP004 today. I'll only need half or so for an Irish Red. I guess there will be an Irish Dry stout in my near future. I really enjoyed that last time I made it.

 

@Prep8611

What is your oxygenation process? Also, have you tried just pitching say two packs of W-34/70 yeast to eliminate that portion of it? I have done multiple 5-gal lagers with a two pack pitch of W-34/70 and they came out fantastic. No issues. Oxygenate with 90-sec of pure O2 before pitch and ferment at 50F.

Just a suggestion! I have a few dozen lagers under my belt at this point and find them no more difficult than ales aside from the obvious differences.

 

Quick extract session IPA/hoppy blonde with Centennial and Jarrylo today. Unsure about that combination, but both are in the freezer and need to be used up.

 

I used two packs my last batch. I don't have equipment to inject with pure o2. I'm gonna use two packs again and a starter of the slurry I saved. It started fermenting 4 hours later so I think there is definitely some useful yeast in there.

 

My local store (s) are closer to $50/lb for the more popular/tropical varieties. $3 or $3.50 per oz.

 

i like hopsdirect. Mosaic, amarillo, citra are generally 15-20 a pound, shipping is a bit rough at $10 to NJ, but kinda worth it if you get 3-4 pounds at a time.

In brewing news - skipped my planned brew day this Sunday, BUT I did receive my ibp-16, an upgraded waterproof probe, and a smaller aluminum steamer basket for my kettle (so I can fit my heatstick into the kettle with grains). So now I will be able to use my hotrod and the controller to better hold mash temps, while still using my gas burners on my stove to assist in boiling (I BIAB in an apartment).

Really excited to try it out this coming saturday. Doing a NEIPA with Belma, El Dorado, and just a touch of mandarina. going to use Imperial's "Juice" yeast, which I believe is their version of 1318.

 

Brewed an imperial stout a few days ago and completely missed my OG. I split it into two mashes and miscalculated my sparge water. Didn't boil enough off and unfortunately ended up with an OG of 1.086 (1.100 expected). The good news is that I'll be drinking this sooner than next winter.


Packaging up my beers for NHC. Entering 3 this year. Didn't get any through to the second round last year but I'm hoping to change that this year! Got a dry stout, fruit beer, and best bitter heading off today.

 

Picked up my 55# bag of Barke Pils today from the LHBS along with a 20# CO2 tank exchange and WLP300 for an upcoming Hefe.

 

Brewed a simple 1.040 Amarillo/Citra Blonde ale last weekend to grow yeast for a Double Sunshine clone. Racking tomorrow.

 

Krausened my first Lager yesterday.

Ordered 4 packs of the German Lager X (Andechs) yeast from the Vault. Took them forever to get it to me and they only sent me one. Called and they aknowledged their mistake and sent me three more packs, twice! So paid for 4 got 7. Yeast was 2 months old by the time I got it so I pitched all 7 packs. Not 100% sure what the viability was as the ferment was really quite slow and the lag time was much longer than it should have been. Only 6 or so batches into Lager brewing so still a little new to what the beers should taste like through/after fermentation and pre lagering. No butter but just skeptical of the ferment. So I force transferred 4 gallon to a keg, used the yeast plus a large harvest of Hella Bock that was about a month old for the next batch. Probably a huge overpitch but we’ll see. Yesterday was day 2 of that ferment and it was ripping so force transferred 3/4 gallon of that ferment to the keg with the previous beer.

Hopefully the new beer will help to clean up the previous one and carbonate at the same time... interested to see how it turns out.

Thinking about doing this for my next hoppy beer as well. Been really enjoying the results of naturally carbonating in kegs lately. I just think the texture is so much better.

 

brewed a NEIPA with Citra, Simcoe and Lemon Drop. also brewing a lavender blonde ale this weekend.

 

only on some varietals, but Citra is one of them!

 

Brewed up a NEIPA last weekend, ~8gal and 1# of Mackinac hops, first time using them.

In the bag they reminded me of Cascade and Hallertau.
In the boil they had sort of a zesty herbal nose.
In the WP they had some very nice melon notes.

So far my hopes are still up for this hop.

 

Currently mashing in on what will eventually become a hoppy kettle sour. 50/50 Pils/wheat. Pitching lacto tomorrow morning. 10 min boil on Saturday night with lots of citra and organic freeze dried apricot at flameout. WLP648 is rocking on the stir plate at the moment!

 

I did this exact same thing this past December, and its now one of the best stouts I’ve ever made.

 

Redoing the pilsner failure and pitching a fuckton of yeast. Weyermann pils, dash of Munich, carahell. Hopped with HMF 60-30-15

 

God decided to rain on my beautiful first brew of spring so I moved to the garage.

 

Making another Milkshake IPA this weekend this time upping the ABV and adding Mango and Strawberries to it. Last time was a session (ended up 4.5% which was higher than I wanted) with no bittering hops and taste and aroma came out excellent! Also trying Belma with the Simcoe, Citra I used last time. Excited to see if this one can come close to the last batch!

 

Huge stout coming up this weekend.
Two low temp/ long length mashes, second conducted in the sparge water of the first. Planned for low efficiency only collecting the first runnings into the BK. Will use the second running’s of the second mash which should have plenty of sugar left in it to make a smaller 6-7%ish stout, ferment that first, collect the slurry, pitch the big one. Easier said than done, long day coming up!

Wish I could use my tap water to brew, lugging 19gals up 4 flights of stairs ain’t no joke!

 

Just curious... what do you plan on doing with the wort for the huge stout while the smaller stout is fermenting.